Improving mathematics teachers' instructional practices triggering higher order thinking skills through lesson study

This doctoral dissertation aims to develop mathematics teachers' instructional practices that support students' higher-order thinking skills through the lesson study model, to analyze the development of the teacher moves that support student inquiry throughout the course, and to investigate the impact of this development on students' higher-order thinking skills. This study, in which the instructional practices and the teacher moves in the classroom, which are expected to have an impact on the change of the students' higher-order thinking skills during the lesson study, was carried out using the case study method based on the qualitative research design. The participants of the study are four mathematics teachers, 53 6th grade students who study at a private school in İzmir and a knowledgeable other (external expert). The participant teachers were given a 10-hour training that lasted two days in the summer before the academic term began. The training comprised of the lesson study, logico-mathematical activities, higher-order thinking skills, questioning approaches, the level of mathematical activities, lesson plans etc., which form the basis of the study. After the training was completed, it was discussed on the topics to be covered during the lesson study and the topics in which the 6th grade students had difficulty and the related learning outcomes were determined. In accordance with these learning outcomes, four lesson study cycles were implemented. The teachers and the knowledgeable other worked together to prepare lesson plans for each lesson study cycle as they did in the lesson study model. Two weeks before those lesson plans were implemented and after the last lesson study cycle finished, the students were given higher-order thinking skills test. While the lesson plans prepared for those four lesson study cycles were implemented by two mathematics teachers who taught 6th grades during 2017-2018 academic year, other participant maths teachers and the knowledgeable other observed these lessons. All research and revision lessons were recorded with two video cameras which were placed in the front and the back of the classroom. After each research lesson, in which the lesson plans prepared by the teachers were implemented, the recordings were examined and the teachers who observed those lessons, researcher and the external expert came together and revised the parts of the lesson plans which required change. Revised lesson plans were implemented by a maths teacher who taught a different 6th grade class. These lessons, which were named as Revision-1 lesson, were recorded, required changes were made in the lesson plans and a second revision was made. In addition, to get the reflections of research and revision lessons, some students, who were randomly chosen, were interviewed after the lessons. In each lesson cycle, after lesson plans were implemented the students were individually given problems which were related to the learning outcomes determined for the research lesson and would support their higher-order thinking skills. Within the scope of this dissertation study, the data were collected from the student answers given to the higher-order thinking skills test and written answers they gave to the questions in the process, the video recordings from debriefing and revision meetings, the video recordings and the notes from practice lessons, reflective diaries which were written by the practitioner teachers before and after each lesson in each cycle, reflective diaries which were written by the participant teachers at the end of lesson study, and the interviews conducted with the students after research and revision lessons. While the data, collected to reveal how teaching practices that trigger higher-order thinking are shaped throughout the lesson study and the development of teacher moves that support student reasoning, were analyzed through the method of descriptive analysis and numerical analysis of qualitative data, the data collected to reveal how students' higher-order thinking skills have developed in classes where teaching practices that support higher-order thinking skills were implemented were analyzed with hypothesis tests. The findings of the study revealed that the rich content of real-life-based content in the lesson plans developed by focusing on student thinking creates an important opportunity for generating productive mathematical discourses. In addition to the activities designed in the lesson plans prepared to develop higher-order thinking skills by focusing on student thinking, the selected questions were one of the most important factors shaping the discussions in the classroom environment. It was observed that the rates of teachers' high potential moves that support student reasoning in practice lessons increased during the lesson study cycles. It was also observed that the structure of the discussions differs according to teacher moves being high or low potential. Similarly, it was found that the students are more active in the discussions and they show higher-order thinking skills when their opinions were asked instead of asking yes-no questions, when they are asked to convince their friends who do not think as the same as they do, when they are expected to make explanations. It was also seen that the category of Extending Student Reasoning, which was used by the teachers at the lowest rate during the first cycle of the lesson study, was the most developed category in the process. The result of the study revealed that there was a significant difference between the average scores of the students they got from the high-level thinking skill test before and after the lesson study. It is considered that the lesson study does not an have an important contribution in the design of instructional practices for the development of students' higher-order thinking skills. It is suggested that the further studies should focus on a more systematic analysis of the student-teacher dialogues during lesson study, and comparatively analyze the discussions in which predominantly high potential moves and low potential moves exist.