Lesson Study as a vehicle to foster teacher agency

The evidence in support of Lesson Study (LS) as a powerful approach to Teacher Professional Development (PD) continues to grow at a rapid rate. However, despite its widespread popularity, the mechanisms by which LS fosters teacher agency remain under-theorised. In order to address this theoretical gap, this paper proposes an emergent theoretical framework which seeks to explain how LS may foster teachers’ achievement of agency. The paper describes how this framework derived from a systematic review of literature, which drew from a total of 32 empirical studies across a range of contexts. Guided by an ecological conceptualisation of teacher agency, a process of thematic analysis on data from studies allowed identification of a number of agency enablers, linked to LS activities. These links are used to generate an emergent theoretical framework, which holds relevance for researchers, LS facilitators, practitioners and policymakers. The timeliness of such a framework is notable given the recent publication of the draft Primary Curriculum Framework (NCCA, 2020), which espouses the importance of teacher agency in order to realise its aim of supporting children to achieve their full potential.