課例研究提升教育改革中教師自主性之形成性研究

Autonomy refers to one’s capability to think and act freely in a given situation. Recent educational transformation has raised the attention to teacher autonomy by encouraging teachers to design curriculum and instruction with their colleagues, and to collect evidences of student learning through classroom observations. This approach is known as lesson studies, introduced to Taiwan by Prof. Manabu Sato since 2012. However, how lesson studies may actually contribute to teacher autonomy in educational transformation? This report begins with a review of prior research on teacher autonomy to identify the gap between the theoretical promise of teacher autonomy for educational reform and the empirical research findings from the studies of teacher autonomy in other countries and in Taiwan. The researcher explains how lesson studies may empower teachers to research learning and instruction in the school contexts. Lesson studies should allow teachers to become conscious about their knowledge and their personal theory, which drives their everyday thinking and decision-making in classrooms, and to refine their knowledge about teaching and learning. However, even for lesson studies, it is very difficult to challenge one’s existing mindset, which has its roots in the industrial paradigm of education. A formative research was conducted to develop a design theory for advancing the knowledge of “how-to” scaffold teacher autonomy in educational transformation through lesson studies. The following research questions guided the research investigation: RQ1. how to scaffold teacher autonomy in educational transformation through quality lesson studies, which aim for teachers’ reflecting and advancing their own knowledge and theory about learning and instruction?RQ2. how to scaffold more teachers’ teacher autonomy in educational transformation by expanding quality lesson studies to a school level? A designed case was created to help the researcher develop and revise the design theory, using the formative research approach. Formative evaluation data were collected to improve the theory because the weaknesses found in the application may reflect weaknesses in the theory and any improvements of the application may reflect improvements of the theory. The data collected included individual and focus-group interviews with the teacher participants, classroom observations, discussion observations, document analysis, and interviews with external experts on lesson studies. Constant comparative method will be used to analyze qualitative data. The research findings include (1) at the case level: reports on the designed case with empirical evidences regarding lesson studies to scaffold teacher autonomy, (2) at the theory level: a design theory on how to scaffold teacher autonomy through quality lesson study, and (3) at the theoretically implication level: an explanatory model to explore the theoretical understanding regarding the relationship between teacher autonomy and lesson studies, as well as its implications for schools’ lesson studies to support teacher autonomy in this transformation.