Aspectos da colaboração profissional docente mobilizados em um estudo de aula (Lesson study) no contexto brasileiro

Abstract

The teacher professional development process encompasses different dimensions, among them professional culture, especially collaboration, which allows teachers to share ideas, experiences, and reflect on practice. A professional development approach that has collaboration as a basic principle, increasingly investigated in Brazil due to its potential to favor the growth of the teacher, is the lesson study. This approach focuses on teaching practice and takes on a reflective and collaborative nature, favoring the teacher’s professional development. Instigated by these aspects, we developed an investigation to highlight and understand the aspects of professional collaboration experienced by a group of teachers participating in a classroom study. The research, of a qualitative and interpretative nature and based on the theoretical assumptions about culture and professional collaboration of Andy Hargreaves and Mônica Thurler, involved eight mathematics teachers participating in a lesson study, who teach classes in the final years of elementary school in public schools state institutions belonging to the 1.ª Coordenadoria Regional de Educação do Rio Grande do Sul (1.ª CRE). The lesson study sessions were held biweekly from August to December 2019, structured in 12 meetings of 3 hours each, which were developed at 1.ª CRE. The empirical material of the study was constituted from the records produced in face of the meeting observations, transcription of the audio recordings of the sessions, as well as the field notes produced in the research lesson (third stage of the lesson study). The analysis of the material showed five important aspects of professional collaboration experienced by teachers in the context of lesson study activities: sharing, mutual support and encouragement, dialogue, cooperation and shared reflection. Regarding to sharin, lesson study gave teachers the opportunity to share their anxieties, fears, goals and classroom experiences. Mutual support and encouragement was an aspect highly valued by teachers, because it created the conditions for everyone to participate in the process and get involved in all stages. The dialogue was one of the highlighted aspects of the experience because the teachers participated in a formative process that valued the participants’ voice and the negotiation of decisions. Cooperation marked the process as teachers were proactive in carrying out different activities. Shared reflection, an aspect considered new in our study, signals that the dynamics of lesson study enabled teachers to think critically and deeply about teaching.