The project aims to expand intercultural and interprofessional collaboration in classroom research and development between Hiroshima University (HU) and Leipzig University (UL). The (junior) researchers and teachers will explore methodologies of classroom observation and processes of democratic classroom development and develop a network for the joint enhancement of an international, sustainable, democratically oriented conceptualization of teaching and classroom development.
Facing an output-oriented educational discourse, teaching and its research are oriented toward subject-specific learning on the one hand and overcoming educational disparities on the other (cf. OECD 2015). This is linked to a democratic claim for equitable chances in education and participation. In this context, Japan plays a pioneering role with regard to collegial-interprofessional lesson development through Lesson Study (NASEM 2011) and is a valued partner in international educational cooperation. So far, however, educational partnerships have taken the form of a relationship of lending and borrowing - mostly between the developed West and a yet-to-be-developed Other. The "exported" offer is taken for granted as a norm that does not require further reflection. Despite being actually a collegial tradition, Lesson Study is also spread internationally in a one-sided notmative educational borrowing (Kinoshita 2019). In contrast, we attempt to overcome this asymmetry in the sense of analytically oriented educational borrowing (Steiner-Khamsi 2016). In doing so, we start from the assumption that the research methodologies, each used differently in Japan and Germany, themselves produce fundamental normative views on the subject matter, here specifically on the question of what appears to be desirable or avoidable as a (democratic) goal of teaching (cf. Hallitzky et al. 2018, 88; Herfter et al. 2019). We therefore examine democratic development both at the object level of school learning and at the methodological level of classroom observation by teachers and researchers. The Japanese researchers use the methodology of Lesson Study for observation and development, which is implemented in close connection with teachers in schools, while the Leipzig researchers use reconstructive methods for observation within their Lesson Study concept. Lesson Study follows the traditional normative claim to democratize both instruction itself and collaboration in instructional development (NASEM 2011). Lesson Study based on qualitative classroom research in the German-speaking countries, on the other hand, faces the challenge of how to explicitly include the idea of democracy in their research processes (Hallitzky et al. forthcoming 2021) while at the same time orienting towards an ideal of norm-free social sciences. The reflexive exchange about the perspectives to the classroom and about the research methodologies will take place via an international research platform to be jointly established.
In terms of content, we set a common emphasis in educational science discourses with the focus on democracy learning, which is reflected in its specific perspectives. With a view to the further development of democratic societies, teaching can be taken into the research focus as a process of producing certain individuals and forms of living together. Here we have to consider that the democratically intended demand for individualization is embedded in complex, historically non-linear and culturally recontextualized processes of modernity. Therefore, we self-reflexively ask which images of democracy are developed in the process of intercultural and -professional collaboration of classroom research and development. To do so, we focus on the meaning of social interactions in teaching as a "form of living together, of common and shared experience" (Dewey 1916/2000, p. 121). The norm-relevant problem of which individuals and communities are (supposed to be) brought forth in the educational process and what meaning they have for the basic order of democracy and freedom (cf. Klafki 2007) emerges as an open and reflective question in the different research perspectives. This openness overcomes a one-sided educational borrowing and enables the non-hierarchical discourse within the network to be established, which is the aim of our project. The materials, data as well as work processes will be documented, discussed and archived on the platform to be developed, so that the content-related and methodological-reflexive cooperation can be made available and further developed for both participating institutions and successively for other networks.
This research network will solidify the collegial-complementary collaboration of observing and developing theoretical perspectives on teaching with different generations of the faculty, thereby strengthening international scholarly relations in teaching research and development in the long term.
