Joining the dots: Using lesson study to develop metacognitive teaching

‘Metacognition and self-regulation’ and ‘collaborative learning’ remain high in the EEF Teachers’ Toolkit of effective teaching approaches, and with good reasons. These reasons can be framed through the following hypotheses. Firstly, to become metacognitive and self-regulating, learners need to experience learning situations, activities and content that can best be resolved, understood and applied through opportunities to engage in dialogue with others. Secondly, through engaging with collaborative learning and dialogic teaching, learners become more adept at grappling with the complexities and challenges that they encounter through the curriculum and in life. Finally, to teach for metacognition and self-regulation, teachers need to experience both for themselves in their own learning to teach. It is these three hypotheses that form the basis of this case study, with a focus on a PGCE module through which student teachers use an adapted lesson study approach to develop a repe