Compare methods

	Lesson Study (Collaborative Inquiry)	Formative Assessment
Field	Education	Education
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2006	1998
Originator	Japanese teaching tradition; introduced to the West by Stigler, Hiebert, Lewis & colleagues	Scriven (term); Bloom; Black & Wiliam (modern synthesis)
Type	Cyclical, teacher-led professional development and practitioner inquiry process	Instructional process using evidence of learning to adapt teaching and feedback
Seminal source	Lewis, C., Perry, R., & Murata, A. (2006). How should research contribute to instructional improvement? The case of lesson study. Educational Researcher, 35(3), 3–14.	Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7–74.
Aliases	Jugyou Kenkyuu, Research Lesson Cycle, Collaborative Lesson Study, Japanese Lesson Study	Assessment for Learning, Classroom Formative Assessment, Feedback-Based Assessment, Embedded Formative Assessment
Related	3	4
Summary	Lesson study (jugyou kenkyuu) is a collaborative, cyclical form of teacher professional development and practitioner inquiry that originated in Japan. A team of teachers studies the curriculum, sets a shared learning goal, jointly designs a 'research lesson,' has one member teach it while the others observe students closely, and then debriefs against the evidence to revise the lesson and their understanding of teaching. Rather than improving a single lesson, its deeper aim is to build teachers' professional knowledge through disciplined, evidence-based collective inquiry.	Formative assessment, or assessment for learning, is the practice of gathering evidence of student understanding during instruction and using it immediately to adjust teaching and to give feedback that moves learning forward. Unlike summative assessment, which measures learning after the fact for grading or accountability, formative assessment is woven into the teaching cycle. Synthesized influentially by Black and Wiliam, it is defined not by the type of instrument but by whether the resulting evidence actually changes subsequent instruction and learning.