![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.walsnet.org\/\/eletter\/2019\/02\/images\/pete.jpg\")
A happy Lunar New Year and a big welcome to the first 2019 WALS News.<\/p>\nDear WALS member,<\/p>\n
A happy Lunar New Year and a big welcome to the first 2019 WALS News.<\/p>\n
This edition celebrates the injection of new talent from around the world joining the WALS Council. The Council plays a vital role in WALS, developing activities and policies to help promote high quality Lesson and Learning Study globally. The Council is multi-national and these new members show just how influential and dynamic it will continue to be long into the future. We welcome you all!<\/p>\n
Preparations are well underway for the 13th WALS international conference in Amsterdam. The preview in this newsletter gives a hint of the amazing experience participants will have and of the phenomenal preparations which promise an amazing experience for all. Also helping to grow practice around the world is our journal the IJLLS. If you are a WALS member you can access the journal\u2019s entire output from morphmatters.com\/wals-theme-2\/<\/strong><\/a> and your own contributions will be welcomed.<\/p>\n Pete Dudley WALS Elected Members<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The WALS Council was delighted to welcome five new elected members at their meeting in Beijing in December. All are playing significant roles in leading Lesson and Learning Study in their own countries and have much to offer WALS. Full biographies will be available on our website, but here is some information about each one.<\/p>\n WALS 2019 Conference from 3-6 September<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you attend only ONE conference this year make it the WALS 2019 conference from 3-6 September in the capital of the Netherlands: Amsterdam. The conference features oral presentations, TED talks, featured symposia, skill building workshops highlighting empirical findings, practical implementation in different settings, current topics, and many other aspects of Lesson and Learning Studies.<\/p>\n We will be showcasing important trends in the field of Lesson and Learning Studies. For the first time in the WALS history there will be a PhD pre-conference for PhD students, young and emerging researchers. The conference will be held in the world-famous Johan Cruijff ArenA in Amsterdam. At the end of the conference week school visits will be organised in Amsterdam\/Haarlem, Utrecht, and Groningen. Three leading Dutch universities for teacher education: VU Amsterdam, University of Groningen and Utrecht University, will host WALS2019. We are pleased to invite teachers, practitioners and researchers from all over the world to take part in this international and important event on the European continent to learn from each other on Lesson Studies.<\/p>\n The theme of the conference is Crafting Sustainable Pedagogies for Teaching and Learning <\/em>and reflects three lenses to look at Lesson Study: the craftsmanship it demands, its sustainable effects on learning and professional development and the beauty of its focus on what is and will always be at the heart of all education: the pedagogies which make us learn. We have a great lineup of keynote speakers including Catherine Lewis<\/strong>, Motoko Akiba<\/strong>, and Aoibhinn Ni Shuilleabhain<\/strong>.<\/p>\n You can watch a high-profile video featuring our keynote speakers on our website<\/strong>.<\/a><\/p>\n Our call for proposals is already open<\/strong>!<\/p>\n We cordially invite practitioners, teachers leaders, researchers, administrators, young researchers, teacher educators, (student) teachers, and educational designers to submit proposals for oral presentations, symposia, TEDtalks, workshops, roundtables, and posters via our website www.wals2019.com<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n We need all of you to make a high-quality conference and are looking forward to your important contribution. Visit the website for more details on this great event!<\/p>\n Register before 11 June 2019 for the best rates. <\/strong><\/p>\n International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies (IJLLS)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies (IJLLS) is the official journal of the World Association of Lesson Studies<\/strong><\/a> (WALS). The first journal of its kind.<\/p>\n IJLLS publishes lesson and learning studies that are pedagogically aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning in formal educational settings. These studies may take the form of action research, design experiments, formative evaluations or pedagogical research more generally that is designed to foster a democratic, discursive and action orientated inquiry process.<\/p>\n The editorial objective of the journal is to promote interdisciplinary and cross-national collaboration focused on improving the quality of learning in classrooms and other formal learning environments. The editorial team encourages teacher educators, educational researchers and teachers at all levels and in all types of education to submit articles based on their research for consideration for publication.<\/p>\n IJLLS is abstracted and indexed in British Library, Cabell’s Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Educational Curriculum & Methods, EBSCO EDS, Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals (NSD), ProQuest ABI inform, and Summon, and ranked by Scopus and Emerging Sources Citation Index (Clarivate Analytics).<\/p>\n Authors may submit articles directly through the journal website. Suggestions for special issues of the journal by guest editors are welcomed. The Editorial Team is always available for advice to budding authors. Find us at www.emeraldinsight.com\/journal\/ijlls<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Four Very Good Reasons to be a Member of WALS in 2019<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Plans are now progressing well for at least three webinars to take place this year focussing on learning study and variation theory, models of lesson study in initial teacher education and PhD research. If you would like to put forward an idea for a future webinar please complete and submit the webinar proposal form available on the WALS website<\/strong>.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThe Learning Study: Recent Trends and Developments\u201d<\/strong> Guest Editors: Pang Ming Fai and Ulla Runesson Kempe \u201cParticipatory Educational Research\u201d<\/strong> Guest Editor: Airi Rovio-Johansson The PhD students (or recent PhD graduates) community has expanded to become a lively community within WALS. It started with the creation of a database on the WALS website for PhD students in the field of LS. The database which contains information of 30 PhD students and their studies is still growing and it is publicly available on WALS website.<\/p>\n This emerging community, facilitated by two PhD students (Tijmen Shipper and Shirley Tan) and two professors (St\u00e9phane Clivaz and Sui Lin Goei,) organized some events during WALS2018. These include three PhD students\u2019 presentations during the expert seminar, two PhD students-symposia and a PhD students-meeting.<\/p>\n In the meeting, about 20 PhD students were given the opportunity to meet each other, to discuss about their research and plan for future activities. Two most discussed activities were the PhD pre-conference day that will take place on Monday 2nd September as part of the WALS2019 conference (see www.wals2019.com\/phd-pre-conference<\/strong><\/a> ) and the creation of a forum for PhD students. This forum will be launched soon, and PhD students registered in the database will be informed.<\/p>\n
\nWALS President<\/p>\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.walsnet.org\/\/eletter\/2019\/02\/images\/rongjin.jpg\")
Dr. Rongjin Huang<\/strong> is a Professor at Middle Tennessee State University, USA. His research interests include mathematics classroom research, mathematics teacher education, and comparative mathematics education. Over the past ten years, he has worked on theorizing Chinese lesson study and developing research methodologies of lesson study. He has served on the leadership team of the Lesson study Special Interest Group (SIG) at American Education Research Association since 2017. Dr. Huang has worked on theory-informed (learning trajectory and variation pedagogy) lesson study and plans to develop a project on technology-assisted lesson study on scale.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.walsnet.org\/\/eletter\/2019\/02\/images\/sharon.jpg\")
Dr. Sharon Dotger<\/strong> is an Associate Professor at Syracuse University in the USA. Lesson study has been a focus of her research and professional development work since 2007. She has led teams of teachers through many cycles and started a local lesson study conference that focuses on science teaching. As a WALS member she hosted a 2 day world-wide twitter chat about lesson study coaching and co-presented a webinar about science notebooks and mathematics journals with Dr. Shelley Friedkin from Mills College.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.walsnet.org\/\/eletter\/2019\/02\/images\/angelika.jpg\")
Dr. Angelika Kullberg<\/strong> is an Associate Professor at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Her research interests are foremost on relationships between teaching and learning in classrooms. She has worked with learning studies since 2003 and attended her first WALS conference 2007. She has been an executive committee member of the European Association of Learning and Instruction, EARLI, 2015-2017. Since 2014 is she an expert member in the scientific committee at Lausanne Laboratory Lesson Study in Switzerland<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.walsnet.org\/\/eletter\/2019\/02\/images\/jiangheng.jpg\")
Dr. Jiang Heng<\/strong> is an Assistant Professor at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Heng\u2019s research areas include teacher professional learning, teacher beliefs, and comparative education. She has led a two-year research project titled \u201cTeacher\u2019s engagement in lesson study for learning community: Shaping teachers\u2019 beliefs about students from disadvantaged social backgrounds<\/em>\u201d in Singapore. She is currently leading a three-year research project on \u201cTeacher learning with classroom assessment.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.walsnet.org\/\/eletter\/2019\/02\/images\/jenny.jpg\")
Jenny Svanteson Wester<\/strong> is a PhD student with a licentiate degree (Svanteson Wester 2014) at Gothenburg University. Her research interests are foremost on relationships between teaching and learning in classrooms. Jenny has been teaching mathematics and science for 25 years in secondary school and she is still teaching, but part time alongside doctoral studies. For ten years, she has regularly both participated and supervised lesson\/learning studies in different subjects in middle school, lower secondary school and upper secondary school in Sweden and has participated in WALS conferences in 2009, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2017.<\/p>\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.walsnet.org\/\/eletter\/2019\/02\/images\/wals2019.jpg\")
<\/p>\nEarly Bird Registration for the 13th International Conference of the World Association of Lesson Studies 2019 has opened!<\/h5>\n
![\"Thought](\"https:\/\/gallery.mailchimp.com\/a31f39c69777f0b1e66222997\/images\/93ddc245-7268-4ab1-a4d8-6cee825fe99d.png\")
<\/p>\n\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.walsnet.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/ijlls-ad.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\nOne \u2013 take part in one of a series of webinars led by worldwide experts in lesson and learning study.<\/h5>\n
Two \u2013 read the papers in the IJLLS including 2 special editions this year.<\/h5>\n
\nThis special issue will bring in both researchers and teacher researchers to share their work on different dimensions of Learning study. This will make original theoretical and practical contributions to the development of Learning study.<\/p>\n
\nParticipatory Educational Research is a growing research field aiming to give a scientific grounding to school research in general and teaching, student learning and teachers\u2019 professional development in particular; the research field is focused on collaborative action research and teachers\u2019 professional development and on improving student learning.<\/p>\nThree \u2013 if you are a PhD student join our growing worldwide community of students who are sharing their learning and experiences through a database and a new dedicated forum on our website.<\/h5>\n