Lesson study is a form of professional development for teachers adopted in recent years from Japan. Introducing lesson study to U.S. teachers and researchers has been the focus of most of the literature on this subject. Much of the literature outlines how lesson study works and describes its essential features. One of the features of lesson study is anticipating student responses, also known as anticipating student thinking. Anticipating student responses is passingly described in lesson study literature. This research was conducted to understand what it means to anticipate student responses for preservice mathematics teachers in a lesson study group. Lesson study literature indicates that anticipating student responses is to anticipate conceptual development from the students' perspective, and the purpose is to be prepared to have meaningful discussions and questions to enable students to develop the understanding. Anticipating student responses is highly related to the hypothetical learning trajectory described by Simon (1995), the self directed anticipative learning model described by Christensen and Hooker (2000) and the expert blind spot discussed by Nathan and Petrosino (2003). While their work does not stem from lesson study, they add theoretical perspective to the idea of anticipating student responses. Their work indicates that anticipating student responses is difficult, valuable, that one gets better at it through experience, and that it is very useful in refining lessons. Participants were enrolled in the mathematics education methods class of a large private university in the U.S. A characterization of anticipating student responses was developed as the participants met in group meetings to create a lesson. They anticipated student responses in ways that facilitated lesson planning and task design. Participants did not anticipate student responses toward students' conceptual development. This research reports five particular ways that anticipating student responses was used as a tool to define and refine the lesson so that it ran smoothly toward lesson goals. These ways are related to: goals, tasks and materials, procedural mathematical reasoning, successful student efforts, and emotional responses. It is believed that anticipating student responses towards task design is a necessary precursor to anticipating student responses toward students' conceptual development.

Lesson preparation is an important part of teachers' profession, yet there has been little research focused on this topic recently. This work studied the preparation of geography lessons in Czechia with an emphasis on the use of internet sources. Based on the findings, criteria for an ideal geographic website for teachers were suggested. The data were collected in two ways: (1) on-line survey of ran- domly selected secondary school teachers (n=72), and (2) semi-structured interviews (n=6). The work indicated that lesson preparation greatly varies from teacher to teacher. In general, teachers do not change their lesson plans significantly, and thus the beginning of teachers' career is crucial for future teaching. Participating teachers spend on average about a quarter of their working time on lesson preparation and there is no apparent correlation between the time spend on lesson preparation and the teachers' age or the length of teachers' career. Furthermore, it was found that all participating teachers use internet resources during lesson preparation, particularly for search of updated infor- mation. The most visited websites are those offering maps and encyclopaedias (predominantly Wik- ipedia). The ideal geographical website should primarily offer ideas for teaching activities, as fully- prepared lessons...

Das Erstellen von Unterrichtsentwürfen wird als Voraussetzung für effektiven, zielgerichteten Unterricht gesehen. Dies gilt insbesondere für angehende Lehrpersonen. Da viele Aspekte, wie z.B. Methoden, Fachinhalte, Standards und die Charakteristik der Lerngruppe, zur gleichen Zeit berücksichtigt und sinnvoll aufeinander abgestimmt werden müssen, handelt es sich um eine kreative und zugleich anspruchsvolle Aufgabe. Es liegt nahe, diesen aufwändigen Prozess der Planung durch spezialisierte Softwaresysteme zu unterstützen, die nicht nur Routineaufgaben erleichtern, sondern auch zur Reflexion anregen. Basierend auf einem Literatur-Review und Interviews mit Dozierenden, die Lehrpersonen ausbilden, werden Anforderungen an Unterrichtsentwürfe analysiert und diskutiert. Es werden dabei nicht nur die relevanten theoretischen Grundlagen betrachtet, sondern ebenfalls das Vorgehen bei der Planung, genutzte Hilfsmittel und besonders unterstützenswerte Aspekte aus der Praxis. Darauf aufbauend werden Anwendungsfälle und Anforderungen an ein Planungsunterstützungssystem systematisch abgeleitet. Existierende Planungssysteme werden vorgestellt und untersucht, wobei viele bereits elementare Anforderungen nicht erfüllen. Insbesondere gibt es kein System, das adaptives Feedback bereitstellt. Um diese Lücke zu schließen, wird eine graphische, zeitbasierte Notation zur Unterrichtsplanung vorgeschlagen. Weiterhin sind ein Ressourcen-Management, Analyse-Möglichkeiten und automatisches Feedback zentrale Bestandteile des Ansatzes. Der entwickelte Prototyp wurde mit über 100 Personen in mehreren Studien systematisch empirisch evaluiert. Im Fokus stand dabei nicht nur die Untersuchung der Gebrauchstauglichkeit des Ansatzes und des Prototyps, sondern auch wie sich die Nutzung des Prototyps auf die Qualität der Unterrichtsentwürfe auswirkt. Es wird aufgezeigt, dass der beschriebene Ansatz für die Planung von Unterricht geeignet ist und angehende Lehrpersonen auch zur Reflexion angeregt hat. / Developing a lesson plan is considered as a prerequisite for effective, targeted instruction. This is particularly true for prospective teachers. Since many aspects such as methods, subject content, standards, and the characteristics of the learner group have to be taken into account and reasonably compiled, it is a creative as well as a demanding task. It stands to reason that this complex process of planning can be supported by specialized software systems that do not only facilitate routine tasks, but also stimulate reflection. Based on a literature-review and interviews with instructors of prospective teachers, requirements for lesson plans are analyzed and discussed. Not only relevant theoretical principles of lesson planning are considered, but also individual planning steps, tools used and practical aspects that would benefit particularly from further support. Building upon this, use cases and requirements for a lesson planning support system are derived systematically. Existing planning systems are presented and analyzed. It is argued that many systems do not meet even basic requirements. Especially there is no system that offers adaptive feedback. In order to fill this gap, a graphical time-based representation is proposed for lesson planning. Further central aspects of this approach are resource management, analysis capabilities and automatic feedback. A software architecture for a planning support system is presented that implements the aforementioned approach and meets the requirements. The developed prototype was empirically evaluated in several systematic studies involving over 100 participants. The focus to study was the usability of the approach and the prototype on the one hand, and how the use of the prototype affects the quality of the lesson plans on the other hand. In this thesis it is shown that the described approach for lesson planning is adequate and suitable to promote reflective thinking about one''s own planning activities.