Great teaching is rarely developed in isolation. Drawing on the Japanese lesson study tradition, this article examines the role of the koshi and shows how collaborative inquiry can enrich professional conversations about teaching and learning.
In higher education, peer observation is a familiar part of academic life. It may support professional development or promotion. Whatever the purpose, opportunities to sit down with colleagues and examine students' learning together are surprisingly rare.
How often do we ask questions like these?
Which students were still struggling?
What evidence suggests they understood the concept?
Why did different groups respond differently to the same activity?
These questions are difficult to answer alone because it is impossible to notice every aspect of students' learning during a lesson. Colleagues therefore need to compare observations, interpret evidence, and think together about what happened.
When I moved to Japan to begin my PhD, I wanted to understand how Japanese teachers seemed to know their students so well. I expected to find the answer in the classroom. Instead, I found it in the conversations teachers had before, during, and after lessons.
Those conversations were part of lesson study (LS), a collaborative approach to professional development in which teachers jointly study the learning materials, plan a lesson around a research question, observe one colleague teaching, and then examine evidence of students' learning together (The Lesson Study Group, 2022)
Students' questions, written work, misconceptions, and classroom interactions all become part of the discussion. The aim is to understand learning more deeply and use that understanding to improve the next lesson. Over time, teachers also build shared knowledge about their students, their curriculum, and their teaching practices.
At EHL, some of these principles are already reflected in practices such as Pedagogical Peer Coaching (PPC), which supports colleagues through observation and professional dialogue. The koshi role overlaps with this collegial spirit, but is distinctive in being embedded within LS: it is anchored in a particular research lesson and inquiry question, and observation forms part of a wider cycle of planning, teaching, analysis, and reflection.
As I became more involved in LS, I noticed that almost every research lesson included someone introduced as the koshi (講師). Sometimes a university professor or experienced teacher, the koshi was initially someone I assumed had been invited to offer expert advice afterwards.
Over the following years, I observed LS across Japan and later served as koshi in other countries. I wanted to understand how people became koshi, how they contributed to professional conversations about teaching, and what higher education might learn from this role.
In Japan, koshi come from diverse professional backgrounds, with no certification program or prescribed career path. In our recent editorial, we describe becoming koshi as “became” — a gradual process through which teachers, school leaders, curriculum experts, and researchers develop the expertise and relationships that lead others to invite them as koshi (Kim et al., 2026). They observe research lessons, contribute to post-lesson discussions, and learn from experienced koshi before supporting LS themselves. Becoming koshi is therefore not a one-off role or intervention, but develops through experience and sustained participation across lesson-study cycles.
What also surprised me was that no two koshi worked in exactly the same way. A mathematics teacher noticed different things from an educational researcher, while a university researcher drew on different knowledge from a school principal. Their comments reflected their expertise and the questions the teaching team was exploring. No single model captured the koshi role.
The idea of manabiai (学び合い), or learning with and from one another, captures this process well. Becoming koshi means participating in a community where teachers and koshi keep learning from one another.
Build a small inquiry group
Start with a research question about students' learning that you want to understand better.
Invite one or two colleagues with complementary expertise to observe a particular lesson, focusing on that shared question.
Afterwards, compare the evidence you each noticed before discussing possible changes. If possible, revisit the question in a subsequent lesson.
When people think of an expert, they often imagine someone who stands at the front of the room and gives answers. That was not what I observed in LS. The first thing I noticed was how much the koshi listened.
Teachers and observers shared what they had seen during the lesson. They described where students hesitated, what questions they asked, and how their thinking developed. The koshi listened carefully before joining the discussion. When they did speak, their comments often began with a question.
"Why do you think this student changed their mind?"
"What evidence suggests the class understood this concept?"
These questions encouraged teachers to return to evidence rather than rely on first impressions. A student's notebook, a comment during group work, or a recurring misconception could become a starting point for discussing curriculum, subject knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, or lesson design.
Try this structure for your next post-observation discussion.
3 minutes – Revisit the research question
What were we trying to understand about students' learning?
10 minutes – Share evidence
What did students say, write, or do?
10 minutes – Interpret together
What does this evidence tell us about their learning?
10 minutes – Look ahead
What question should we investigate in the next lesson?
The koshi role developed within Japanese LS, and we cannot simply import it into higher education, where structures and ways of working differ. We can, however, learn from the practices that make it effective.
LS in higher education has already been adapted from the Japanese model. Cerbin (2011) describes it as a form of classroom inquiry in which lecturers investigate students' learning by jointly planning, observing, and analysing a lesson. Wood and Cajkler (2018) argue that this process also strengthens professional learning by enabling colleagues to build shared knowledge through collaborative analysis of classroom evidence.
EHL already has many of the ingredients for this kind of collaboration, including an established culture of collegial learning through initiatives such as PPC. Our faculty brings together expertise that few higher education institutions can match. Alongside disciplinary knowledge, many colleagues have led hotels, restaurants, tourism organisations, events, and hospitality businesses, shaping what we notice in the classroom.
Imagine the same lesson being observed by several colleagues. A colleague with experience in hospitality operations may notice how students make decisions under pressure. A communication lecturer may focus on how students negotiate ideas within a team. Someone with expertise in teaching and learning may notice how students build understanding collaboratively or where misconceptions begin to appear. None of these perspectives tells the whole story. However, together, they help us understand students' learning more completely.
Bring a different lens into the conversation
Invite someone whose expertise complements your own:
a colleague with hospitality industry experience,
someone from another discipline,
a course representative,
or a colleague with expertise in teaching and learning.
Ask each person to identify one piece of evidence about students' learning from their professional perspective.
So, what might educators learn from the role of koshi? The lesson I have taken from koshi is simple: expertise becomes more useful when it is shared. Thus, perhaps it is less about adopting a new role than about strengthening the conversations we already have. When colleagues with different expertise examine students' learning together around a shared research question, the inquiry becomes more focused, which in turn helps build a more complete understanding of both their teaching and their students. That principle lies at the heart of LS and is just as relevant in higher education.
References
Cerbin, B. (2011). Lesson study: Using classroom inquiry to improve teaching and learning in higher education. Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Kim, J., Tan, S., & Choy, B. H. (2026). The role of koshi (講師) in lesson study communities: became, being and becoming. International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, 15(3), 209-223. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijlls-03-2026-0138
The Lesson Study Group (2022). What is lesson study. https://lessonresearch.net/about-lesson-study/what-is-lesson-study-2/
Wood, P., & Cajkler, W. (2018). Lesson study: A collaborative approach to scholarship for teaching and learning in higher education. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 42(3), 313-326. https://doi.org/10.1080/0309877X.2016.1261093