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We were delighted to welcome three new WALS council members elected at our AGM online in December. Here you can find out more about their work, interest in Lesson and Learning Studies and how they would like to support WALS as a council member.
Dr. David Sekao
 David Sekao is from South Africa and holds a PhD (Mathematics Education). He has over thirty years’ experience in the education sector (primary school mathematics) in South Africa – as a teacher, subject advisor at district level, curriculum specialist at provincial level, and education specialist at national level. He is currently working as a researcher and educator at the University of Pretoria (UP). His first encounter with Lesson Study (LS) was through the training in Japan at Miyagi University of Education and Naruto University of Education. During his tenure with the Department of Basic Education he introduced LS in four provinces to support primary school mathematics teachers with content knowledge and pedagogical skills.
After joining UP he established a LS unit (www.up.ac.za/lesson-study); forged collaboration with the national Department of Basic Education; and identified ten schools to constitute the LS Project schools. Serving in the WALS international council is an important milestone for UP, South Africa and the African continent, however, it comes with an added responsibility of ensuring heightened collaboration with universities locally and in the African continent to expand the knowledge and the implementation of and research output in LS.
Dr. János Győri
 Dr. János Győri is a professor of education at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. One of his main interests in education is teachers’ collaborative professional development. Whilst a guest researcher in Japan in the late 1990s, his interest was aroused in lesson study – but the really big impact on his interest was when he read Catherine Lewis’ early articles on lesson study and the Stigler-Hiebert book in 1999.
He has been actively involved in WALS activities from its inception, presenting at the first Hong Kong conference. He plans to contribute to the work of the council and the association in two areas: with an international team (with Claudia Mewald and James Calleja and others), he is adapting lesson study to the field of vocational education, which is still a terra incognita for lesson study. Also, he wants to disseminate lesson study in those East-European countries in which lesson study didn’t become a well-known method, and to invite new members from this region to the WALS community.
Dr. James Calleja
 James Calleja from the University of Malta led his first lesson study in 2013 when he was a head of the mathematics department at a secondary school in Malta. His passion for designing teacher PD inspired him to pursue his PhD studies focusing on the design and implementation of a PD programme for mathematics teachers.
In 2017, following his appointment as a research academic at the Faculty of Education (University of Malta), he set up the Collaborative Lesson Study Malta (CLeStuM) programme and website (www.clestum.eu) in collaboration with two other colleagues. Within CLeStuM, he supports teachers and schools to adopt and adapt lesson study as a teacher learning model. So far, 12 lesson studies have been carried out. As a WALS Council member he seeks to disseminate the good practices of teachers and schools and to strengthen the promising work of CLeStuM through research. More importantly, through the fora offered by WALS he aims to create stronger and long-lasting connections and networking opportunities so that the
knowledge gained can be shared with, celebrated and enjoyed with the global lesson study community.
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