Motoko Akiba

Professional Title
Associate Professor
Organization/Institution
About Me (Bio)
Motoko Akiba is an Associate Professor of Education Policy in the Department of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies at Florida State University. Her areas of research expertise are teacher policy and reform, teacher professional development, and comparative education. Dr. Akiba received her B.A. from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, and a dual-title Ph.D. in “Educational Theory & Policy” and “Comparative & International Education” from Pennsylvania State University-University Park. Her publications include Improving teacher quality: The U.S. teaching force in global context (Teachers College Press, 2009) and Teacher reforms around the world (Emerald Books, 2013). Her articles appear in journals including Educational Researcher, American Educational Research Journal, Education Policy, Educational Policy Analysis Archives, Teachers College Record, Comparative Education Review, and Compare on teacher policy topics such as professional development, compensation and performance-related pay, and multicultural teacher education. Her research program has been funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Education, and AERA Grant Program. She is currently leading a NSF DRK-12 project entitled, Identifying an effective and scalable model of lesson study. Dr. Akiba is also serving as an Associate Editor of Educational Researcher.
Florida State University (FSU)
12/15/2012

This CAREER proposal has four objectives: 1) examine the nature of mathematics teachers' learning opportunities for instructional improvement, 2) examine how work contexts influence the quality of teacher learning opportunities, 3) examine the impact of teacher learning opportunities on changes in student mathematics achievement over four years, and 4) work with district and school administrators to promote instructional improvement and student achievement by effectively providing learning opportunities to mathematics teachers.

Florida State University (FSU)
08/01/2014

This project investigates the variation in teachers' practice of lesson study to identify effective and scalable design features of lesson study associated with student mathematics achievement growth in Florida. Lesson study is a teacher professional development model in which a group of teachers works collaboratively to plan a lesson, observe the lesson in a classroom with students, and analyze and discuss the student work and understanding in response to the lesson.