Teacher Leaders Providing Classroom Support to Teachers through Demonstration Lessons/Modeling
Research on Teacher Leaders Engaging in Demonstration Lessons/Modeling
Teacher leaders are often engaged in efforts that promote improvement of teachers’ classroom practice by providing some form of instructional support. One such strategy is for teacher leaders to do demonstration lessons or modeling of a particular technique for teachers to learn from and/or emulate. Nine research studies focused on teacher leader programs where this strategy was used. (See Table 1.)
Research Studies that Included the Strategy of Teacher Leaders Using Demonstration Lessons or Modeling in their Instructional Support Work with Teachers
What Research Says
In the nine studies in which the strategy of demonstration lessons or modeling was present, other strategies to provide instructional support to teachers were generally also identified as teacher leader practice. None of these studies investigated the unique contribution of demonstration lesson or modeling. Moreover, across these nine studies, demonstration lesson or modeling appears in various ways.
Interventions Impacting Teacher Leaders' Practices with Teachers
Three studies (Frechtling & Katzenmeyer, 2001; Brown et al., 2001; Wallace et al., 1999) provide findings about the impact of an intervention (such as teacher leader preparation program or training) on teacher leaders’ practices with teachers (including demonstration lessons or modeling). These studies showed that “formal” leadership actions, such as demonstration lesson, were exhibited by teacher leaders who were part of a preparation or training intervention. However, as Frechtling & Katzenmeyer (2001) found, these “formal” leadership actions were less frequent outcomes of an intervention, in comparison to more “informal” leadership actions such as sharing with teachers. Wallace et al. (1999) reported that teacher leaders were found to replicate the leadership model that they had been trained in, although “proactive” models where the classroom is the sphere of influence, such as when the teacher leader demonstrates new techniques in a teacher's classroom, were less prominent than those leadership models in which teacher leaders provided various kinds of assistance, not limited to the classroom setting. Brown et al. (2001) showed that teacher leaders who had been trained in particular strategies and had the opportunity to practice these skills (such as sharing lessons) during training were likely to report using these strategies in their own practice with teachers. The findings across these three studies suggest that while demonstration lessons or modeling were practices that teacher leaders engaged in, they may not be as widespread as other, less “formal” practices. These studies suggest that preparation programs that explicitly include opportunities to practice instructional support strategies, including demonstration lesson or modeling, are likely to have teacher leaders actually engaging in those strategies.
Teacher Leader Knowledge Impacting Teacher Leader Practice
Another study (Manno & Firestone, 2006) showed a relationship between increased teacher leader knowledge and teacher leader practice, such as demonstration lesson or modeling. They found that teacher leaders with content expertise (compared to those teacher leaders without content expertise) were more likely to engage fellow teachers around, for example, issues of implementing curriculum and were more likely to model how to teach the content to others.
Teacher Leader Practice Impacting Teachers' Classroom Practice
Three studies showed that teacher leader practices, including demonstration lessons or modeling, provided positive results on teachers’ classroom practice (Gersten & Kelly, 1992; Race et al., 2002; Vesilind & Jones, 1998). In the Gerston & Kelly (1992) study, “limited” modeling by the teacher leader accompanied classroom observations and feedback to the teacher over a six-week period. In the other two studies, demonstration lessons were part of a repertoire of teacher leader practices that impacted teachers’ classroom practices.
Thus, whether demonstration lessons or modeling were part of the intervention (as with Gersten & Kelly, 1992; Race et al., 2002; and Vesilind & Jones, 1998) or a post-intervention outcome, occurring after or sometimes during a preparation program or training (as with Frechtling & Katzenmeyer, 2001; Brown et al., 2001; and Wallace et al., 1999), these studies provide findings for the claim that demonstration lessons or modeling exists as one of a number of strategies to provide instructional support to teachers. Moreover, they suggest promising areas for future study: investigating specific factors, such as teacher leader content knowledge or the design of the preparation program, that may impact the likelihood of teacher leaders engaging in demonstration lesson or modeling as an instructional support strategy, and investigating the specific contribution of teacher leaders’ demonstration lessons or modeling when providing instructional support to teachers.
These nine studies were distributed across the grade range (five were studies at K-5, with another three at K–12) and across subject areas (three were in math/science, three science only, one math only), suggesting that demonstration lessons or modeling was considered appropriate in various classroom settings. Among these nine studies, two common features regarding demonstration lessons or modeling can be seen. First, this strategy was typically used in conjunction with other teacher leader practices to provide instructional support to teachers. Second, demonstration lessons or modeling was often used in initiatives designed to support or promote curriculum implementation by teachers, thus providing some focus for the modeling. Neither of these features were studied systematically, but their common occurrence in these studies suggest some potential importance. There was little evidence of a clearly-articulated or consistently applied approach to or expectations for what constituted demonstration lesson or modeling, a feature that merits more study.
There are a number of methodological issues worth noting, regarding this set of nine studies. In a few of the studies, teacher leaders participated on a voluntary basis (Gillis et al., 1991; Race et al., 2002; Shanahan et al., 2005), and in most of the remaining studies, not enough information was available to determine if participation was voluntary or not. Generalizability about the findings from these studies must be considered in this light. Most of these studies had small samples of teacher leaders (five studies had samples smaller than ten), but a few of these studies had quite large samples (Brown et al., 2001; Wallace et al., 1999; and, likely, Frechtling & Katzenmeyer, 2001). Most studies used multiple data sources, allowing for data triangulation, but a few studies used a single data source (Race et al., 2002; Silva et al., 2000; Brown et al., 2001). There were no common measures used, and little information was provided about how measures were developed or validated. Two studies were meta-analyses or re-analysis of data collected in previous studies (Frechtling & Katzenmeyer, 2001; Wallace et al., 1999). Taken as a set of studies, some examining teacher leader practices such as demonstration lessons or modeling as an intervention impacting teacher practice and others examining the phenomenon as an outcome of a preparation or training program, there are enough methodological issues to be cautious about the claims that can be made from this body of research.
For a bibliography for the research on demonstration lessons/modeling, click here. [PDF 13K]
The nine studies described above were part of a more inclusive review of research on teacher leaders' practices designed to provide instructional support to teachers. For a summary of research on teacher leaders' instructional support practice, click here. [PDF 309K]
