Practice-Based Insights on Teacher Leaders Providing Classroom Support to Teachers through Lesson Planning
Teacher leaders – current or former classroom teachers working with other classroom teachers and other educators in the school or district – are present in many reform efforts in mathematics and science education. Lesson planning, review, or analysis is one of a variety of strategies teacher leaders can use to support the improvement of classroom teachers’ instructional practice. As a strategy employed by teacher leaders, lesson planning, review, or analysis may be used for various purposes: to focus attention on the content and learning outcomes in a lesson, rather than on an activity for activity’s sake; to deepen understanding of “big ideas” and the content knowledge in a lesson; or for articulating the conceptual flow across lessons that guides student learning over time.
Advice from experienced practitioners offers guidance to those involved in teacher leaders’ efforts to improve teacher’s classroom practice through lesson planning, review, or analysis. Insights provided by a group of expert practitioners with diverse backgrounds and experiences in working with teachers included the following ideas:
- Start with the end in mind – Ensure that teacher leaders articulate the learning goals of a lesson so that they are clear and meaningful to the teacher.
- Content is job 1 – Emphasize with teacher leaders the centrality of the content of the lesson when lesson planning.
- Stay focused – Advocate that teacher leaders use a shared protocol to structure lesson planning.
- What’s the big idea? – Ensure that lesson planning addresses a series of lessons developing a “big idea.”
- All together now – Develop shared expectations about what constitutes good instruction.
- Two or more can play this game – Recommend to teacher leaders that they engage in lesson planning with groups of teachers.
Teacher leaders will work with teachers in many venues to help them change instruction. If teacher leaders are planning to spend time working with teachers in their classrooms, they might also assist teachers beforehand in planning what will happen in the classroom. There are many issues for teachers to consider as they attempt to change their instruction. Careful planning is essential if teachers are to ensure that they cover the intended content while also trying to implement new pedagogical practices. Teacher leaders can help teachers think through all of the issues they will need to consider, and work with them to create or tailor lesson plans that guide them in their instruction. Conversations with teachers during planning can also help build a shared vision for what quality instruction looks like.
Experienced practitioners, including MSP program leaders, offered insights around strategies that teacher leaders can use to provide instructional support to classroom teachers, for the purpose of improving instruction. Data were collected and vetted through multi-round, online panel discussions with practitioners, as well as interviews and focus groups with MSP leaders. The insights below reflect general agreement among these practitioners on the strategy of lesson planning, lesson review, or lesson analysis and include illustrative examples from their own practice. After reviewing these insights, you will be given an opportunity to share your own experiences with using these strategies for these purposes. The information you provide will be included in the analysis of insights and examples from other practitioners as this website is periodically updated.
Start with the end in mind – Ensure that teacher leaders articulate the learning goals of a lesson so that they are clear and meaningful to the teacher.
Lesson planning can be a powerful tool for teacher leaders working with teachers when it becomes the occasion to clearly articulate learning goals. In that way, the particular activities, materials, and procedures become a means to the larger end: the learning goals. An MSP leader advocated that teacher leaders and teachers:
Focus on the learning outcomes intended for the lesson, rather than just the activities the students will be doing. All too often instruction becomes a mechanical set of experiences and activities and the learning targets get lost, for both the teacher and the students. Intentional lesson design, review, and analysis can help avoid this. Scaffolding this process with resources to address content and big ideas, articulation of how those ideas develop over time and researching commonly held student preconceptions all better prepare a teacher to anticipate student response and facilitate learning.
Experienced practitioners highlighted the need for the learning goals to be meaningful to teachers, connected to his/her instruction, so that teachers are invested in them. As one noted,
Teacher leaders have to work with teachers “where they are,” in the context of their own lessons or new lessons they are committed to teaching from designated materials in order to engage them in the change process. Nothing that is imposed on teachers from the outside that teachers don’t have some stake in or buy into on their own will have the same potential for improving instruction.
Insight in action
As part of a middle school science mentoring program, mentors met with classroom teachers on a fairly regular basis to help them improve instructional practice through lesson planning. Mentor and teacher pairs usually met before or after school, during lunch, or during preparation periods. In the beginning of the mentoring cycle, mentors reviewed the teachers’ lesson plans, and as the pair became more comfortable working together, the mentors would challenge teachers to think more carefully about lesson design and how the lesson supported the development of district standards.
Content is job 1 – Emphasize with teacher leaders the centrality of the content of the lesson when lesson planning.
In lesson planning, experienced practitioners noted the importance of the teacher leader and teacher having a shared focus on the mathematics or science content of the lesson. While attending to the mechanics of the lesson is useful, particularly when a teacher has very limited experience with a particular strategy, the mathematics or science content needs to be a central part of any lesson planning practice. The content focus might come into play in discussing the learning goals of a particular lesson; considering students’ prior knowledge; articulating how the lesson builds understanding; and considering strategies for assessing student knowledge; all as part of the process of planning a lesson. MSP program leaders warned of the pitfall of having the content “negotiated out” of the lesson, in the hopes of making a lesson more accessible for a teacher, lest the result be a lesson devoid of rigorous content.
Stay focused – Advocate that teacher leaders use a shared protocol to structure lesson planning.
The use of a protocol or guiding questions can provide needed focus to lesson planning. Teacher leaders can bring to or develop with teachers a shared protocol to use in planning successive lessons. As an MSP leader noted,
A protocol or set of guiding questions structures the practice of lesson planning or review. This provides greater focus and consistency over time, so that lesson planning is more about an overall strategy for working on and improving lessons, rather than a disconnected, one-by-one look at individual lessons. The protocol or guiding questions can, with time, be less explicit as teachers internalize an approach toward planning lessons.
A protocol might consist of reflection questions to pose when planning a lesson (What is the goal of the lesson? How does this lesson relate to those that came before and follow? What content may be challenging for which students?). Or a protocol might focus on particular aspects of a lesson (identifying activities that review, introduce, solidify or extend concepts; clarifying the purpose of whole group, small group, pair or individual work). A protocol might be specific to a curriculum or a unit, or it may be generic enough that it is used consistently in planning a variety of lessons.
Insight in action
MSP-sponsored teacher leaders used a protocol that focused attention on cognitive demand and student engagement as they planned and reviewed lessons with mathematics or science teachers. Using the protocol helped teacher leaders and teachers develop a shared understanding of learning goals for students in a given lesson, and provided teachers with guiding questions they could use in planning. How will students be encouraged to challenge the ideas of others? What investigations will students carry out? How will students be asked to share their content knowledge? How will students be encouraged to develop multiple solutions? After using the protocol to frame the lesson planning process, teacher leaders used it as a basis for observations and feedback provided to teachers as they co-planned or implemented lessons.
What’s the big idea? – Ensure that lesson planning addresses a series of lessons developing a “big idea.”
A lesson should not be treated as an independent event, disconnected from the lessons that precede or follow it. Teacher leaders can support teachers’ understanding and effective implementation of lessons when they help to situate a single lesson in the context of a series of lessons developing a “big idea.” As one MSP leader observed,
The storyline should start first – what chapter or big idea is the lesson part of, and then how does the lesson fit into this? The literature on learning suggests that a key factor in lesson planning is being able to organize and structure what is to be learned. Teachers have to help students see how the structure fits together so no lesson should ever be isolated from the others.
As experienced practitioners noted, the big idea or network of ideas may be introduced as an organizing principle under which to proceed as a teacher leader begins his/her work with a teacher, to reinforce the idea that lessons need to add up to something from the perspective of the student learner. With each lesson, a teacher leader might work with the teacher to identify (or construct) the big idea. Articulating the big idea among lessons may not happen when the practice of lesson planning is new to teachers, but does need to get increasing attention as teachers become more skilled in this practice. An MSP leader noted that “lesson planning helps teachers focus on the big ideas. Without a coherent vision of lesson planning, a lesson can easily become ‘activity for activity’s sake’.” Teacher leaders need sufficient content knowledge themselves, in order to articulate the big idea to teachers during lesson planning, or to understand how instructional materials call out the big idea, so that they can foster that understanding among teachers.
Insight in action
As part of collaborative reform efforts to improve K-6 science education across multiple urban school districts, teacher leaders facilitated grade-specific meetings for elementary science teachers to prepare and support them in teaching specific lessons from designated materials. The teacher leader and the teachers worked together to explore how each learning experience built conceptually on the preceding lesson and how teachers could elicit the desired understandings from students.
All together now – Develop shared expectations about what constitutes good instruction.
As teacher leaders and teachers plan lessons together, it is important that there be shared expectations about what constitutes good instruction. These shared expectations may precede lesson planning or evolve through discussion of a lesson. Teacher leaders and the teachers they are working with need not have shared expectations at the outset, however. An MSP leader explained:
Teacher leaders can effectively work with teachers who do not yet share a vision as to what constitutes good instruction. Teachers and administrators develop an understanding of effective practice over time by experiencing and observing success. I think that teacher leaders can be effective in less than ideal situations. Their goal should be to work with other teachers and administrators and together develop shared expectations as a result of together helping students learn….Many people don’t change their ideas about good instruction until they begin to change their practice. They might be pressured into changing what they say, but it is less likely that they will change what they believe.
If expectations are not shared initially, experienced practitioners noted that it is the teacher leader’s role to introduce them through his/her work with a teacher. Lesson planning can be an avenue for doing so as teacher leaders and teachers plan, implement, and reflect upon instruction. As described by one MSP leader, lesson planning “should be undertaken by teacher leaders and teachers for the purpose of improving instructional practice, meaning that there needs to be thoughtful and cumulative reflection on lesson goals and strategies (and not a ‘show and tell’ mentality to showcase best lessons).” What is important is that teacher leaders and teachers demonstrate a commitment to improving practice as they engage in their work together.
Two or more can play this game – Recommend to teacher leaders that they engage in lesson planning with groups of teachers.
Teacher leaders often help individual teachers with lesson planning, but engaging in this practice with a group of teachers offers some distinct advantages. As one practitioner explained,
The process of engaging in lesson planning, review, or analysis with a group of teachers is the icing on the cake. It helps create a common dialogue and the shared vision of effective instruction, and moves teachers as a group in a school or district forward and provides the structure for sustaining the change in instruction over time.
It may be more difficult to schedule lesson planning with a group of teachers, and also more demanding to facilitate discussion. Even so, lesson planning with a group of teachers can lead to conversations enriched by multiple responses and build agreement about lesson goals, thus building greater accountability within the group. In reflecting on what it takes to facilitate such group work, an MSP leader commented:
The role of the leader is to organize the work; help provide the resources; push to ensure that the group stays focused on the mathematics; help them work together and mediate the tensions that arise from conflicting views on how the lesson should proceed; and ask questions to make sure the lesson “hangs together” and that the mathematics is correct.
What is important, experienced practitioners suggested, is that teacher leaders consider the needs of the teachers as they implement this strategy with individuals or with a group, as well as attend to the larger goals of the lessons that are being planned.
If you are interested in how these practitioner insights were collected and analyzed, a summary of the methodology can be found here.
Research on Teacher Leaders Providing Classroom Support to Teachers through Lesson Planning
In a review of the published literature, nine research studies were identified in which teacher leaders engaged in lesson planning as a strategy to improve the instructional practices of classroom teachers. These studies were distributed across grades K-12 in mathematics and science, suggesting that lesson planning was considered an appropriate teacher leader strategy in various classroom settings. These studies examined different aspects of teacher leaders engaged in lesson planning: as part of a definition of teacher leader practice; the impact of an intervention (such as teacher leader training) on teacher leader practices, including lesson planning on student outcomes; and the impact of interventions on teacher leader practice, including engagement in lesson planning. In these studies, lesson planning was examined as part of a set of teacher leader practices; none focused on the unique contribution of lesson planning. The findings suggest that lesson planning is recognized as part of a set of practices through which teacher leaders work with teachers to improve classroom instruction.
Teacher leaders are often engaged in efforts that promote improvement of teachers’ classroom practice by providing some form of instructional support. One instructional support strategy employed by teacher leaders is to provide demonstration lessons in which a teacher leader models a particular technique for teachers to learn from and/or emulate. In a review of the empirical literature on teacher leadership, fourteen studies were identified with findings related to the teacher leader practice of conducting demonstration lessons to classroom teachers.
Research Studies that Included the Strategy of Teacher Leaders Using Demonstration Lessons or Modeling in their Instructional Support Work with Teachers
What Research Says
The MSP-Knowledge Management and Dissemination project conducted an extensive review of the empirical literature on teacher leadership. The review was based on a rigorous process developed by the MSP-KMD project (read a detailed description of the process) that applied standards of evidence to the findings of each study. In the fourteen studies in which the teacher leader practice of conducting 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 lessons or modeling. Moreover, across these fourteen studies, various outcomes of the teacher leader practice of providing demonstration lessons or modeling were examined:
- Impact of teacher leader practice, including demonstration lessons or modeling, on student and teacher outcomes
- Impact of teacher leader knowledge on teacher leader practice, including demonstration lessons or modeling
- Impact of teacher leader preparation programs on teacher leader practice of providing demonstration lessons or modeling
Impact of teacher leader practice, including demonstration lessons or modeling, on student and teacher outcomes
Studies by Gersten and Kelly, (1992), Gigante and Firestone (2007), Race et al. (2002), and Vesilind and Jones (1998) showed that teacher leader practices, including demonstration lessons or modeling, had a positive impact on teachers’ classroom practice. In Gersten and Kelly (1992), “limited” modeling by the teacher leader accompanied classroom observations and feedback to the teacher over a six-week period. In Gigante and Firestone (2007), Race et al. (2002) and Vesilind and Jones (1998) demonstration lessons was part of a repertoire of teacher leader practices that impacted teachers’ classroom practices. None of these studies examined the unique effect of demonstration lessons on teacher classroom practice, relative to other teacher leader support practices. The validity of these findings are strengthened by the use of multiple data sources to allow for triangulation in analysis (Gersten & Kelly, 1992; Gigante & Firestone, 2007; Race et al., 2002; Vesilind & Jones, 1998), member checking (Gigante & Firestone, 2007), and detailed description of the data analysis procedures (Gigante & Firestone, 2007). These studies examined teacher leadership in mathematics and science and in elementary and secondary grades, suggesting that teacher leader support which includes demonstration lessons has a positive impact on teacher instruction in various settings.
Studies by Balfanz et al. (2006) and Ruby (2006) examined the relationship between teacher leaders who engaged in a set of instructional support practices, including demonstration lessons, and student achievement in middle grades mathematics (Balfanz et al., 2006) and middle grades science (Ruby, 2006). In these studies, teacher leaders were one component of an extensive intervention designed to improve student learning, The effect of teacher leadership was not examined independent of other components of the intervention (such as new curricula, new instructional materials, and professional development for classroom teachers). Both studies found that student achievement improved in schools that received the treatment. The validity of the findings of Balfanz et al. (2006) and Ruby (2006) was strengthened by the use of comparison schools and the inclusion of reliability information of the instruments used in each study.
Studies in this set provided evidence of teacher leaders who provided demonstration lessons or modeling as one of their support strategies had positive impact on teachers’ classroom instruction and student achievement. However, none of these studies was designed to investigate the unique influence of this teacher leader activity, indicating a fruitful area for future research.
Impact of teacher leader knowledge on teacher leader practice, including demonstration lessons or modeling
Studies identified factors that influenced teacher leader practice, including demonstration lessons. Two related studies (Gigante & Firestone, 2007; Manno & Firestone, 2006) were conducted as part of the same teacher leader initiative in K-12 mathematics and science. Manno and Firestone (2006) found that teacher leaders with content expertise (compared to those without content expertise) were more likely to engage with teachers around curriculum implementation, including modeling how to teach the content. Gigante and Firestone (2007) found that teacher leaders’ use of demonstration lessons and other instructional support practices was impacted by the amount of time they had available. When teacher leaders had less time available, they were more likely to engage in “managerial” support strategies, such as providing resources to teachers, than direct instructional support practices, including demonstration lessons. The validity of the findings in Gigante and Firestone (2007) and Manno and Firestone (2006) was strengthened by the use multiple data sources (which allowed for triangulation in data analysis), and by detailed descriptions of data analysis procedures. Edge and Mylopoulos (2008) found that participation in a cross-school network of teacher leaders contributed to teacher leaders’ confidence in providing instructional support to teachers, including demonstration lessons. Findings from these three studies suggest that initiatives that feature teacher leaders engaged in instructional support practices, including demonstration lessons, should attend to factors such as time, peer support, and teacher leader knowledge that may influence their practice.
Impact of teacher leader training programs on teacher leader practice of providing demonstration lessons or modeling
Studies by Brown et al. (2001), Frechtling and Katzenmeyer (2001), Glazer et al. (2006), and Wallace et al. (1999) provided findings about the impact of teacher leader training programs on teacher leaders’ practices with teachers (including demonstration lessons or modeling). These studies found that “formal” leadership actions, such as demonstration lessons, were exhibited by teacher leaders who participated in a preparation or training program. Frechtling and Katzenmeyer (2001) found that these “formal” leadership activities were less frequent than more “informal” leadership actions such as sharing advice with teachers. Both Brown et al. (2001) and Wallace et al. (1999) reported that teacher leaders who learned and practiced particular strategies (such as demonstration lessons) in their training programs were more likely to report using those strategies with teachers. Wallace et al. (1999) found that “proactive” models where the classroom is the sphere of influence, such demonstrating new techniques in a teacher’s classroom, were less prominent than models in which teacher leaders provided various kinds of assistance, not limited to the classroom setting. Glazer et al. (2006) reported that teacher leaders employed demonstration lessons to introduce pedagogical techniques and then transitioned to other forms of instructional support (such as classroom observations) as teachers implemented these techniques in their classrooms.
The findings across these four studies suggested that demonstration lessons or modeling were employed by teacher leaders, but were not as widespread as less “formal” practices and that the occurrence of demonstration lessons decreased over time. The studies also suggested that teacher leaders who participated in preparation programs that included opportunities to practice strategies such as demonstration lesson or modeling were likely to use those strategies. These findings should be viewed with caution as these studies had methodological limitations, including reliance on a single data source (Brown et al., 2001; Glazer et al., 2006; Wallace et al., 1999) and lack of description of data collection and analysis (Brown et al., 2001; Frechtling & Katzenmeyer, 2001; Glazer et al., 2006; Wallace et al., 1999). Due to these limitations, further research is warranted into the relationship between teacher leader preparation and the practice of demonstration lessons and modeling.
Additional information on these studies
For a bibliography for the research on demonstration lessons/modeling, click here [PDF 24K]
The fourteen 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 272K]
Teacher Leadership Matters
Empirical evidence shows that teacher leaders’ practice impacts teachers’ instructional practice and, in some studies, provides evidence of positive impact on student outcomes. Findings across studies include:
- Teacher leaders’ practice, particularly in providing instructional support to teachers, impacts teachers’ classroom practice.
- Teacher leaders’ practice occurs in a larger context of conditions that impact teachers’ practice.
- Teacher leaders’ practice is related to positive student outcomes.
Learn more about research on why teacher leadership matters.