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Learning from the masters: Shanghai’s teacher-expertise infusion system

Xiu Cravens (Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA)
Jianjun Wang (Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China)

International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies

ISSN: 2046-8253

Article publication date: 9 October 2017

417

Abstract

Purpose

The urgency of improving the schools call for a distributed instructional leadership model where teachers are not just recipients of professional development, but also active leaders who are coaches and mentors for their peers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the teacher leadership development system in Shanghai, and identify pathways to constructing actionable models that develop and maximize instructional expertise.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a qualitative study. Purposive sampling was conducted to select four teaching-study groups from a frame that included all certified “expert teachers” from a large Shanghai district with about 9,000 teachers. Grounded theory approaches were used to understand “what actually happens in the teachers’ world.” Participative observations (of lesson delivering and collaborative decoding), semi-structured interviews, teachers’ reflective journal entries, and video recording of group work and lessons were the main measures of data collection.

Findings

Three key features of expertise infusion were identified: recognizing, differentiating, and labeling teacher expertise at multiple mastery levels; providing expert teachers with support and leadership responsibilities to lead practice-embedded and cross-school peer learning; and creating a roadmap for teachers to chart continuous learning pathways individually and build an enhanced content pedagogical knowledgebase collectively.

Originality/value

Results from this study provide the impetus for further exploration in how Shanghai continuously share and improve good teaching systemically, which could be informative to US schools and districts in their effort of redesigning professional development that maximizes available expertise among teachers and stimulates teacher-led action research for student learning.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Submission to the special issue of IJLLS, titled: “Theory and practice of Chinese lesson study and its adaption in other countries,” as an addition to the ZDM issue 2016(4), Lesson Study Around the World. Research for this study was supported by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Citation

Cravens, X. and Wang, J. (2017), "Learning from the masters: Shanghai’s teacher-expertise infusion system", International Journal for Lesson and Learning Studies, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 306-320. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLLS-12-2016-0061

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited

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