ABSTRACT

In China, a variety of approaches have been used for teachers’ professional development and one shared feature is to develop and demonstrate public lessons for discussions in a multiple-layer professional learning community (Huang, Peng, Wang, & Li, 2010). Exemplary lesson development is a newly developed approach for implementing new curriculum, which focuses on either teaching important content topics effectively or implementing reform-oriented instructional strategies (Huang & Bao, 2006; Zhang et al., 2008). Exemplary lessons, similar to public lessons, literally refer to lessons for teachers to imitate and study. Exemplary lesson development is often done by experienced teachers through school-based teaching research activities or research projects (Huang et al., 2010). It has been acknowledged as a powerful model for teachers’ professional growth in China (Huang & Bao, 2006; Huang & Li, 2009). In addition to some similarities shared with the Japanese lesson study in terms of their activity structures, the Chinese model focuses “on both content and pedagogical knowledge and skills, and an open, learner-centered implementation component” (Lerman & Zehetmeier, 2008, p. 139).