Defining music demonstration lessons: a unique performance-based lesson type improving teachers’ instructional skills in Chinese mainland education

Abstract

Teaching is a highly complex act, and learning to teach in an educational era that combines both teacher-centred and student-centred approaches presents additional challenges. Conducting demonstration lessons (DL) is one of the methods aimed at enhancing teachers’ instructional skills. This study examines the features and functions of this unique type of lesson from the perspective of music demonstration teachers in Guangdong, China. Through observation and interviews, the findings not only reveal the prevalence of DLs as performance-based lessons in Chinese teachers’ professional lives but also explore their distinctions from regular school teaching and their potential for improving teachers’ pedagogical abilities. Concerns and issues related to this type of lesson, along with possible solutions, are also discussed to provide recommendations for incorporating DLs into teacher training programmes in higher education institutions.

Introduction

Teaching is a highly complicated act, and learning to teach adds more challenges (Butler, 2001). In the past, for decoding the complexity of teaching and providing suggestions on how to teach in school education, many studies were conducted to explore effective teaching pedagogies and strategies as good practices for others to learn and reference (Clarke et al., 2013; Negru et al., 2016). However, how to teach depends on what society expects students to learn (Lo, 2012). A teacher’s teaching practice is not solely influenced by personal professional competency and teaching intention but is primarily shaped by external requirements and expectations from a social and global standpoint (Fullan, 2015). Presently, teachers are under the global expectation to excel in two teaching approaches: employing a teacher-centred approach to ensure a consistent education quality overall (Fuller and Stevenson, 2019) and employing a student-centred approach to cultivate future students with independent thinking and innovation (Schweisfurth, 2020).

Specifically, in line with the global educational trend of standardising educational design and processes to assess teaching and learning effectiveness, commonly referred to as the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), global education tends to adopt a teacher-centred approach, employing uniform regional curricula to guide students’ learning progression and sequence and utilising standardised assessment methods to evaluate the students’ learning achievement. Consequently, a competitive culture has emerged, wherein winning awards and earning reputations are means of showcasing educational success at the school, state and even national levels (Sahlberg, 2016). Meanwhile, the field of educational reform has also emphasised the importance of cultivating students’ individuality through critical and creative thinking and fostering innovative competency (OECD, 2018; UNESCO, 2015). In this context, teachers are expected to adopt a student-centred approach, following students’ learning sequences, facilitating the individual construction of knowledge, sharing autonomy with students to foster their sense of ownership in learning and providing flexible spaces for personalised development.

However, despite the potential variations and ongoing updates in educational trends, the process of translating theory into practice still predominantly relies on teachers’ interpretation and implementation within their local educational context (Bremner, 2020). In China, these two approaches have also dominantly guided music teaching. On one side, student-centred education has been officially incorporated into national documents, such as the latest national curriculum standards (Ministry of Education, 2022), as a representation of the educational reform shift from traditional teacher-centred to current student-centred education. On the other side, although music students are not involved in international assessments, a national-level assessment called the China Quality Monitoring of National Compulsory Education (CQMNCE) assessment has been developed under the guidance of the Chinese Educational Bureau. This assessment aims to evaluate students’ learning outcomes and monitor teachers’ teaching quality (Zhang and Leung, 2023). It holds significant importance within China’s music education system as it takes place every three years and assesses the music learning competencies of fourth and seventh-grade students nationwide (Yin, Li and Wu, 2016). Consequently, due to the prominence of this national-level assessment, teachers face time constraints and experience tension between applying student-centred approaches to meet national curriculum requirements and implementing teacher-centred approaches to deliver the CQMNCE-prescribed learning content to students (Zhang and Leung, 2023).

To explore the instructional practices of Chinese music teachers in the aforementioned contextual situation, the authors first conducted two preliminary research studies and revealed the demonstration lesson (DL), a unique lesson type that not only aims to demonstrate learning outcomes by using standardised teaching content and sequence but also aims to model the student-centred approaches showing how students can be actively engaged and motivated in learning (Zhang and Leung, 2023; Zhang, Leung and Yang, 2023). However, the more details about the DL emerged, the more questions were raised by the authors; for instance, how do music teachers in China, especially the demonstration teachers who conducted both DL and their regular lessons (RL) at school, perceive this type of guiding lesson? Is DL a part of RL in a school setting? Are there any distinct features of DL to make it unique and popular in China’s music teaching context? Therefore, this study is a follow-up study of both Zhang and Leung (2023) and Zhang, Leung and Yang (2023), aiming to address the aforementioned questions and gain an in-depth understanding of the features and function of DL from the perspective of demonstration teachers, within the guidance of the two educational approaches in Chinese music teaching. The findings will not only contribute to understanding demonstration teachers’ perceptions towards lesson implementation under the two teaching approaches’ guidance but also foster cultural respect and contextual understanding of music teaching in China within the multicultural global community.

Demonstration lesson

A DL is a lesson type for the observation of teaching happening in a realistic or simulated classroom setting for evaluating and/or improving teaching and learning (O’Leary, 2012; de Paor, 2015). Since it contains a cycle of acquiring new knowledge through direct seeing from others’ doing, reflection on self-action, imitation of observed techniques and making further improvements in self-teaching, it has also been conducted as a method of teacher growth and development (Loong et al., 2017). In the past, although the function of DL form of professional development (PD) for teachers has been widely accepted in various domains, there is still ongoing discussion regarding its practical application and the role it plays in education (de Paor, 2015). Consequently, current literature predominantly presents two perspectives on DL: one that views it as a means of supervision support and another that considers it a tool for showcasing models to demonstrate its educational effect and implications. Both contain an implication that effective teaching can be transmitted through observation and imitation, leading to positive learning outcomes (Gomes et al., 2023).

Specifically, the earliest report about DL described its coaching or mentoring function to build mentorship between experienced teachers and teachers who are newly employed in a school setting. After ten years of experience of using DL, Ruhnke (1936) reported the positive effect of the improvement of new teachers’ teaching techniques and their working confidence through their after-school observations of the experienced teachers’ lessons. From him, DL is a kind of supervision strategy that lets mentor teachers transfer ‘the aim of education in the fields of habits, skills, ideals, and attitudes’ into the functional activity in a real classroom context which mentee teachers can understand (p. 413). Later on, DL, with its mentorship function, was well accepted in many other research. For example. Hockly (2000) describes the benefits of having pre-service trainee teachers observe DLs, as it allows them to directly grasp ideas with concrete procedures on what to teach before understanding how and why to teach from the trainer/teacher. When trainee teachers consistently observe various elements that constitute good teaching practices, their opportunities to acquire these techniques are enhanced and stimulated. Peters (2011) and Darling-Hammond (2012) also echoed this idea, viewing DL as a supportive approach in higher education. They emphasised the use of a similar coaching strategy, building a direct ‘modelling-receiving’ relationship to establish stronger teacher-learner connections as apprenticeships. Consequently, from this perspective, DL’s coaching and mentoring function can be seen as transmitting effective teaching techniques through structured, sustained and observable processes from one to the other.

Another perspective on DL is to consider it as a type of model lesson with distinct features and characteristics that showcase how a lesson can be conducted (Fernandez and Chokshi, 2002). In this interpretation, DL goes beyond the traditional ‘mentor-mentee’ relationship and instead supports peer observation and peer learning. This kind of DL can be easily identified within a practical-oriented instructional improvement process, such as the lesson study and learning study. Lesson study is a teacher-led and evidence-based approach, originated in Japan, to PD (Fuiji, 2019). In a lesson study cycle, teachers collaborate to identify a shared instructional goal. They plan a research lesson, with one teacher teaching while others observe and take notes. Afterwards, the group engages in a structured post-lesson reflection to analyse the instructional strategies and identify areas for improvement. Based on the insights gained, the lesson is revised and refined and later shared as a model for other teachers to observe and learn from (Fuiji, 2019). Similar to the lesson study, the learning study, originated in Hong Kong and is rooted in the lesson study, uses a similar instructional, observational and reflectional study cycle but takes variation theory as a basis to improve teachers’ teaching quality (Marton and Booth, 2013). It highlights the significance of providing learners with diverse examples or instances of a concept and emphasises the role of teachers in designing instructional experiences that promote deep understanding and help students discern essential patterns. In this learning process, DL functions as showcasing effective teaching strategies and instructional techniques that align with the learning goals identified in the study (Marton, 2014). Therefore, in this aspect, DL provides an opportunity for other teachers to observe a collectively constructed lesson and gain insights into more scientifically effective instructional practices.

Demonstration lesson in China music education

In China, the educational implication that good teaching can be transferred from observation to action is also embedded in school music education (Li, 2017). However, in addition to sharing a belief in DL’s advantage for teaching improvement and substantialising this educational implication as an inner-school PD activity, DL has also extended its reach beyond the school level. It is incorporated into a yearly teaching improvement event known as the Music Class Demonstration Event (MCDE), which aims to enhance teaching quality nationwide (Xiao, 2019; Zhang, Leung and Yang, 2023).

Specifically, the MCDE is a nationwide educational event organised by the National Education, Sports, Health, and Art Department (NESHAD) under the Ministry of Education since 1995. It serves as a platform for teaching demonstrations held during various teaching competitions and teacher training programmes at all levels, ranging from national to provincial, district and local schools (Li, 2017). The primary aim of the MCDE is to stimulate music teachers’ motivation to enhance their teaching skills and competencies, ultimately improving teaching quality. During the MCDE, teachers have the opportunity to upload one videotaped music lesson from their usual schools for judging. A panel of music experts representing the Bureau of Education selects a limited number of the most effective and attractive music lessons based on their personal criteria. These selected lessons, after undergoing several levels of evaluation and judgments, exemplify outstanding examples of regular school lessons, hereafter RL, that not only exhibit good teaching quality but also strongly align with the latest educational reform and national documents, such as the national music curriculum standards (Liu, 2011). The chosen lessons, known as demonstration lessons (DL), then participate in a province-wide event and subsequently in a nationwide educational event and are given again on stage, aiming to provide opportunities for other schoolteachers to observe and learn from them (Qin, 2013; Xiao, 2019). This process, spanning nearly 30 years, has allowed DL to have a significant impact on showcasing exemplary teaching practices across China. The modelling function of DL, aimed at improving teaching quality throughout the country, has garnered widespread support and acclaim from Chinese educators (Lan and Li, 2019; Zhang, 2012).

However, while conducting DL is becoming a regular teaching activity among school teachers and has been well promoted by the government, critical voices have started rising regarding its limitations in lesson preparation and its authentic representation in real school contexts. For instance, Luo (2018) criticised the process of preparing DL as ‘polishing a lesson [Mo Ke 磨课]’ due to its repetitive nature (p. 223). This process requires teachers to repeatedly practise the same teaching content over time to become familiar with and confident in presenting it on stage. Within this process, not only does students’ time get wasted on teachers’ lesson preparation, but the lesson itself often deviates from its original essence. Holding a similar concern, Wang (2013) pointed out that DL not only do lessons with sequential teaching patterns, which result in both teachers and students feeling tired from repetitive demonstrations, fail to authentically represent what teachers teach in real school contexts, but they also tend to restrict teachers’ creative thinking. According to Xiao (2019), although MCDE has shown a shift from a teacher-centred to a student-centred teaching mode, DL still predominantly relies on a teacher-centred approach. This emphasis on teacher-centeredness may give rise to issues concerning the development of students’ creativity and individuality.

Although the aforementioned critiques outline a possible ‘polishing-based’ and ‘teacher-centred’ DL type in the Chinese context, these educators all stated from an audience’s perspective and provided little or nil empirical evidence to support their statements. Although Zhang, Leung and Yang (2023), in their observational study analysing selected lessons from an MCDE event, revealed that DL tends to have a strongly content-driven and teacher-centred nature, their study lacks the perspective of teachers interpreting their understanding of DL, and the process of how MCDE-participating teachers prepare these DLs remains unknown. In this case, even though DL has been identified as one type of lessons which might different from RL in China because of its showcase on the stage, the exploration of how it is prepared and implemented, as well as its function in Chinese music education, is still limited.

This study aims to fill the gap in an empirical exploration of DL from teachers’ perspectives in the context of music teaching in China. By focusing on a group of teachers who participated in MCDE and their preparation process for DL, this study explores how these selected teachers implement their practices on the performing stage and how they perceive their lesson function, preparation and implementation. Thus, the two research questions are as follows:

From the perspective of MCDE-participating teachers,

1. 1. What are the general features of music DLs in China’s MCDE event?

2. 2. How do they perceive the function, lesson preparation and lesson implementation of a DL?

Methodology

To address the research questions, a qualitative research design (Maxwell, 2013) using observation and interview was applied to this study. Observation allows direct gathering of information in natural settings but can be influenced by observer bias (Cowie, 2009). Interviews provide in-depth participant perspectives but may be subject to subjective bias (Fontana and Prokos, 2016). Accordingly, combining both observation and interview in research design offers a better approach, as it provides both objective and subjective insights, mitigating biases through triangulating data from multiple sources, and leads to a more comprehensive understanding of the research topic (Maxwell, 2013).

Participants

Six participants were selected based on purposeful sampling (Maxwell, 2013). The initial criteria for participant selection were as follows. First, the targeted participants had to have DL teaching experience to be able to provide more details based on their personal experiences. Second, the selected teachers had to be experienced music teachers who had at least five years of teaching experience to be able to better compare the structure and management of DLs with their regular daily lessons. Third, this is a follow-up research study on Zhang, Leung and Yang (2023)’s DL study in China. Therefore, all the participants are expected to be among the demonstration teachers who presented their elementary teaching lessons at the 2018 Guangdong Music Class Demonstration Event (GMCDE).

Based on the above criteria, a group of teachers who had participated in the 2018 GMCDE was introduced to the authors by an experienced school music teacher. After the authors contacted them through social media, six teachers who are specialised to teach school music classes volunteered to be participants in this study (see Table 1).

Table 1. Basic Information of Participants

Research instrument and data collection

This study involves three aspects of data collected from each participant: one DL, one individual interview and lesson plans for the DL.

For observation, after selecting the six participants, their DLs from the 2018 GMCDE were first searched and found in a video recording format on the Guangdong Department of Education’s website (see http://thematic.zy.gdedu.gov.cn/index.html). As a public learning resource, these DLs are accessible from the website, and copyright permission for these videos has also been given on the website for research purposes (Guangdong Academy of Education, 2018). Therefore, a nonparticipant observation was applied to gather the data for exploring each DL from the ‘what does it look like’ perspective. For interviews, due to the worldwide pandemic, all interviewees were invited to participate through the online software, Tencent Meeting, and the interviews lasted 45–60 min. Casual chatting occurred a few times over approximately two weeks through social media before each formal interviewer started to become familiar with the interviewees and to enhance their trust and willingness to share. To gather the participants’ information on ‘what does it feel like’ for the DL and to understand the function of DL for them, a list of specific questions, such as ‘What is the process of participating in MCDE?’, ‘How do you prepare a DL in your school setting?’ ‘What is your feeling in participation?’, ‘What do DL and MCDE mean to you?’ and ‘How does participation in MCDE support your teaching and learning?’, were raised during the interview. All participants were informed that their sharing would be audio-recorded, and they were allowed to withdraw if they wished to do so. Lesson plans for the DLs were also collected from the interviewees as supplementary materials to support understanding of what they had done in observation and shared in the interview.

The combination of observations, interviews and lesson plans allowed for different perspectives to cross-check the consistency of the findings. For ethical concerns, all data were anonymised after being collected, and a pseudonymous strategy was employed during the later analysis and reporting processes.

Data analysis

Thematic analysis (Miles et al., 2020) has been applied to analyse data while focusing on the general feature and participants’ perceptions of the DL. All collected data were first input into data analysis software, MAXQDA 2020, and then read repeatedly, defined with codes, synthesised into categories and condensed as themes, following Saldaña’s (2021) inductive two-cycle data analysis process. Observations and interviews were coded separately by different methods. The analysis of observation in tandem with the interview was to answer the first research question about the general feature of DL, and the analysis of the interview was also applied to answer the second research question about MCDE-participating teachers’ perceptions towards DL.

Specifically, for observations, first, process coding combined with descriptive coding was the first-round analysis. Because process codes are good for defining ‘simple observable activity and more general conceptual action’ (Saldaña, 2021, p. 111) and descriptive codes are appropriate for generalising meanings from words or short phrases, a list of observation summaries according to the first-cycle codes also was documented. In addition, focused coding was the second cycle of data analysis for observations. Table 2 provides an example of the coding process. The development of subcode categories such as ‘multiple activities’ and ‘fixed teaching pattern’ eventually synthesised into themes ‘activity-driven lesson design’ and ‘sequence-patterned lesson structured’, respectively, for the observational findings.

Table 2. An Example of Two Cycles of Data Analysis for Observation

For interviews, all the original audio-recorded interview clips were transcribed and discussed with the interviewees before being input into the data analysis software. The initial codes were derived from the gathered recurring words and short phrases of the participants using in vivo coding, aligning with the observation categories, such as ‘activity-driven lesson design’. To ensure systematic organisation, a coding manual was developed, consisting of three sections: the original observation categories, code descriptions and interview-specific wordings. These codes were subsequently verified by the interviewees to ensure credibility. In the second coding cycle, pattern coding was applied, clustering the first-cycle codes into subthemes based on shared characteristics. These subthemes were then grouped into several main themes, forming the basis for reporting the findings derived from the synthesised data pool (refer to Table 3). In addition, to ensure the credibility of this study, two reviewers, one university professor and one experienced music teacher, were involved in reviewing and checking the coding process. Their feedback and comments enhanced the accuracy of the coding procedure and the trustworthiness of the data.

Table 3. An Example of the Interview Coding Process

Findings

In general, following the gathering and analysis of data from observations and interviews, the MCDE participants identified a distinctive type of DL with three dominant features. However, an interesting phenomenon emerged when participants were asked to illustrate their perceptions of DL. They consistently introduced DL by comparing it to their regular daily school lessons. Therefore, the following results not only present the features of DL in MCDE and teachers’ perceptions of it but also provide a comparison between DL and RL in the context of music teaching in schools. This comparison supports a comprehensive understanding of DL’s function and implementation in China.

Three dominant features of the demonstration lesson

Findings revealed that a DL can be defined with three dominant general features: the activity-driven lesson design, the similar pattern-based lesson structure and the rehearsal-needed lesson practice.

Specifically, first, this study frequently found diverse activities appearing in participants’ DLs. Added to participants’ oral emphasis on the importance of conducting activities for students learning, the activity-driven lesson design could be defined as one of the significant features of a DL. Several examples occurred while the participants illustrated the importance of having classroom activities.

Zoe: I applied different kinds of activities in my demonstration lesson because they were fun, engaging, and had specific teaching functions within … the activities also provided a game-playing feeling to support students’ positive learning attitude.

Ling: Most of the activities in my demonstration lesson are important and functional. For example, I would like to encourage students to sing, then I conducted singing-based or choral-based activities for students to enhance their singing ability while involving in-class musical collaboration.

JK: One of the purposes of a demonstration lesson is to show observers what could be effective ways to conduct lessons. You may have seen that I used singing-based, conducting-based, and movement-based activities in my class (demonstration lesson). The reason for having them is because they truly benefit students’ learning, and it is worth using them for engaging students.

In addition, a similar lesson-structured pattern, with a teacher-led introduction of the teaching content at the beginning, an activity-driven learning process in the middle and a performance-based content demonstration towards the end were commonly observed in participants’ DLs. According to the participants, when structuring a DL, they need to follow a certain time-limited sequence to schedule their teaching content and strategies and rehearse their practices several times to ensure a final 40 min of ‘complete demonstration’ on the performing stage.

Zoe: I feel that we are following a solidified lesson-structured pattern for a demonstration lesson. For example, we need to raise students’ curiosity as an introduction to the lesson, extend knowledge further after learning the main content, and close the lesson by showing off what we have taught in the lesson. If we miss any parts, it just doesn’t seem right.

Mary: I tried to not follow the traditional way (a fixed teaching pattern) to design my lesson and wanted to add my personal style in structuring the teaching content. However, I also worried that my changes would not be accepted by the others (the observers/audiences). That’s why I still followed the traditional way eventually in my demonstration lesson.

Henry: You may define a similar fixed teaching pattern among our lessons. The negative part may make most of the lessons look like each other from a general lesson-structured perspective. However, the good thing is to save a lot of time changing and adjusting details when rehearsing my lesson from a regular school setting to a demonstration setting. The teaching practices under a fixed lesson-structured pattern also strengthen the success of demonstrating a complete predesigned lesson.

Furthermore, all six participants commonly mentioned that a successful lesson implementation for a DL relies on multiple teaching rehearsals before the final performance on the stage. In other words, the preparation for conducting a demonstration is a complicated process. It requires (1) teamwork and collaboration with teacher leaders for choosing a qualified lesson design; (2) multiple teaching rehearsals for fixing the lesson structure; (3) dedicated self-practice for enhancing teaching-related skills such as instrumental, presentation and classroom management; and (4) a long period of preparation time from months to years to ensure that all the above processes can successfully occur. Besides, among participants’ descriptions of the lesson preparation process, the term ‘polishing a lesson (Mo Ke 磨课)’ as described by Luo (2018), which means to practise, research and adjust teaching details from an RL setting into a demonstration setting, also commonly occurred during the interviews. Similar to Yang (2018)’s promotion of rehearsing teaching practices to polish the lesson, the participants also offered the following illustrations and stated that the rehearsal-needed practices is another important feature for DL.

Ella: Before I conducted the demonstration lesson that you watched on the stage, this lesson (teaching details) has been polished many times in my school. I taught the same lesson in my regular class, demonstrated how the lesson goes at the school level, and received feedback and evaluation from music experts to improve the details… Therefore, this is a polished lesson for sure.

Ling: It is normal to polish our regular lesson by demonstrating it many times and receiving critiques and positive comments from your team to eventually turn it into a demonstration lesson… When you decide which lesson is going to be your demonstration lesson, you might also need to go to other schools or even other cities to continue polishing your lessons with unfamiliar students. In this way, you will determine whether your planned teaching strategies and methods can truly match different students’ learning needs for an eventual demonstration function.

JK: The demonstration lesson has a modelling function for other teachers to conduct their regular school lessons. Therefore, it is necessary to polish your lesson to good quality. However, the meaning of conducting demonstration lessons is much more than just polishing your teaching content. It also allows you to improve and reflect on your teaching in the entire preparation process.

Teachers’ perceptions towards demonstration lessons and school regular lessons

During participant interviews, there was a recurring tendency for individuals to naturally draw comparisons between DL and RL when discussing their understanding of DL’s function, lesson preparation and implementation. Instead of regarding DL as a variation of RL or another type of RL, participants naturally interpreted DL as a distinct lesson category. DL was perceived not only as providing supervision (Darling-Hammond, 2012) and modelling functions (Lewis et al., 2019) to observers or audiences but also strongly as a PD activity that enhances participants’ personal teaching skills and confidence. Detailed specifics are provided as follows.

From the perspective of interpreting DL’s function, lesson preparation and lesson implementation, JK and Zoe introduced that the most unique feature that differentiates DL and RL is their respective function. Except for modelling effective teaching to others as an audience’s PD and enhancing audiences’ teaching skills through watching MCDE participants’ demonstrations, DL also functions as an MCDE participants’ PD activity. It allows them to drill teaching techniques, exercise teaching sequences and flow, practise teaching language and expression and eventually enhance their overall teaching competency. From the function of RL aspect, all participants pointed out that the function of RL is to improve students’ learning through teachers’ teaching. In other words, it possibly starts with teachers’ pre-structured lesson design and teaching content, but the teaching process, flow and in-class activities must follow students’ learning flow and knowledge acceptance. Due to the functional differences between DL and RL, their lesson preparation, teaching format, lesson structure, teaching tempo and teaching content become different accordingly. Table 4 summarises the features of both DL and RL, including the different details mentioned above.

Table 4. A Summary of Participants Mentioned Differences between Demonstration Lessons and Regular Lessons

Furthermore, participants also illustrated their perceptions of the strengths and limitations of conducting DL in MCDE. From them, preparing DL caused both mental and time pressure during the preparation process as they were under the expectation from their preparation team of winning the teaching award and they needed to find time to practise their prepared teaching content and activities. For example, as Ella mentioned,

‘I want to show the best class, you know, (I wish to present) the best of myself in teaching. But the preparation process indeed causes pressure, lots of pressure…and so I need to keep practicing my teaching, using different classes to try my teaching content, and preparing activities for different students…the more I practice, the more confidence I gain, and the more familiar teaching sequence I can master’.

Mary raised the same concern about mental pressure, but she emphasised that she gained more valuable experience than feeling pressured during the MCDE event. From her,

‘Pressure exists all the time, but it is fine for me because I have a team to support me while preparing my demonstration lessons. For me, DL not only helped me rapidly improve my teaching skills through extensive teaching practice in a relatively short period of time but also, to present the lesson more vividly on stage, I needed to search for teaching materials, which in turn enriched my knowledge in teaching and deepened her understanding of some unfamiliar cultural knowledge’.

Due to the long period of time spent on preparing DL, when participants were asked whether DL would take up their RL time for lesson preparation, all participants responded yes. This is because DL was originally selected from one of their regular RLs, representing a class with rich activities and unique teaching content. However, in order to showcase this RL as a teaching performance on stage, it needs to be practised multiple times, similar to a performance rehearsal. This includes adjusting the content within the lesson, such as teachers’ behaviour, students’ responses, teaching and learning activities and other details, in order to achieve a better, relatively ‘perfect’, demonstration for the MCDE audiences.

Discussion

Defining demonstration lessons in Chinese music context

Findings from this study provided a general picture of how DLs in music were operated and perceived from the perspective of China’s MCDE-participating teachers. The results not only support previous researchers’ assumptions that the DL might be different from the RL in school music teaching (Wang, 2013; Zhang, Leung and Yang, 2023) but also provide the following insights to define the DL in the Chinese music education context.

First, based on the participants’ expressions on the significance of DL improving their teaching competencies, DL is a PD lesson type for enhancing teachers’ teaching skills beyond its impact on students’ learning achievements. In the past, DL’s PD functions have been explored by many researchers (Loong et al., 2017; Negru et al., 2016); it has also been pointed out by China’s official documents, with their detailed requirements for participating teachers to prepare their singing, piano playing, instrumental playing and dancing skills for the teaching competition when first organising the MCDE (NESHAD, 1996). From this perspective, the findings of this study strengthen the features of PD in MCDE. The expressions of teaching improvement the participants gained from conducting DL, with fewer statements on students’ improvement in learning, also support the assumption that DL focuses more on teachers’ teaching growth rather than students’ development.

Second, since the findings revealed a similar teaching pattern embodied in participants’ DLs, and this result also matches well with the findings in Zhang, Leung and Yang (2023)’s research, this forms a fixed structural feature of DL in China. From this point, although this phenomenon is similar to de Paor (2015)’s illustration that DL can be utilised as an invitation for other teachers to learn the new teaching methods through repetitive observable occurrences, participants’ explanations of following previous demonstration teachers’ teaching patterns and worries for changes also revealed a potential lesson structural tradition with pattern-based teaching in music education in China. Additionally, the fixed sequential patterns in teaching, with their unavoidable teacher-centred nature, correspond to today’s Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), which promotes standardised educational design and processes to ensure similar effective learning outcomes (Sahlberg, 2016). Although this standardisation in teaching and learning has been criticised by researchers who advocate student-centred learning approaches for impeding both teachers’ and students’ creativity and individuality (van Huizen et al., 2005), the findings showed that DL teachers indeed conducted many class activities and well-engaged students. Their aim was to use student-centred learning approaches through activity-driven lesson design, thereby striking a balance with the standardised learning sequence and further enhancing students’ class participation and engagement.

Finally, although the function of DL in the Chinese context (Li, 2017) resembles that of coaching and mentoring (Hockly, 2000), as well as collaborative planning and lesson conducting (Fuiji, 2019), this study provides an additional perspective on DL in education. It suggests that DL can serve as a performance-based lesson type aimed not only at showcasing teachers’ enhanced instructional techniques through practised and polished teaching under expert guidance but also at providing contextualised and visual demonstrations on how to implement effective music lessons. In contrast to regular school lessons, which unfold naturally in an educational setting with spontaneous teacher-student interactions and a one-time execution process (Lan and Li, 2019), DL requires teachers to dedicate time to teaching rehearsals, prepare various teaching activities to demonstrate their skills, structure their repetitive teaching behaviours consistently and adapt to teaching unfamiliar students in an unfamiliar setting for the final lesson display. As such, when teaching is developed through rehearsal-based practice in an artificial context with an audience present, the overall nature is more akin to a performance than a traditional lesson. Given these distinctions, it might not be surprising that teachers clearly differentiated between the two types of lessons, DL and RL, during their interviews.

Concerns and issues

In addition to exploring the features and functions of DL in the Chinese music education context, a series of questions and concerns based on the findings should be raised accordingly. For example, as Luo (2018) worries about whether DL will waste students’ time when teachers participate in this kind of lesson demonstration event, the participants’ illustrations of the repetitive lesson polishing process in this study enhance this concern. Since the initial process of DL selection indeed comes from a regular school teaching context (Liu, 2011) and the essential process of polishing the prepared lesson before showing it on the stage has also been strongly expressed by the participants, there is a high possibility that DL consumes students’ learning hours to help support the teachers’ growth.

Furthermore, while DL has been used for years as a model lesson to showcase exemplary teaching practices, there is an ongoing debate about whether these practices actually enhance teaching quality or, conversely, impede teachers’ personal and creative growth (de Paor, 2015). In China, despite the official organisation of MCDE since 1995, with the primary goal of improving teachers’ instructional skills and fostering positive developments in teaching more broadly, the persistent use of fixed sequential patterns in lesson structuring may inadvertently convey to the public that ‘imitating others’ teaching methods’ is more valuable than ‘creating one’s own unique style’. As a result, there is a risk that, regardless of how much teacher individuality and creativity are encouraged to nurture students’ independent and creative thinking in line with constructivist learning theory (van Huizen et al., 2005), these principles may not receive the attention as they should be in China’s DLs.

New direction in practice

With the revealed concerns and worries based on the findings, should DL as a lesson type be completely criticised in China’s educational system? With the positive feedback on using DL as PD for teacher education, would it be possible to reposition China’s unique performance-based DL in such a way that it does not inhibit students’ regular learning time but continues its benefits for teachers’ teaching skills and competencies?

The implication of this study suggests a potential shift, redirecting the focus from in-service teachers to pre-service teachers for several reasons. First, DL has been applied as a teaching approach to improve pre-service teachers’ teaching skills in the past (Hockly, 2000; Darling-Hammond, 2012). Even though the large time spent on repetitive pedagogical behavioural training might seem to be a teacher-centred educational strategy, it does work well in supporting pre-service teachers to build both cognitive and practical connections between direct observation and taking action (Darling-Hammond, 2012) and spend time in reflection and discussion for further self-development (Loong et al., 2017). Second, DL takes time to rehearse and standardise self-practice. When using regular school teaching hours to practise DL’s elements, it might not only cut into the time meant for student learning but can also lead to feelings of boredom and exhaustion among both pupils and teachers due to the repetitive nature of the teaching methods and content (Wang, 2013). Therefore, shifting DL’s preparation and implementation from in-service to pre-service teachers would afford them more time to unpack what they observe into smaller, more digestible teaching segments. It would also encourage teachers to do more group discussions and collective reflection, promoting deeper interactive engagement.

Conclusion

Following Zhang, Leung and Yang’s (2023) previous exploration of the DL in the Chinese music education context, this study further provides an in-depth understanding of its features, functions and comparison with school teachers’ daily RLs from MCDE-participating teachers’ perspectives. The results mainly demonstrate three aspects. First, the DL in China context presents ‘a performance-based lesson type’ feature with activity-driven lesson designs, a fixed pattern-based lesson structure and rehearsal-needed lesson practice in Chinese music education. Second, a DL and a regular school lesson in China music school education are two different lesson types. Even though the DL was initially selected from the school’s regular music lessons, changes occur in the overall teaching features in an artificial demonstration teaching setting. Third, although the implementation of DL in practice aroused challenging voices (Luo, 2018; Wang, 2013), the participants illustrated the advantages of conducting DLs and the benefits of using DL preparation as PD to improve their teaching skills and competencies.

The significance of this study lies in three aspects. First, it explores the unique phenomenon of conducting two different types of lessons in the teaching lives of Chinese music teachers, providing cultural insights into how these teachers conduct their lessons, particularly from the perspective of demonstrating teachers. Second, it reveals an interesting finding that two learning approaches, a standardisation-based teacher-centred approach and an individualisation-based student-centred approach, can work in harmony to enhance teachers’ professional growth during the preparation and implementation of this particular type of lesson. Lastly, in addition to its conventional functions as a ‘mentor-mentee’ supervision (Hockly, 2000) and a model for good practices (Fujii, 2019), this paper uncovers another function of the DL, using it as a performance-based lesson to improve teachers’ teaching skills and showcase their teaching outcomes.

However, the smaller sample size in this study might not generalise a prevalent phenomenon across the country. Future studies could broaden this aspect by conducting large-sample quantitative investigations. In addition, a comparative study between China and other countries with an intention to increase mutual understanding of the diverse cultures and a follow-up exploration on moving the implementation of DLs from in-service to pre-service teachers are also worth exploring in the future.