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Introduction
The importance of improving schools, increasing teacher quality, and improving the quality of student learning has led to a concentrated concern with professional learning of teachers as one important way of achieving these goals (Cameron et al. 2013; Chen, 2022; Morcom and MacCallum, 2022; Stenberg and Maaranen, 2021). Numerous studies indicate that teachers’ professional learning can be enhanced through pedagogical activities (Avidov-Ungar, 2016; Insulander et al. 2019; Kirkwood and Christie, 2006; Vasalampi et al. 2021), including professional learning communities (Brodie, 2021), teachers’ research groups (Chen, 2022), and pedagogical social media (Prestridge, 2019). Consequently, policymakers, researchers, and educational practitioners worldwide are investing in providing pedagogical activities to support teachers’ professional learning, with efforts observed in the U.S. (McCray, 2018), England (Opfer and Pedder, 2011), China (Zhang and Ng, 2011), and New Zealand (Starkey et al. 2009).
In China, open class (gongkaike in Chinese) can be considered a form of pedagogical activity (Sun et al. 2015; Wu and Clarke, 2018). Open class serves as a pedagogical practice for teachers’ professional learning and development (Zhang et al. 2022). During the open class, teachers demonstrate their instructional methods, allowing aspects of their teaching to be closely observed and discussed in detail by their peers (Wu and Clarke, 2018). Meanwhile, the professional development of teachers conducting open classes could be enhanced through this process (Zhang et al. 2022). Although some current research has been conducted on open class (see Sun et al. 2015; Wu and Clarke, 2018; Zhang et al. 2022), no studies have specifically focused on how teachers conduct the open class and examined how open class facilitates conducted teachers’ professional learning.
Therefore, the current study undertakes this task by drawing on fieldwork at Sailing School and semi-structured interviews with nineteen teachers about their experiences conducting the open class. It focuses on how teachers conducted the open class and aims to elucidate how open class facilitates teachers’ professional learning. This study is conducted within the context of China, where open class represents a unique form of pedagogical practice. Unlike in Western educational contexts, where pedagogical activities are generally regarded as private matters (Ross et al. 2011), open class in China is more publicly oriented. Therefore, this study, by exploring open class, aims to provide the international academic...