Modeling and the Gradual Release of Responsibility: What Does It Look Like in the Classroom?

Recent professional development efforts in literacy have highlighted the role of the teacher as a model for students using direct instruction. Direct instruction is a lesson methodology taught to teacher candidates. We developed a schematic to represent the confluence of evidence found in the research and analysis of several lesson planning templates in order to create a visual representation of the elements of instruction that could be used to plan lessons. Previous research has demonstrated that modeling was not used frequently in classrooms. We were interested in determining if teachers were still using modeling infrequently. To investigate this, we identified three questions we would pursue through action research and mixed methods of analysis in local classrooms. These questions focused on determining the amount of time spent modeling in classrooms and the actions used after modeling to determine the extent these actions were reflected in the research literature. We found that teachers are using modeling much more frequently than was found to be the case in the previous study, but that the instructional actions following modeling are often inconsistent with research literature conceptions.