Part One Laying the Groundwork for Powerful Use of Video in Teacher Learning
No matter our educational roleāwhether teacher, teacher leader, coach, administrator, researcher, or teacher educatorāvideo can be leveraged as an important tool in understanding and improving classroom practice. No other observation instrument offers the chance for us to see ourselves in action, or freeze the fast-paced moments of classroom interactions. However, there are several elements that are essential to appreciate before entering into using video to facilitate teacher learningāoneās own or the learning of others.
In the first part of this text, foundational skills in non-judgmental classroom observation, awareness of bias, and thoughtful interpersonal interaction are among the aspects to consider in order to successfully lead teacher professional learning using video analysis of teaching. In Part 2, specific video analysis tasks are presented in detail, to be selectively adopted and adapted for use in your context.
1 Why Video for Teacher Learning?
When I discover who I am, Iāll be free.
āRalph Ellison, Invisible Man
Chapter Objectives
- To highlight the research base that strongly supports video as a tool in developing teachersā observation skills
- To present video in teacher learning along a continuum of development
- To offer considerations in the design of video analysis tasks
- To describe the types of facilitation structures often used with video for teacher learning
Take a moment and try to imagine these scenarios:
- An artist completes her painting and shares it with her instructor in order to improve her craft. The painting is then taken away where neither the artist nor her instructor can see it again. When they speak about the painting, the instructor and artist rely solely on their memory and do not look at the painting while they speak. The written feedback the artist later receives on the painting is in the form of a rubric with 35 categories in which the instructor has rated her, without seeing the painting again, from 1 to 4.
- A nurse learns about how to determine a patientās level of risk in an intake procedure he has to perform. He now must do this procedure himself with a patient in a clinic, and the nurse educator is going to be there to observe him in this fieldwork setting to give him feedback on how he carries it out. However, he has never seen anyone do the procedure; he has only read a description of it in a textbook and heard his instructor and others discuss it in class.
- A teacher is told that she needs to improve her practice in the area of student engagement. Several administrators, mentor teachers, and coaches all observe the teacher and conduct numerous conferences with the teacher to explain to her what she needs to do better. She tries her best to understand what it is that she needs to change, but each observer notices different areas and gives different suggestions.
The first two scenarios above seem implausible, yet the third scenario may seem quite familiar and thus, believable. What all three share in common is the notion that complex professional skills can be acquired just by reading about them, having them described to us, or by receiving feedback based on our imperfect memory. What is missing in all three scenarios is the active and direct ownership of observing the skills or products in question by the very professionals who are carrying them out. Unfortunately, this is precisely what we do when we learn to teachāor support teachers in their learningāwithout ever looking directly at our own or othersā teaching.
Teaching is incredibly complex, and no matter how much teachers try to attend to learners and learning while teaching and no matter how much feedback observers give them, analysis of teaching relies too often on fragmented recollections of events filtered through the viewerās perspective. Video is the ideal tool to turn that around. Analysis of teaching via video supports reflective, critical inquiry because of its stop, rewind, and re-view capacity, and it opens up possibilities for seeing other teachers and ourselves teaching. Video is the only means by which teachers can see their teaching through their own eyes.
Due to its tremendous potential for teacher learning, the analysis of teaching via video records has been in existence for many years, and the accessibility and portability of digital video has made it ever easier for teachers to utilize. However, greater facility and access have not always led to thoughtful, descriptive review of instruction, as the process of video analysis must be carefully scaffolded. Coaches, supervisors, mentors, teacher leaders, teacher educators, and facilitators of professional learning communities recognize how powerful sharing video clips of teaching can be yet quickly come to the realization that a foundation first needs to be laid for teachers to gain the most from the experience. Often, facilitators are unsure about how to create such structures and seek protocols that will guide them in leading teacher learning with video analysis. This book seeks to address these concerns by providing educators with concrete, user-friendly protocols that share descriptive viewing practices designed to support teachers and facilitators in effective video analysis.
This book begins by articulating research-based principles for selecting, introducing, and leading professional learning that incorporates video analysis. Understanding the research base for the use of video in teacher learning provides a solid foundation for entering into the process of designing and facilitating teacher-learning experiences with video.
What Is the Research Base for the Use of Video in Teacher Learning?
Video began to be discussed in the research literature on teacher learning in the early 1970s. Its use has increased as a result of improved accessibility of digital video recording, storing, and sharing, and there are now numerous studies published on its applications. Video analysis has especially been the focus of research since the early 1990s, and as a still-emerging technological tool in teacher learning, research on its applications is helpful for educators who want to optimize its application. Understanding promising practices in the use of video for teacher learning has become increasingly important in light of the general movement in the United States toward more practice-based, clinically rich teacher education (Grossman, 2010) and toward more evidence-based teacher professional learning in Kā12 school districts.
This research base indicates that video analysis is an activity that takes place across the whole spectrum of teacher learning, from preservice to in-service teacher-learning contexts, across all disciplinary boundaries, and in the education of teachers in diverse content areas.
In spite of the abundance of research pointing to the benefits of vid...
