Video-based Research in Education

Cross-disciplinary Perspectives

Lihua Xu, George Aranda, Wanty Widjaja, David Clarke, Lihua Xu, George Aranda, Wanty Widjaja, David Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351612371
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The rapid development of video technology in the last decade has changed the ways in which people communicate, how they learn, and how research is done. Video technology offers rich potential in capturing complex social interactions over a prolonged period of time and in supporting teacher professional learning and development.

This book explores the ontological, epistemological, methodological, and ethical challenges associated with the different uses of video in research, ranging from video as a tool for investigating social interactions and for stimulating participants' reflection, to the use of video for engaging varied communities and social groups in the process of teaching, learning and research. Each chapter presents the authors' critical reflection on the ways in which video was employed, the research decisions made, the methodological challenges faced, and the consequences for how educational practices were understood. As such, it illustrates a wide range of philosophical and theoretical standpoints with respect to video-based research approaches.

This book will stimulate broad and rich discussion among education researchers who are interested in video research and contributes to: advancing knowledge of the field; developing approaches to dealing with emergent ethical, theoretical, and methodological issues; and generating new protocols and guidelines for conducting video-based research across a variety of disciplinary areas in education.

PART I

The roles of video in education research

Wanty Widjaja

DEAKIN UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

Gaye Williams

DEAKIN UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIA

David Clarke

THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Overview

This part examines various ontological, methodological and ethical issues concerning the role of video in educational research. It is imperative that any research design adheres to the principle ‘first do no harm’ and acknowledges any ontological and epistemological biases in communicating our research. Critical issues such as considerations of multiple theoretical perspectives in framing research, research design and video configurations to capture data associated with this framing research will be discussed. In video studies involving cross-national research teams, the notion of ‘representative sampling’, ‘comparability’, ‘validity’, and ‘reliability’ in designing analytical tools for processing and coding of video data becomes more prominent. The complexity and issues involved in cross-country comparative study are multifaceted.

The six chapters in this section highlight potential and challenges associated with video research where a variety of theoretical framings and methodological issues involved. These video studies are conducted in a variety of educational and cultural settings. Each chapter addresses the following overarching questions:

• What is the theoretical perspective framing the research?

• How do theoretical perspectives framing the research impact on the research design and the video configurations employed to capture data?

• How does a research team formulate a research design and develop or select tools for processing, and/or analysing video data?

• To what extent do methodological and/or ethical considerations specific to video studies impact on the design and the findings of the research?

In the first three chapters, international video studies are interrogated to draw attention to various factors that enable cross-cultural discourse. This discourse is intended to increase the comparability across country analysis and offer equal voice to researchers from different countries. It is vital to establish protocols intended to ensure each participating country has control of who uses their data and for what purposes. In addition, it is essential that protocols are put in place to optimise opportunities for equal voice and equal considerations of different perspectives.

Chapter 1, by Clarke and Chan, proposes and discusses four metaphors to characterise the role of video in classroom-based research. They argue that the four metaphors, “a window, a lens, a mirror or a distorting mirror”, capture important differences in researchers’ theoretical stances, research paradigms, values, and epistemological and ontological biases and assumptions. Clarke and Chan caution researchers to be vigilant in communicating explicitly their theoretical perspectives, methodological choices, and epistemological and ontological biases and assumptions. This way, the researchers can strengthen the credibility and validity of educational research.

The challenges involved in ensuring validity, valuing cross-cultural perspectives and enabling comparability in cross-national video study are examined critically in both Chapters 2 and 3. Both these chapters draw on large-scale international comparative studies with a large data set of classroom videos. The chapters draw on data from different disciplines and educational settings: secondary mathematics in Chapter 2 and primary science teaching in Chapter 3. Chapter 2 by Xu and Clarke highlights methodological tensions involved in selecting ‘a representative sample’ from a large data set, where not overgeneralizing and overstating the claims becomes very important. Establishing a systematic approach in coding and interpreting data such as the use of ‘cultural natives’ in the Learner’s Perspective Study is fruitful in addressing the issues of representativeness and sampling. As with Chapter 2 by Xu and Clarke, attention is paid to cultural sensitivity in Chapter 3 by Tytler et al., who raise questions about ethical issues in examining quality teaching and learning in three countries. They develop a research framework called ‘Shared repertoire of values, goals, methods, and procedures’ to facilitate cross-cultural analysis and ensure the interpretations accommodate cultural sensitivity and reflect research traditions, educational systems, and pedagogical practices in different countries. Questions are raised about ethical issues that are addressed through ongoing conversation among the research teams and always requiring country consents and country confirmation of the way the data are being analysed and interpreted with cultural sensitivity. These protocols are protected by legal documents. Tytler and colleagues employ member checking and constant examination of video data in the EQUALPRIME project. This involves the use of multiple cultural lenses taking into account both the ‘cultural insider’ and the ‘cultural outsider’ perspectives to reach ‘a productive re-discovery of science teaching and learning’ (see Hackling, Ramseger, & Chen, 2017).

Both Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the role of video to interrogate aspects of teachers’ pedagogical practices framed by socio-cultural learning theory and perspective, using teachers’ classroom videos complemented by stimulated-recall video interviews. These two chapters highlight the catalytic role of classroom video to engage teachers in reflecting on their practices. Chapter 4 by Lee, Ng, Seto and Yoke illustrate some potential and challenges in using video recording to examine teachers’ conceptions of metacognition and their metacognitive instructional practices in a Singapore primary classroom. They discuss two issues concerning threats to validity from using video due to the Hawthorn effect and the intrusion caused by the presence of video camera in classrooms. Similarly, Widjaja, Xu and Jobling discuss methodological challenges in drawing inferences about primary school teachers’ professional noticing. Examining video data from mathematics and science lessons enables researchers to gain insights into the nuances and variations of teachers’ professional noticing situated in different social contexts. They challenge the analogy of ‘human eyes’ to adequately represent the capacity of the camera lens in ‘capturing’ teachers’ professional noticing.

Chapter 6 by Thomas and Moss explores two metaphors to argue that no single way of seeing or understanding can be privileged. The first metaphor refers to light from an image refracted through a crystal. The second metaphor refers to light from an image diffracted as it passes through an aperture. Interrogating teachers’ multiple ways of seeing informed by these metaphors enables the authors to examine how teachers’ views on social and cultural historical contexts influence their pedagogical practices post-‘9/11’. Two methods are used: unedited video documentary, and video-stimulated interviews. Unlike the other chapters, this video is not of classroom interaction but rather images of popular culture produced by the author(s). Like Chapter 1, though, metaphors are integral to the chapter development and analyses. In Chapter 1, the metaphors characterise the different roles of video whereas in Chapter 6, the use of the metaphors is informed by the video methods.

All six chapters highlight a variety of roles videos play in educational research within a number of cultural and social contexts. They all share a common theoretical stance, that research is a socially constructed and interpretive process. Each chapter differs in its scope of study and emphasises different methodological potential and challenges involved in researching teaching and learning, as well as teachers’ pedagogical practices. We hope that the rich discussion of methodological and ethical issues involved in video-based research in this section contributes to the growing body of literature in the educational research community and informs the direction of future research in the field.

1

THE USE OF VIDEO IN CLASSROOM RESEARCH

Window, lens, or mirror

David Clarke

THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

Man Ching Esther Chan

THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

• Research context

Any classroom settings in which video is employed as a research tool.

• Methodological focus/insights

Video can be employed as a research tool within a variety of research paradigms. These paradigms are implicit in the metaphors used to characterise the research use of video. The use of these intuitively appealing metaphors (window, lens, mirror) can gloss over (or even conceal) important differences between these paradigms.

• Theoretical stance

Research as a constructive and interpretive process.

• Additional issues highlighted

The choice of words that researchers use to describe and report on the research process and accounts reflect their assumptions about their relationship with the data and the phenomenon of interest. Ethical and technical issues are also discussed.

Introduction

Educational research, like research in the physical and biological sciences, must make optimal use of available technologies in addressing the major problems of the field. This strategic deployment of available technologies reflects a purposeful process of data generation rather than data collection. This chapter addresses the question of the status of video records of classroom events vis-à-vis any interpretive accounts that might be constructed using such records as a source of data. Four possible conceptions are offered to characterise the role of video in classroom research: (i) as a window through which to see the classroom; (ii) as a lens with which to focus on selected aspects of classroom activity; (iii) as a mirror catalysing teacher and student reflection on their practice; and (iv) as a distorting mirror, in which the researcher sees a representation of their own values and perspectives reconstituted as classroom data.

Each metaphor has significant entailments for the meaning and authority (as evidence) that can be accorded to the resultant images for research purposes. The key verbs corresponding to the four metaphors outlined above are: see, focus, reflect, and represent. Accounts of video-based research make use of all four of these perspectives, sometimes in relation to the same study. Use of any one of these verbs (and metaphors) not only identifies the status of the observed object but also designates the essential nature of the activity of the researcher (the observer), signifying a key research act and a distinct form of associated researcher agency. These same verbs invite readers to position themselves in particular ways in relation to the researcher’s interpretation of the video records. Finally, the metaphor employed prescribes the nature of the research product: a record of documented ‘reality’ (‘seen’ through the window); a selective close-up of some aspect of the research setting (lens); the researcher’s or participants’ interpretive reflections on recorded events (mirror); or the researcher’s reconstructed portrayal of those events (distorting mirror). To adopt each or any of these alternatives, the researcher or the reader of the research report must make a choice regarding what ontological authority to accord to the video record. The use of each of these metaphors represents an ontological choice made by the researcher, which is seldom explicitly acknowledged. The purpose of this chapter is to make these choices visible and their identification and acknowledgement obligatory for researchers.

The ontological issues raised in this chapter apply, in one form or another, to all research, particularly where the research is mediated by a form of technology (and we would include statistical procedures and learning analytics as forms of technology). Undertaking discussion of these issues in relation to video-based classroom research serves to amplify the issues in ways that heighten their visibility and immediacy for many research settings, since classrooms resemble other complex institutionalised social settings, such as courts of law and hospital wards. We wish to emphasise that video has much in common with other research tools. For the purposes of this chapter, classroom-based video research has the virtue of making highly visible issues of general significance for educational research and, we would suggest, even more broadly, for research in a wide variety of social settings.

Video as window

The most obvious metaphor used in relation to video is that it serves as a window onto social interactions (Haw & Hadfield, 2011), such as those occurring in a classroom. This image is simple and immediately ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I the Roles of Video in Education Research
• Part II Video as a Tool for Capturing and Understanding Complexity of Teaching and Learning
• Part III Video as a Tool for Reflection on Practice in Teaching and Learning
• Index