Designing a Collaborative Video Learning Lab to Transform Teachers' Work Practices

Introduction

Teacher education and professional development (PD) have long been modeled on curriculum-based programs, with teachers attending classes on a regular basis to acquire new or updated knowledge about their profession. Yet these programs are increasingly being seen as unsatisfactory in bringing about transformations in professional practices, notably at a time when the schools are often pressed to adapt to rapidly changing social contexts (OECD, 2014). This observation is thus not new, but the dissatisfaction has become acute and educational policies are needed that can respond with new ways to improve PD in the schools. We believe that in this context a developmental approach holds promise.

A developmental approach to education presupposes the design of ad hoc programs that:

• 1.

  Support teachers as they develop professionally and not just as they acquire the knowledge needed to begin their practice¹,

• 2.

  Allow educators to function as facilitators rather than as transmitters of knowledge,

• 3.

  Flexible enough to allow the educational contents to be closely adapted to the professional obstacles or problems that the teachers themselves identify (Leblanc & Ria, 2014), and

• 4.

  Let the educational program unfold in various non-anticipable and negotiated timeframes (Durand, 2011).

This chapter describes why and how video-based education contributes to a developmental perspective.

Video- and artifact-based programs are increasingly used for teacher education and PD for four main reasons:

• 1.

  Explosive growth in the technological potential of digital techniques,

• 2.

  Simpler use of video tools,

• 3.

  A clearer picture of the teaching practices that the reforms in educational policies and PD programs have targeted for change, and

• 4.

  The increasing conviction that training and actual professional practice must be more closely associated (Blomberg et al., 2013; Calandra & Rich, 2014; Gaudin & Chaliès, 2015; Janik & Seidel, 2009).

The use of video is nevertheless often limited, perhaps reductively, to:

• 1.

  Bringing authentic images of the real practices of teachers and students,

• 2.

  Illustrating the steps of good practice transmission,

• 3.

  Standardizing the practices to be used in the schools and classrooms in response to new reforms, and

• 4.

  Building a “prescriptive learning path to improve teacher professional competencies” (which was denounced in the introduction to this book).