Using Guided Video Analysis to Enhance Preservice Teacher Reflective Practice in a Graduate Social Studies Methods Course

Introduction

The use of technology in teacher education expands in many parameters. Video has been widely used as a tool to enhance teaching and learning (Zhang, Lundeberg, Koehler, & Eberhardt, 2011). For example, in teacher education video has been used to give supervisors access to the classroom performance of teacher candidates without needing to be present in the classroom. However, there has been limited training to help teacher candidates to critically analyze and effectively utilize video recordings of authentic classroom instruction for improving their learning skills. Although numerous research studies have documented the benefits of the use of videos for teacher learning skill development (e.g., Arya & Christ, 2013; Baecher & Kung, 2011; Kleinknecht & Schneider, 2013; Seidel, Blomberg, & Renkl, 2013), teachers’ analysis of their own videos or other teachers is not common practice in teacher education programs. It is uncommon to observe a teacher education course or curriculum in which methods of video analysis are taught to pre-service teachers as required skills along with other pedagogical knowledge and instructional skills.

Implementation of video recording analysis of authentic teaching in a teacher preparation course has been mostly voluntary. However, recent changes in performance-based teacher assessments like the education Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) have challenged teacher educators to rethink the ways teacher candidates are prepared in initial and advanced teacher education programs. The edTPA require teacher candidates to demonstrate knowledge and skills through authentic teaching artifacts, written commentary, and video clips recorded in real classroom settings. Teacher candidates are required to submit video clips of their own teaching to be viewed and assessed by evaluators (AACTE, 2015). In other words, the edTPA requires that teachers apply their pedagogical learning and content knowledge and demonstrate their ability to enact their learning for the purpose of actual, not hypothetical, student learning. This implies that pre-service and in-service teachers should know how to utilize their own videos, as well as those of other teachers, for the purpose of improving their instructional skills as well as the learning of their students. These initiatives have also urged teacher educators to prepare their candidates for the active use of video-recorded instruction either in curriculum courses or in field-based practices (Arya & Christ, 2013).

Due to these new changes on teacher education, it calls for innovative methods to prepare teacher candidates (Ball, 2009). Brunvand (2010) show that the use of video in teacher training makes it possible to analyze the same situation several times from different angles, something that direct observation does not allow. Using video can thus help develop better noticing skills among preservice teachers as they switch their focus from themselves to that their student learning. The reflective practices in which teachers analyze video-recorded lessons need to be explored from a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach. As recommended by Masats and Dooly (2011), “teacher education must involve integrated approaches across disciplines and courses in order to demonstrate and make use of new learning paradigms holistically…” (p.1161). In the new approach to teacher education, the role of teacher educators is to employ professional practices whereby teacher candidates share knowledge and make changes to their instruction in a meaningful way, positively impacting their student learning. In this sense, the contextualized use of video analysis in teacher education programs will maximize the benefits of authentic teaching and learning experiences among teacher candidates. Although there is no single best method for video-recorded instruction, many effective ways exist that can help to successfully integrate different types of videos and various discussion settings into specific teacher learning contexts.