Using Video to Highlight Curriculum-Embedded Opportunities for Student Discourse

Abstract

History classrooms remain stubbornly resistant to instructional change. We explored whether using classroom video to help teachers identify curriculum-embedded opportunities for student discourse improved their understanding and facilitation of document-based historical discussions. We observed a relationship between teachers’ capacity to notice curriculum-embedded opportunities for student discourse in classroom videos and their growth in enacting document-based history discussions. For three of four teachers, the intervention appeared to improve both their analysis of document-based discussion facilitation and their enactment of the practice. Teachers’ incoming proficiency and familiarity with document-based history instruction appeared to inform their experience throughout the intervention. We discuss implications for practice and future research on professional development for history teachers.

Coaching Teachers in Document-Based History Instruction: Practices That Support Teacher Facilitation of Student Discourse

“…This study took up the question of how to support teachers to make this conceptual shift. Building on prior work (Reisman et al, 2019; Reisman & Enumah, 2020) that highlighted the promise and limitations of practice-based methods focused solely on facilitating discussion, the coaching program developed for this study sought to decompose the full document-based lesson, so that teachers might see how a successful historical discussion represents the culmination of students’ learning and thinking over the course of the full lesson. The first author worked with all the coaches in the first year of the design-based study to specify and identify video exemplars of each of the three focal practices.…”

Motivation and Perceived Learning of Secondary Education History Students. Analysis of a Programme on Initial Teacher Training

“…That the pupils expressed their great satisfaction with the methodological change may explain why they perceive it as an improvement on the traditional teaching methodology, based on the transmission and reception of a master narrative, which is still widespread among history teachers today. Research's like Reisman and Enumah ( 2020 ), have improved the instruction using classroom video to help teachers identify curriculum-embedded opportunities for student discourse. This improved their understanding and facilitation of document-based historical discussions.…”

Student teacher professional growth on teaching historical thinking and reasoning: A case study on the use of an observation instrument

“…In a reasoning one constructs arguments to support assertions about the past (and addresses possible counterarguments) (see also Leinhardt et al, 1994;Monte-Sano & De La Paz, 2012;Voss & Carretero, 1998). In addition to being quite demanding for students, fostering these ambitious goals by active teaching methods is not in line with the emphasis on teacher centred teaching and lecturing, which seems to be the preferred approach of many history teachers in, for example, the United States and Europe (Reisman & Enumah, 2020;Wiggins, 2015). Teachers may be positively disposed towards teaching HTR but nevertheless find it problematic to enact and struggle with finding concrete ways to include the teaching of HTR in their usual practices (c.f.…”