Video as a tool for focusing teacher self-reflection: supporting and provoking teacher learning

Abstract

Understanding teacher knowledge and expertise is crucial to the promotion of teacher learning and the appropriate focus of any analysis aimed at understanding the development of teacher knowledge and expertise is natural classroom practice. Video provides a unique opportunity to capture some of the complexity of this practice in situ, opening up possibilities for its observation and analysis. This paper describes the research landscape related to the use of video for promoting teacher learning, drawing on a variety of research studies to illustrate the breadth of approaches that have been employed. One particular research study is reported in some detail since, it is argued, this represents a new level of devolution of agency to teachers to play a self-scaffolding role in their own professional education. The study involved the investigation of an approach to the provision of feedback to teachers about their practice that involved stimulating teacher self-reflection and juxtaposed structure and agency. An observation framework grounded in classroom practice research was developed, and teachers selected elements of that framework to serve as the focus for examining their practice and seeking feedback about that practice. This gave recognition to the importance of agency and ownership in learning through explicitly enabling teachers to focus on those personally salient outcomes to which they themselves attach value (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002). Teachers and researchers examined video recorded lessons focusing on the teachers' selected observation elements, and then engaged in feedback conversations about their observations and analyses, and the implications of these for future practice. The approach identified the video record as an artefact of the teacher's own practice, and one which demanded a professional response from the teacher. The balance between structure and agency realized in the study, in combination with the use of video for observation and analysis of practice, facilitated teacher self-reflection and functioned to both support and provoke teacher learning.

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