Building Reflective Practices in a Pre-service Math and Science Teacher Education Course That Focuses on Qualitative Video Analysis

Abstract

The use of video for in-service and pre-service teacher development has been gaining acceptance, and yet video remains a challenging and understudied tool. Many projects have used video to help pre-service and in-service teachers reflect on their own teaching processes, examine teacher-student interactions, and develop their professional vision. But rarely has video been used in ways more akin to qualitative education research that is focused on student learning. Even more rarely has this focus occurred at the earliest stages of pre-service teaching when students have not yet decided to pursue teaching careers. Yet here we argue that there are benefits to our approach. We examine a course for prospective pre-service math and science teachers at the University of California, Berkeley, that engages participants in qualitative video analysis to foster their reflective practice. This course is unique in that the prospective pre-service teachers engage in qualitative video analysis at a level characteristic of professional educational research, in that their analysis focuses on student learning of math and science content. We describe classroom activities that provide opportunities for the preservice teacher participants to better observe, notice, and interpret their students' sociocognitive activity. The course culmination project involves participants developing and teaching lessons in a high school classroom. The participants then videotape the lessons and conduct qualitative video analysis. Results include detailed examples of two selected prospective pre-service teachers demonstrating coherent and effective approaches to conceptualizing the learning and teaching of mathematical and science content along with some potential design principles for building reflective practices through qualitative video projects.

Examining Preservice Teachers’ Reflective Thinking Skills in the context of Web-Based Portfolios: The Role of Metacognitive Awareness

“…While the participants were constructing their portfolios, they identified their teaching goals, and collected the evidence pertinent to their goals (lesson plans and teaching practice video recordings) (Wolf, 1994). Reflection tasks were also a part of portfolio construction process, and these tasks were framed in a way to assist participants go beyond describing their teaching practice experiences and develop more in-depth interpretations and understandings of their teaching practice as they tried to minimize the discrepancies among their goals, experiences, and observations (see Appendix; Barth-Cohen et al, 2018;Fuller & Bown, 1975;Loughran, 2002). In this respect, reflection tasks were completed in two phases, and in the first phase, the participants were able to return to their experiences by viewing the video recordings of their teaching practice, and they also had the opportunity for attending to feelings connected with their experiences in real classroom settings (Boud et al, 1985).…”

“…Experiences for preservice teacher's reflective thinking may evidently rest in their observations and practices in the real classroom settings (Gelfuso & Dennis, 2014). If this is not possible, video analysis of critical teaching cases can be an option for creating the stimulating context for reflective thinking (Barth-Cohen et al, 2018).…”

The Use of Ambisonic Audio to Improve Presence, Focus, and Noticing While Viewing 360 Video

“…Although the technologies may vary, the results have been genuinely positive. For instance, the combination of audio and visual representations of teacher practice can lead to improved reflection (Barth-Cohen, Little, & Abrahamson, 2018), listening (Widodo & Rozak, 2016), noticing (Walkoe, Sherin, & Elby, 2020), and analytic skills (Frommelt, Hugener, & Krammer, 2019).…”

Formación en lectura de cuentos: Impacto en intervenciones en educadoras docentes y no docentes

“…En segundo lugar, da cuenta de la efectividad del dispositivo de formación y, por ende, del empleo de videos y de la autoobservación que el dispositivo ofreció como modo de estimular la reflexión sobre la acción y el reposicionamiento docente. Estos resultados coinciden con lo identificado por un número importante de investigaciones que defienden este método de formación docente por sobre otros posibles (Barth-Cohen et al, 2018;Gelfuso y Denis, 2017;Assen et al, 2016).…”