Teaching Science Effectively: A Case Study on Student Verbal Engagement in Classroom Dialogue

Abstract

The present case study illustrates a teacher who participated in a oneyear, video-based, teacher professional development (TPD) program on classroom dialogue. This study expands the field of research on TPD by presenting the longitudinal results of Laura's teaching performance, her students' engagement in classroom dialogue, and their higher order learning perceptions. Additionally, a reflection of her participation in the TPD provides more insights into the role of TPD programs for individual teacher learning. Results revealed that Laura constantly changed her questioning and feedback behavior in terms of providing her students with more questions that foster elaboration of knowledge and feedback, which scaffolds students' learning processes. As a consequence, more students in Laura's classroom elaborated on their knowledge, which was reflected by a positive change in student higher order learning perceptions. Her reflection showed that the video tool and a mindful facilitation of the TPD program were of great value for Laura's positive learning experience.

Using video clubs to develop teachers’ thinking and practice in oral feedback and dialogic teaching

“…Pre-and post-surveys provided the data for this comparison. This design adds to previous evidence ( Van den Bergh et al, 2014;Schindler et al, 2016) that did not measure the difference in outcomes between an intervention group and a comparison group. This study provides evidence of change in teachers' practice through analysis of video taped lessons.…”

“…This outcome is very encouraging from the perspective of Hattie and Timperley's typology. Several other small-scale projects have also reported positive impacts of video clubs on teachers' thinking and practice about feedback (Van den Bergh et al, 2014;Gröschner et al, 2015;Schindler et al, 2016).…”

Video-Based Reflection on Teaching: What Makes It Effective?

“…From this perspective, it is interesting to see − most clearly in the interventions studied by Schindler et al (cf. Pehmer et al, 2015;Schindler et al, 2015) and Berson et al (2015) − that the challenge to teachers of translating thought into action crucially depended on opportunities to repeatedly collaborate on lesson planning and move rapidly through complete cycles of planning, teaching and reflection. This finding suggests the importance of designing PD activities as consecutive cycles.…”