The Video Mosaic Collaborative Repository: A Historical Perspective

• In Event: The Video Mosaic Collaborative: An Online Professional Development Resource for Mathematics Education and the Learning Sciences

Abstract

Purposes
Based on the merits of preserving a major video collection on students’ mathematical learning and making it broadly accessible for education and research, the Video Mosaic Collaborative (VMC) was initiated as a collaborative research and development project supported by the National Science Foundation. Researchers worked together with Rutgers University Libraries to build the VMC, design and test its tools, and use VMC resources in instructional interventions (Agnew, Mills & Maher, 2010).

Perspectives
Products from prior research should be disseminated widely and repurposed creatively, especially when their use is hypothesized to serve a critical social need. A massive library containing more than 4500 hours of video from over a quarter of a century of research was generated through cross-sectional and longitudinal research studies conducted in multiple contexts. Students from urban, working class, and suburban communities in formal and informal settings engaged in problem-solving tasks from the mathematical strands of algebra, geometry, fractions and rational number, counting and combinatorics, probability, pre calculus and calculus. An overarching goal of all the studies was to follow diverse groups of students over time to enable the tracing of how they build mathematical ideas and forms of mathematical reasoning when situated in a learning environment that encouraged thoughtfulness, building meaning of mathematical ideas, collaborating with others, and sharing of ideas in the establishment of justifications for problem solution (Maher, 2005; Maher, Powell & Uptegrove, 2010). It was hypothesized that videos from this collection could be a valuable tool in teacher education to promote the development of mathematical reasoning (Maher, 2008).

Techniques
Selection of videos to be made available on the VMC leveraged substantial efforts made by previous researchers in studying raw footage to identify and code critical events in students’ mathematical learning, guided by a methodology for video data analysis that emerged over the years (Powell, Francisco & Maher, 2003; Davis, Maher & Martino, 1992). Series of video clips edited from longer research sessions were catalogued with metadata to make them findable on the VMC repository. Along with videos are related resources that include descriptions of videos with statements of problem tasks, transcripts and, when available, students’ written work (see http://videomosaic.org).

Materials
VMC videos illustrate students engaged in solving challenging mathematical tasks and articulating their reasoning in learning environments with a highly skilled facilitator in the role of classroom teacher. The videos, the problem-solving tasks featured in them, and related readings selected from research literature are among the materials used in developing instructional interventions for teachers in an iterative program of design research. Interventions are conducted in a variety of contexts: graduate courses in mathematics education; professional development workshops for in-service teachers; portions of courses for pre-service teachers at the elementary, middle and secondary levels; and learning science courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels (Palius & Maher, 2011). Variation also includes face-to-face, online and hybrid settings.

Significance
There is great potential to tap the tools and resources of the VMC for research and educational activities. We invite further exploration beyond our own designs.

Author

• Marjory Fan Palius, Rutgers University