Designing Democratic Tasks to Engage Student Thinking

• In Event: Video Analysis for Pedagogical Sense-Making Among Teacher Learners Across Disciplines

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to understand 1) the ways I design and engage pre-service social studies teachers in video analysis of their teaching, and 2) how pre-service social studies teachers’ conceptions of social studies teaching is articulated and altered throughout the year. Considering perspectives on teacher learning that rely on isolating, analyzing, discussing, and practicing instructional interactions (Star, Lynch, & Perova, 2011), when engaging in isolating pieces of teaching, teacher educators must contextualize and connect these to disciplinary purposes for teaching in social studies. Connecting pedagogical moves with students’ disciplinary engagement in content is what gives meaning to teaching. Teaching social studies is not simply copying and pasting practices analyzed through 6-10 minute videos, but is rather the design, performance, and relationship building that results from careful theorizing about practice (Hawley, 2010). We must approach video analysis of teaching with a similar emphasis.

Video analyses took place five times through two semesters. Our social studies teacher education program values disciplinary methods of inquiry in social sciences for teaching for a deep democracy, a connecting thread for our social studies education courses. Pre-service teachers (PSTs) learn broadly about this philosophy as it suggests the need for communities of difference to find points of common interest as part of working together toward a better, more democratic community and society (Green, 2008). Therefore, study design was informed by practitioner inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) and Participatory Action Research (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2005) with teacher educator and PSTs positioned as participant-researchers of their own teaching. Data sources included self-selected video of PSTs’ teaching, semi-structured interviews, and artifacts/documents.

Initial findings include two claims. First, as both teacher educator and student teacher, the role of the teacher in the deliberate design of scaffolds with intentional de-scaffolding is vital to students (PSTs and K-12) developing the capacity to do the work independently. Consciously de-scaffolding allowed PSTs to be agentive in their own learning, reveal students’ thinking to the PSTs, and enable PSTs to make decisions based on student thinking. To do this, we modeled the process through highly structured, instructor active, large group video analysis early on, and over time reduced structure, instructor involvement, and group size. This space for agency is particularly important in teaching social studies for democratic community as it models positioning learners as decision-makers in meaningful tasks that clearly prompt, draw out, and build on student thinking are noticeable. Second, visions of good social studies teaching and the purposes for teaching social studies as realized by the teacher clearly shaped instructional choices and selection of video clips. Over time, deeper discussions about why certain pedagogical moves were made coincided with clear shifts in thinking by PSTs regarding what social studies teaching is for (see Green, 2008) and how to best go about doing that work. Clips selected were one indication of this as PSTs frequently started with a teacher-centered, call-and-response instructional video. Eventually these clip selections moved into small group, gallery walk, or other less teacher-centered videos of teaching that emphasized student work and student thinking.

Author

• Andrew L. Hostetler, Vanderbilt University