Using Teacher Self-Captured Video in Professional Development

• In Event: 75.019 - Advancing the Knowledge Base to Improve Teaching: Generating a Design Framework for Video-Based Activity Systems

Abstract

Video continues to be an important resource in professional development programs for mathematics and science teachers (van Es, Tekkumru-Kisa & Seago, under review). A key premise of such work is that teacher learning occurs at the time that the video is viewed and discussed with teachers. Advances in technology, however, offer new ways to use video with teachers that we believe challenge this assumption and may call for rethinking how we design and conceptualize video-based learning opportunities for teachers. In particular, video cameras have become small, portable, and even wearable, making it both feasible and easier logistically for teachers to operate cameras as they teach, and to make choices during instruction about where and what to record. In addition, video today is captured in the form of digital files which can easily be uploaded, edited, and shared. As a result, more and more, professional development has moved away from “highly specified” to “emergent” designs (van Es et al., 2014) in which video from participants own classrooms are used as a central part of the program.
Teacher self-captured video: Recent research documented the potential of “self-captured” video (Sherin & Dyer, 2017; van Es et al. 2015) to support teacher learning not only in conversations with peers but also (a) during the process of capturing the video and (b) as teachers select clips to share with peers. This poster advances this issue further in two ways. First, we characterize the nature of the video clips that teachers captured and chose to share with peers. Drawing on prior research, we categorize each video according to the dimensions of widows, depth and clarity of the student thinking shown in the video (Sherin, Linsenmeier, van Es, 2009) as well as, more basically, whether the video is audible, whether student faces are visible etc. If we have begun to rely on teacher-captured video to drive professional development, then understanding the nature of such video is critical. In addition, through observations and interviews with a subset of teachers, we examine teachers in the act of recording their classrooms, changes they made over time, as well as their goals for capturing video and the criteria they used to select clips to share. This poster has implications both for how we design activities in which teachers are asked to capture video from their classrooms as well as how we use self-captured video during professional development meetings.
Data Sources: Data for this study include the written comments of 40 primary grade teachers who participated in one of several online courses on modeling or argumentation in mathematics. Across the 10-12 weeks of the courses, teachers posted over 250 video excerpts and made over 1800 written entries, averaging about 100 words each. In addition, 10 teachers were observed during the course of the program on a day that they recorded their classroom. These teachers also participated in two interviews where they discussed the decisions they made concerning recording in their classroom and the role of videotaping in their learning about modeling or argumentation.

Authors

• Miriam G. Sherin, Northwestern University

• Tracy Dobie, University of Utah

• Christopher Leatherwood, Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy Human Development and Social Policy

• Mari Altshuler, Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy Learning Sciences