Digital New Teacher Mentoring and Learning Through Teaching Video Footage Review

• In Event: Classroom Video as a Tool for Music Teacher Learning: Outlining Strategic Research Agendas

Abstract

In this paper, three studies of new teacher digital mentoring that included video review of teaching will be addressed. The teaching footage review was through a technique called video-based shared reflection (Tochon, 2007). This particular technique of video review utilized teaching footage as a reference for planning and guiding mentoring discussions during meetings.

The first study was a descriptive case study bound by the 2015-16 school year with two first year teacher participants teaching and mentee experiences (both individual and collective) (Patton, 2015). Research questions included: (a) how do two first year teachers describe their challenges, needs, and concerns specific to orchestral pedagogical content knowledge? and (b) how do the participants interact within the digital mentoring environment? Findings worth mentioning for this symposium included the flexibility and frequency of communication within the digital environment as well as review video footage of teaching to cater support for the mentee participants. The second study was an extension of the first with a continued collection of data on digital mentoring with a new set of mentee participants during the 2016-17 school year (Patton, 2015). In addition to featuring similar findings to the 2015-16 mentee experience, other preliminary findings in the 2016-17 study focused on logistics of recording and sharing video footage of teaching as well as how this helped support mentee learning from the mentee’s perspective featured through data analysis (Goldman, Erickson, Lemke, & Derry, 2007; Tobias, 2014). The third study was a multiple case study (n = 2) describing mentor perceptions of mentee learning in the digital mentoring environment during the 2017-18 academic year (Barrett, 2014; Creswell & Poth, 2018; Stake, 1995; 2006; Yin, 2014). Research questions included: (a) How do mentors describe their experiences within the digital environment?; (b) How do mentors describe changes in mentee teaching practice as evidence of mentee learning?; and (c) How do mentors describe the emergence of their mentoring practices in response to the learning of each mentee? Andragogy (Knowles, 1984; Knowles, Holton, & Swanson, 2005; Merriam, Caffarela, & Baumgartner, 2007) was the theoretical framework for guiding portions of the investigation and data analysis to help feature mentee learning. In addition to the meetings and discussions during mentoring, video footage of lessons helped mentor participants note mentee learning and adjusting mentoring approaches to mentee’s needs.

The findings from these investigations are of particular importance to this symposium as they identified key critical features of teaching video footage for digital mentoring. Specifically, how this type of video footage was used, how this footage helped mentors acquire access to mentee’s classrooms through the video footage, and how mentees also used footage to reflect and refine their teaching. These three studies collectively add to the extant body of research on new music teacher mentoring and further highlight how mentoring can be a form of teacher education especially when combined with teaching footage review within digital environments.

Author

• Jessica Vaughan-Marra, Seton Hill University