Heightening Teachers' Professional Awareness in Video-Based Peer Discourse to Develop Specialized Content Knowledge

• In Event: New Perspectives on Teacher Learning: Teachers as Facilitators of Peers' Professional Growth

Abstract

Objectives: While many teachers' professional development programs employ collaborative video-based discourse, much of the research on such discourse only partially covers its rich facets (Lefstein, Louie, Segal, & Becher, 2020; Lefstein, Vedder-Weiss, & Segal, 2020). Specialized Content Knowledge (SCK)-- the mathematical knowledge and skills unique to teaching mathematics such as thoughtful integration of examples or awareness of various approaches for presenting a particular topic (Ball, Phelps, & Thames, 2008)-- can provide a reference point for studying teachers' professional growth.
Perspectives: Our study focuses on the contribution of a specially designed video-based Curiosity-Driven Discourse (CDD) for the development of math teachers' SCK. Specifically, we are interested in whether heightening math teachers' professional awareness through such discusive habits affects their SCK.
Method: Our research population comprised 18 elementary school in-service mathematics teachers in a two-year mathematics education master's degree program. The participants videotaped their teaching using their own mobile phones and conducted a conversation with their peers over an episode of their choosing. The participants were encouraged to use CDD to focus on specific points in the video that piqued their shared curiosity, rather than evaluating the teaching actions they observed. We collected three types of data: a report submitted by the teachers summarizing their reflections based on video records of their own teaching and of their discourse with their peers, interviews, and a researcher’s field notes.
In order to study the contribution of this discourse on the teachers' perceived SCK, we used an adapted model of levels of awareness (Blinded, 2018; Blinded 2018; Blinded 2019; Mason, 1998). The model refers to Awareness in Action (AIA) regarding the knowledge of one's own math teaching actions and Awareness in Disciplines (AID) regarding knowledge of math and of math education research. We utilized qualitative research methods, coding to identify the main categories and sub-categories (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).
Preliminary Results: We found that the peer CDD discourse raised teachers’ awareness ( (Mason, 1998) which resulted in fostering the development of their SCK. Here are two examples of growth in the teachers' proficiency:
Level of awareness
Impact on SCK
Awareness of one's use of technology (AIA): “I chose to use Excel so that students would be exposed to a wide variety of examples.”
“From the discourse with my peers, I realized that with Excel my students can also identify that the average of any three numbers that make up an arithmetic progression is equal to the middle term and then to generalize.”
Awareness of examples incorporated in the lesson (AIA): "During the discourse I recognized that through my lesson only series of odd numbers presented. "
"The discourse led me to realize the importance role of choosing varied examples during the lesson, to support students’ understanding processes."

Significance of the study: This research offers a new tool to examine the productivity of teachers' collaborative discourse by examining growth of teachers’ SCK spurred by heightened professional awareness.

Authors

• Ruti Segal, Oranim Academic College of Education, Shannan Academic College of Education

• Avraham Merzel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Yaron Lehavi, The David Yellin College of Education