Digital Video to Improve Teachers’ Literacy Strategy Instruction: A Tool for Researchers and Professional Development

• In Event: Digital Video in Literacy Research, Teacher Education, and Professional Development: Demonstrations of Research Techniques and Practices

Abstract

Objective

This presentation examines the ways that digital video served as a powerful medium for a researcher studying teacher learning (Pea & Lindgren, 2008) and for teachers studying their own practices in a professional development context.

Theoretical Framework

In collaboration with a school district, the researcher designed a professional development model focused on teaching nine teachers an explicit literacy strategy instruction model (Almasi, 2003), which drew on the work of Pearson and colleagues (e.g., Fielding & Pearson, 1994; Pearson & Dole, 1987; Pearson & Gallagher, 1983). Educators know that teaching elementary aged students to be strategic readers is a complex task and effective professional development is intensive, sustained over long periods of time (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1996), and incorporates modeling, opportunities for collegial inquiry, and feedback (Darling-Hammond & McLaughlin, 1996; Joyce & Showers, 1995).

Method

With effective professional development in mind, the teachers engaged in a two-year professional development. Prior to any professional development the nine teachers were interviewed and also asked to video of three strategy lessons before the first professional development opportunity. These lessons provided a baseline for the researcher and also captured video for teacher analysis. In the first professional development session, teachers learned about the explicit strategy instruction model, compared their strategy lesson already recorded to the model presented, and set goals for upcoming implementation. After the first professional development session, the teachers met intermittently to collaboratively plan and analyze their own teaching and a peer’s teaching using video three times each year. At the beginning and end of each school year all participant were interviewed.

Data Sources

Digital data sources included a) digital video of five lessons in year one and three lessons in year two for all nine participants, b) digital audio recordings of three collaborative planning sessions, c) digital audio of six video debriefing analysis sessions, d) digital audio of four interview sessions per participant, e) word documents of lesson plans taught, f) digital pictures of classroom artifacts, and g) e-mail correspondences.

Results/Demonstration:

The presentation will demonstrate how a researcher and research assistants worked together to share video data sets, data analysis schemes and tools, and coding systems, and reliability measures. We will focus on how we used video analysis tools together to come to a collective understanding of teacher change in strategy instruction over the course of one year. The researcher will also demonstrate how the teachers used the video analyze their own teaching with a partner during the professional development. Discussion will focus on how the video tool helped guide changes in teacher practice and how the video partner analysis time in the professional development provided a context for knowledge building.

Significance

This work is significant in that the research identifies how teachers can be supported and self-initiate reflection through video to improve their own strategy instruction. In addition, the work is further significant to researchers in providing a coding scheme, descriptions of inter-rater reliability checks, and other guidance for working with NVivo to process large video data sets.

Author

• Lynn E. Shanahan