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Article Excerpt
Teacher educators have been using videos as learning tools for teachers since the late 1960s and early 1970s. At that time, publications primarily reported results from microteaching studies. These articles summarized teachers' learning from watching brief clips of classroom instruction that featured specific instructional techniques to be modeled (among others, Acheson & Zigler, 1971; Allen & Clark, 1967; Limbacher, 1971; Ward, 1970). More recently, with the advent of digital technologies, video has often been embedded in complex multimedia databases and accompanied by a variety of instructional materials (e.g., transcripts, handouts the videotaped teacher gave to her students, samples of students' work from the videotaped lesson). In addition, the learning objective for teachers has shifted from learning specific instructional techniques to deepening pedagogical content knowledge and developing reflective knowledge of teaching and learning (Santagata, Gallimore, & Stigler, 2005). As a result, more recent publications focus on reporting teacher progress in identifying important instructional moments, analyzing student thinking, and reflecting on content (Davies & Walker, 2005; Jacob, Lamb, Philipp, Schappelle, & Burke, 2007; Lampert & Ball, 1998; Santagata, Zannoni, & Stigler, 2007).
Although limitations still exist in the methodologies used to gather evidence of teacher learning from analyzing videotaped instruction--in most cases restricted to qualitative studies of small groups of teachers--evidence of the positive effects on teachers' overall understanding of the teaching-learning process, knowledge of subject-matter specific instructional strategies, and understanding of student thinking is rapidly increasing (among others, Borko, Jacobs, Eiteljorg, Pittman, 2008; Jacob et al., 2007; Santagata et al., 2007; Sherin & Han, 2004; Sherin & van Es, 2005; van Es & Sherin, 2008; van Es & Sherin, 2002). In particular, authors of recent studies praise the use of video for allowing in-depth analyses of students' learning in action--analyses that teachers would not be able to do while teaching a lesson (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2000; LeFevre, 2004; Sherin, 2004; Sherin & van Es, 2005; van Es & Sherin, 2002). Less frequent in the literature are detailed descriptions of questions and tasks professional development providers use to guide teachers' analyses of videos. If we are to understand the learning processes in which teachers engage when analyzing video and what specifically helps them to acquire knowledge that is useful in teaching, we need to make public the detailed descriptions of questions and tasks that accompany our video-based professional development programs. In a recent American Educational Research Association symposium on the use of video to study teaching, Hilda Borko (2007) called for collaboration among researchers to share the specifics of materials and tasks used with teachers.
The Video Cases for Mathematics Professional Development, developed by Seago, Mumme, and Branca (2004), provide a good example of video-based material accompanied by questions that structure teachers' analyses. The CD includes videos of real classroom teaching, and the accompanying guide assists teachers in exploring the topic of linear functions as well pedagogical strategies to foster student conceptual understanding, such as choosing and using various representations and interpreting and responding to students' methods and errors. The Supporting the Transition from Arithmetic to Algebraic Reasoning Project is another example. This project describes in detail a professional development model, the "Problem Solving Cycle," that involves teachers in sharing their practices with their colleagues through video and other records of practice (Borko et al., 2008; Koellner et al., 2007). A third example is Sherin and van Es's (2008) research on teacher learning in the context of video clubs, in which the authors describe in detail teacher and facilitator's roles in discussions around video clips of classroom interactions.
This article contributes to this literature by describing in detail a video-based professional development program implemented for 2 consecutive years with sixth-grade teachers from five middle schools in a low-performing district. The study can be categorized as what many would call "design research," in that we attempted to engineer an innovative educational environment and simultaneously conduct an experimental study (Brown, 1992). It also shares with design research some of the tensions that come with wanting to refine an intervention to improve practice, while attempting to develop a deeper understanding of the general principles--the theory--at the basis of the intervention (Bielaczyc & Collins, 2007).
What distinguishes this article from previously published studies is its focus on the difficulties teachers may encounter in using video to deepen their content and pedagogical content knowledge as opposed to the benefits of such forms of professional development. Specifically, this article reports on challenges that particular groups of teachers, such as those working in low-performing schools, may face. It describes the process through which our team of researchers and facilitators modified tasks and questions used in the 1st year version of the program to develop a new version for the 2nd year that would address teachers' needs.
Before I introduce the theoretical framework and research at the basis of the professional development program under investigation, I provide a context for the study by briefly summarizing research on teachers working in low-performing schools.
Although teachers everywhere are faced with a similar challenge--that of teaching to students fairly complex content in a relatively short period of time--there are a set of attitudes, beliefs, and characteristics that, according to research, tend to distinguish teachers who work in low-performing schools. These beliefs and characteristics may affect ways teachers participate in professional development programs and can be obstacles to program success. Although some of the difficulties teachers in this study encountered with the professional development material may be similar to the ones teachers working in higher performing schools would face, teachers in low-performing schools are at a particular disadvantage for the following reasons:
a. They do not think they are able to affect students' learning. They tend to attribute students' poor performance solely to factors outside the school, such as neighborhood violence, lack of parental monitoring, and economic conditions. As a consequence, they underestimate their role in the students' learning progress (Oakes, Joseph, & Muir, 2003).
b. They tend to have low expectations for their students. Teachers working in low-performing schools tend to underestimate students' potential. In particular, they tend to believe that their students are not capable of conceptual understanding and the only route to the improvement of their performance is highly procedural teaching (Anyon, 1981; Oakes et al., 2003; Spencer, 2006)
c. They are more likely to hold an emergency credential or being asked to teach outside their subject matter area than teachers working in higher achieving schools and less difficult working conditions (Lankford, Loeb, Wyckoff, 2002; Loeb, Darling-Hammond, & Luczak, 2005). As a consequence, these teachers' content and pedagogical content knowledge tend to be poor (Hill, 2007). This often results in teachers not being able to valorize what students do know and not being able to leverage on that to build more sophisticated mathematical understanding.
d. Finally, in the current No Child Left Behind climate, they are particularly pressured to improve students' performance on standardized tests. Many school administrators do not see teaching for understanding as the most direct way--or see it as having any potential at all--to improve students' scores. Lacking leader support, teachers are often left alone in implementing innovative practices (Apple, 2004; Gutstein, 2003).
The article is structured into four sections, each accomplishing a specific goal: (a) provide a theoretical framework and a brief of the research at the basis of the various components of the video-based professional development program under study, (b) describe in detail the program as it was developed for the 1st year of implementation, (c) summarize what we learned about teachers' difficulties, and (d) illustrate how we modified the program for the 2nd year of implementation to respond to these difficulties.
Theoretical Framework and Research Base
The main objective of the professional development program described here was that of assisting teachers to choose mathematically rich problems and to maintain that richness as they guide students through problem solutions. Findings from the video portion of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (Hiebert et al., 2003) provide both the basis for the main objective of the professional development program and for the specific teacher knowledge and skills that we chose to target. In summary, Third International Mathematics and Science Study video research found that compared to the United States, high-achieving countries engage students more frequently in rigorous mathematical reasoning. In particular, students in these countries are presented with complex mathematics problems that require them to make connections between mathematical ideas. In addition, and contrary to U.S. lessons in which solution methods are reduced mostly to procedures to be followed, the complexity of the mathematics in high-achieving countries is maintained throughout the solution process. Two hypotheses may explain these results: (a) U.S. teachers do not possess a deep understanding of the mathematics they are asked to teach and (b) teaching mathematics with attention to conceptual underpinnings is not consistent with the tradition of school mathematics in the United States. Thus, although conceptual understanding has become a shared objective for student learning within the education mathematics community, U.S. teachers seldom have the opportunity to observe examples of teaching in which the complexity of the mathematics involved is maintained. With these two hypotheses in mind, we designed the professional development program to include opportunities for teachers to deepen their own understanding of key concepts of the curriculum they teach, improve their knowledge of ways students understand the content, and learn about instructional strategies that can be used to maintain the mathematical richness of the problems they pose.
Our approach to teacher learning about instructional strategies centers on the analysis of videotaped lessons. We view teaching as a cyclical process that goes beyond what happens in the classroom to include planning and reflecting. Improvements in planning and reflection have great potential for improving teaching (Ball & Cohen, 1999; Hiebert, Gallimore, & Stigler, 2002)....
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