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Article Excerpt
"All we ever do is reflect!" is a typical refrain heard by those of us who teach interns and student teachers to write about their teaching. Indeed, "reflection" is such a common practice in teacher education that although our students may question its value, we rarely do (Fendler, 2003). Asking prospective teachers to write a reflection from memory after they have taught a lesson is a standard assignment intended to help preservice teachers learn from their teaching. The format of this reflection may be disputed, but the idea of learning from reflecting on one's memory of teaching a lesson is rarely questioned.
Since Dewey's (1938) seminal writing on the complexity of learning from experience, teacher educators have wrestled with the challenge of encouraging preservice teachers to go beyond just having experiences to actually learning from them (Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1985; Munby & Russell, 1994). Many teacher educators are exploring technology for its potential to help preservice teachers learn from their experience in facilitating discussions (Calandra, Gurvitch, & Lund, 2008; Harford & MacRuairc, in press; Hess, 2004; Sherin, 2004; van Es & Sherin, 2002). However, although we may assume that reflections using video are superior to written or verbal reflections that rely solely on memory, this assumption is based largely on impressions rather than systematic inquiry. Thus, this study investigated the following question: To what extent and in what ways might using video help interns reflect on their discussion-based teaching in a more complex manner than when they use memory-based written reflection? This article discusses findings from an investigation of three preservice elementary intern teachers' memory-based and video-based reflections on their facilitation of discussions.
We begin with an explanation of how we conceptualize teacher change and why we chose classroom discussions as a site for studying preservice teacher learning. Next, we elaborate on our research questions and methodology. Then we report three major findings: Video-supported reflection helped interns to (a) write more specific (vs. general) comments about their teaching than writing from memory, (b) shift the content of the reflections from a focus on classroom management in memory-based reflections to a focus on instruction when video is available, and (c) focus less on themselves and more on children when they reflect on video clips of their teaching. Finally, we discuss the power of video-based reflection to help interns revisit, notice, and investigate how they facilitate classroom discussions, and we suggest directions for future research.
Theoretical Perspective
Defining Teacher Change
Teacher change is made possible when practitioners value uncertainties and disruptions as rich sites for learning and when they make connections between their experiences and practical knowledge (Britzman, 1991; Field & Latta, 2001). Dewey (1938) pointed out that participating in classroom life is not necessarily "educative" unless it is oriented to purpose and guided with curricular ends in view. Almost 50 years later, Paley (1986) noted that "real change comes about only through the painful recognition of one's own vulnerability" (p. 123). Her influential study established the importance of that era's technology--the tape recorder--in capturing vulnerability. More recently, Field and Latta (2001) argued that "the possibility of becoming more experienced arises only when something happens to us beyond what we anticipate" (p. 887). This study investigated whether reflection on facilitating classroom discussions with the aid of video is a better tool for creating the dissonance that fosters learning than reflection based on one's memory of events.
This research intersects with Kennedy's (2005) study of the development of practicing teachers' craft knowledge (e.g., concerns with lesson flow, content coverage, student learning). That study showed that even the use of nonevaluative questions to guide teachers in selecting video clips highlighting their "moment-to-moment" decisions produced mostly "evaluative judgments of their practices" (p. 209). Moreover, even when teachers were dissatisfied with their performances, "less than half of all such experiences lead to explicit statement of new ideas" (p. 212). Although our study focused on preservice teacher interns, Kennedy's study is of interest because it focuses on teachers' decisions about extraction of video clips of their teaching. Additionally, teacher change with respect to the facilitation of classroom discussions may broadly be understood as what Kennedy refers to as "craft."
Van Es and Sherin (2002), who studied what preservice teachers learn to "notice" when they use video as a tool, concluded that teachers need to (a) learn to pay attention to what is important, (b) make connections between specific classroom interactions and the broader concepts and principles of teaching and learning they represent, and (c) use what they know about their own teaching context to reason about a given situation. Thus, what teachers notice and how they interpret classroom events are key aspects of teacher change.
Classroom Discussions as Key Sites for Studying Learning From Experience
We selected classroom discussions as the context for studying teacher change for several reasons. Because discussions are a particularly complex aspect of teachers' lived experience, they provide a rich site for studying whether teachers make an important transition from "having" experiences to learning from them (Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1985; Munby & Russell, 1994). Moreover, many educators claim that highly interactive discussions that engage students in the production of knowledge can broaden and deepen students' conceptual understandings in all disciplines (Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003; Palincsar, Anderson, & David, 1993). However, because the types of knowledge, ways of knowing, and types of texts vary by discipline, how productive interactive discussions are carried out in different subject matters may vary (Wells & Arauz, 2006). For instance, learning to engage in scientific inquiry through discussion and comprehension of informational texts entails examining alternative points of view, and frequently the goal for collaborative talk is to reach a consensus supported by solid argument and evidence (National Research Council, 2000; Osborne, Erduran, & Simon, 2004). By contrast, when discussing students' response to literature, the goal is not necessarily to reach a conclusion by consensus but rather to understand the varied nature of literary interpretation by grappling with and constructing new understandings (Langer, 1995; Rosenblatt, 1938/1995).
From their own schooling experiences (Lortie, 1975), novice teachers are familiar with an IRE discourse structure in science and English language arts--a three-part sequence where the teacher initiates a question, students respond to the question, and the teacher evaluates the response (Cazden, 1988). Shifting from a "one-size-fits-all" IRE discussion pattern to more open-ended discourse structures appropriate to particular subject matter contexts entails teachers learning how to recognize various kinds of discussions, how to use them effectively with their students, and how to teach their students to participate effectively (Hess, 2004). Although learning to facilitate interactive discussions is challenging, it is an important area of expertise that all teachers need to develop; thus, it is an important goal for supporting the learning of novice teachers.
The Promise of Video as a Tool for Analysis and Learning
Given the complex dynamics of classroom discussions, it is difficult to document them for further analysis and reflection. Studying video records may shift interns' attention from the exploration of vague perceptions about what transpired (Ball & Cohen, 1999) to a more complex and evidence-based analysis of whether and how classroom interaction in discussions promotes student learning in literacy and other content areas. Kennedy's (2005) research on what teachers learn from viewing videotapes of their teaching found that many teachers seem to learn only from negative experiences. We investigated this matter further, following the arguments offered by several researchers (Borko, 2004; Mason, 2002; Sherin & van Es, 2005; van Es & Sherin, 2002) that explicit noticing is critical to change because if persons do not notice, they cannot choose to act differently. Clearly, research indicates that the use of video cases to study classroom interactions in preservice teacher education might lead to improved teaching practices and, in turn, has the potential to improve student achievement (Labbo, Kinzer, Leu, & Teal, 2004). Sherin (2004) argues that using video for developing an "analytic mind set" is developing "a different kind of knowledge for teaching--knowledge not of 'what to do next,' but rather, knowledge of how to interpret and reflect on classroom practices" (pp. 13-14). Putnam and Borko (2004) also remind us that because teachers' patterns of thought and action become routine, they may need different types of experiences that "help teachers 'break set'--to experience things in new ways" (p. 6).
Some researchers have noted that video technology "affords the luxury of time" (Sherin, 2004, p. 13) and may help teachers examine their ability to facilitate discussions by slowing down the fast pace of classroom life so that explicit noticing of particular aspects of the discussion can be further analyzed (van Es & Sherin, 2002). Video excerpts can be reviewed several times with different foci and foster productive professional discussion among experienced teachers (Borko, Jacobs, Eiteljorg, & Pittman, 2008). In addition, video is being used increasingly to help preservice teachers learn to analyze examples of classroom teaching (Santagata, Zannoni, & Stigler, 2007; Star & Strickland, 2008). Some studies illustrate the promise of helping preservice teachers analyze their own teaching (Calandra, Gurvitch, &Lund, 2008; Yerrick, Ross, & Molebash, 2005). Still, some scholars argue that what prospective teachers actually take away from video-based self-reflection needs further exploration (Grossman, 2005; Wang & Hartley, 2003).
The same "slowing it down" capability of video technology facilitates what we notice as researchers. That is, interns' video reflections provide windows through which we may view and...
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