Source: Journal of Teacher Education, Volume: 70 issue: 3, page(s): 237-250
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)
The authors state that the purpose of this article is to make a conceptual argument about productive use of video in preservice teacher education contexts.
They first theorize what makes the use of video productive in teacher preparation.
Next, they review existing tools and frameworks focusing on their affordances and limitations for guiding teacher educators’ use of video.
They then propose an integrated framework that specifies the procedures, processes, and key considerations for using video in teacher education.
They provide one case to unpack the complexity of creating a productive video-embedded learning environment in preservice teacher education and show how the framework guides teacher educators’ decision making.
The following research questions guide the authors’ inquiry:
Research Question 1: What makes video use “productive” in preservice education?
Research Question 2: What are the affordances and constraints of the existing frameworks for video use?
Research Question 3: What are guiding principles and procedures for using video productively to support preservice teacher learning?
Theorizing Productive Use of Video in Preservice Teacher Education
In this section, the authors unpack the notion of “productive” use of video before turning to the discussion of frameworks and tools for video use.
Sociocultural Perspective, Preservice Teacher Learning, and Trajectories of Participation
The authors propose that while engaging in activities, preservice teachers interact with people and informational resources to deepen their understandings about teaching and learning, and to develop complex practices.
The type and nature of interactions that are coordinated in a system are related to changes in preservice teachers’ trajectories of participation.
The key then for supporting preservice teachers’ learning is to create a system of activities that facilitates desirable interactions—the interactions that result in preservice teachers increasing their capabilities for participation in the work of teaching in ways that are valued in the community.
Video as a Tool That Mediates the Social and Intellectual Interactions in a System
The authors note that the use of preservice teachers’ videos brings individualized experiences from local classrooms into a collective learning space, thereby enabling teacher educators to help preservice teachers generate new meanings about their personal teaching experiences through professional conversations with others.
Therefore, when video is strategically located inside the teacher preparation activity system, teacher educators can facilitate preservice teachers’ individual and collective interaction that is difficult to coordinate otherwise.
Productive Use of Video Contributes to Moving Preservice Teachers’ Learning Forward
The authors point out that the type and nature of interactions in a video-embedded learning environment are dynamically and interactively shaped through the coordination of multiple aspects of the system, such as the tools and frameworks that guide conversations, the norms, and practices for video observation and analysis, and the nature of facilitation before, during, and after video observation (Blomberg et al., 2013).
The authors emphasize that the productive use of video, then, hinges on the coordination of the multiple components of a video-embedded activity system and its consequence—whether and to what extent the video-mediated interactions increase preservice teachers’ participation in ways that are valued in the community.
An Integrated Approach for Using Video to Move Preservice Teachers’ Learning Forward: The Principled Use of Video (PUV) Framework
Principles, Procedures, and Key Considerations
The PUV framework proposed by the authors illustrates various pedagogical decision points in the process of designing video-embedded learning activities.
The first two processes have to do with setting goals.
Specifically, they are (a) articulate worthy goals of preservice education and (b) frame one or two specific learning objective(s) of a particular video-embedded activity.
During these goal-setting processes, teacher educators locate preservice teachers on their learning trajectories in relation to developing deep understanding or complex performances and specify the progress that preservice teachers are expected to make with a particular video-embedded learning activity.
The next processes have to do with setting up and coordinating preservice teachers’ interactions in a video-embedded activity.
During these processes, teacher educators specify the key features of the video-embedded learning environment that affect preservice teachers’ interactions. It includes (c) selecting a clip, (d) designing a task, (e) selecting a tool, and (f) facilitating conversations.
Although the framework is presented in a linear form, it is unlikely that the actual decision-making processes are either linear or follow the suggested order.
Instead, the authors speculate that the actual work of designing a video-embedded learning environment can begin at various decision points and one decision will inform the others.
Regardless of the entry point, however, each of the processes specified in this framework needs to be considered to set up and facilitate productive interactions using video.
PUV Framework in Action: An Illustrative Case
The authors present one case to illustrate how the proposed framework guides a teacher educator’s decision making around video.
The case comes from a disciplinary specific methods course offered for secondary science preservice teachers in a 15-month graduate, certificate-plus-master’s teacher preparation program in the United States.
The secondary science preservice teachers attend a total of 20 sessions of 3-hr-long discipline-specific methods classes from September to June.
This case unpacks the complex decision making that goes into the design and enactment of a video-embedded learning activity with a particular group of preservice teachers in a particular time and place, illustrating how the PUV framework can guide a teacher educator’s complex and interconnected decision making.
It should be noted that this case was situated at the very beginning of the program where preservice teachers had yet to reflect and problematize their own vision of teaching.
Changes in preservice teachers’ experiences later in the program, such as preservice teachers taking on more responsibilities in their field site, enable teacher educators to foreground different learning goals.
For example, the teacher educator may foreground the goal of developing initial repertoires of teaching, such as designing and launching complex tasks.
With the shift of the foregrounded learning goal and some progress made by a group of preservice teachers over time, it may be an appropriate time to shift to selecting and using video from preservice teachers’ own teaching to facilitate the interactions that preservice teachers need at that stage of their learning trajectories.
The authors demonstrate how the PUV framework makes the complex and connected decision points explicit.
References
Blomberg, G., Renkl, A., Sherin, M. G., Borko, H., & Seidel, T. (2013). Five research-based heuristics for using video in preservice teacher education. Journal for Educational Research Online, 5(1), 90-114