Teacher Education
Spend time discussing what really happened, rather than what you think happened
Whether putting you in the shoes of the learner or increasing flexibility in ever-changing teaching and learning environments, video enhances teacher reflection practices.
Dawn Thompson:
Some of the things that we found, and I’m guessing some of you would definitely agree with this, video enhances teacher reflection practices in several ways. So for example, it’s a concrete evidence of what really happened. So sometimes our memory only suits what we saw or what we observed, it doesn’t suit the entire environment. So it’s a concrete evidence of what really happened rather than trying to remember and then spending time discussing what we think happened as opposed to getting into the richer discussion of what did happen, why it happened, how it could be improved or how it was really great. We don’t want to use it just to say what was wrong, right?
Our teachers are able to view their instructional choices and how that affects students. So sometimes teachers get so excited and so engaged in what they’re doing as a teacher that they maybe aren’t always observing students and what students’ reactions are to what’s going on. So they might not notice everything happening in the room. And so by watching the video, they can pick up on what it’s like to be a student, what it’s like to be a learner and see what that lesson felt like for the learner. Why isn’t that working? A few other things. I already said that we think what happened.
One of the other things that we’ve noticed is that using video, we can deal with… I don’t know what’s wrong with me right now. We can deal with changing roles, responsibilities, we can see, maybe, how some personal biases might be reflected in our teaching and we can fix some of those kinds of things.
