Using Digital Video in Professional Development: Difference between revisions

{{ORBITreading}}[[Category:Reading]]

<section begin=CautionaryNote/> '''‘Good pedagogic practice’ is not a stable entity. What counts as good practice is contested, variable, irreducibly situated in a specific context. '''

* the observer’s knowledge of the contexts of these interactions;

Observation provides an opportunity for the observer to render explicit the criteria as well as the values, assumptions and prior experiences that shape and inform the act of observation. Because observation necessarily involves interpretation, different observers will disagree about what they are observing. Student teachers will not see a lesson in the same way that experienced teachers and mentors will see it – and what a student teacher can see will change rapidly during the course of their education.

As teachers and teacher educators, we are always wrestling with the problem of particularity. We teach and we observe others teaching in very specific contexts – particular schools, particular classrooms, particular classes taught at particular moments of the school day. Digital video provides us with the chance to see inside other people’s classrooms, to learn from others’ practice, to make comparisons about teaching and learning across different sites. (Of course, the window of DV provides a particular perspective on these other classrooms: we don’t get to see everything, and what we do get to see has been framed in particular ways. I will say more about this later.)

=== 1.3 It brings a multimodal lens to the analysis of teaching and learning ===

… classrooms are places where communication extends far beyond the modes of spoken and written language; they are multimodal sites, sites where meanings are made through many differing means, and where resources such as gesture, gaze, posture, and the deployment of visual objects are crucially important to meaning-making. … In other words, to understand English in its full dimensions, and to understand the ways in which it creates new kinds of identity for students and teachers, we regarded a multimodal approach as essential  

In the classroom (as elsewhere), meanings are constructed and negotiated multimodally. Classroom interaction is embodied: how the furniture is arranged and what is displayed on the walls, where and how teachers and students stand or sit, their movements and gestures and facial expressions, as well as what they say and how they say it – all of these resources contribute to the semiotic work that is carried out in a lesson. Digital video enables us to attend to any and all of these modes as they are deployed in the classroom, to consider how each contributes to, or detracts from, or is in tension with, the pedagogic intentions of the lesson.

When we carry out classroom observation, we don’t always see the same thing. We can reach different conclusions about what is going on. In real-time, in-the-flesh observation, however, it is rare (and problematic) for more than one or two people to observe the same lesson. Digital video footage enables large numbers of observers to see the same lesson. Hence, in sharing their analyses of what they have seen, the observers are obliged to render explicit what they bring to the act of observation: the assumptions they have made, the values that underpin their judgements, the criteria by which they are operating.

The most productive question to ask of a piece of DV footage is, ''What else do we need to know to make sense of this?'' Digital video allows us into other classrooms (though only virtually, and only in the two dimensions of the screen – it cannot place us there, ‘in the round’). And what it cannot provide is a historical perspective – a sense of how the interactions we see are products of the (shared and separate, individual and institutional) histories of the participants.  

In '''''Teaching Talking 2''''' (see below, [http://www.ite.org.uk/ite_topics/identifying_digital_video_clips_of_good_pedagogic_practice/005.html see also Section 5]), we see a Year 8 student make a one-word contribution to a plenary. But the significance of this contribution cannot be understood from the video clip itself. It is the teacher, Kate, who provides the information that Paula, the student, is a newly-arrived beginner bilingual, a Portuguese-speaker who has never before contributed to whole-class talk in her English lesson. Knowing this history, we can begin to appreciate the utterance as an important moment in Paula’s development and as evidence of the effectiveness of the collaborative group work that had preceded the plenary.

Footage of what happens in a classroom is rich, dense material. Tiny fragments of lessons are worth analysing in detail. Concentrate on small episodes – generally only a few minutes is plenty.

=== 2.3 What don’t we know? What can’t we see? ===

==== Some possibilities… ====

* Provide transcripts of the footage – either before or after showing – or (more arduous but worthwhile) ask student teachers to transcribe a brief episode themselves: suggest that they indicate facial expression, body posture and gesture as well as language, and note the different kinds of contributions made by individual pupils

** observing the teacher’s gestures as well as the language used;

** noting the questioning – both teacher’s and pupils’…

==== … and some prompt questions that might help to guide observation ====

* What do you notice about the classroom – about layout, displays, resources?

* What do you notice about the teacher’s and students’ use of language in the opening stages of the lesson?

* What tells you that work has started – the nature and level of talk, the posture and physical attitudes of students, reading and writing activities?

* What do you notice about the students’ language in different parts of the lesson?

What can make the resources a little difficult to use is that they are so tightly framed, so heavily mediated. To a very large extent, the programmes are constructed within the conventions of television documentary, so what the classroom footage means is presented to us, the viewers, as a neat package. Each programme explores a clearly defined aspect of curriculum or pedagogy. The evidence provided by closely edited classroom footage is explained to us by expert voices, thereby confirming some meanings and excluding others. This tends to limit the interpretive space of the viewer – and to limit the possibilities of open exploration of the footage by student teachers.

(One possible activity is to ask student teachers to view a programme and to discuss the frame that has been used: what is the point of view of the specific programme? What different contributions do teachers, children and ‘talking heads’ of academics/’experts’ make to the programme?  

** What is noticeable about his use of language? (Consider the use of conditionals and language which suggests possibility rather than certainty…)

** ''There is a very specific issue here about the children’s understanding of the word ‘abstract’. The footage provides powerful evidence of children’s developing understanding of the word and of the concept, of the web of meanings and associations that cluster around the words as their activities enable them to participate in the making of abstract art. Making sense of a term like ‘abstract art’ is shown to be a long-term process: it cannot be achieved by the giving and receiving of a dictionary definition, but the children’s participation in the classroom activities is the route whereby they can begin to grasp something of what ‘abstract’ might mean.''

=== 3.2 Gifted and Talented – History – Causal Reasoning: WW1 ===

[http://www.teachers.tv/video/23938 This video clip] presents a mixed-ability Year 9 class grappling with the linguistic and conceptual demands of constructing an argument about the causes of the First World War. The activities and the issues involved in this lesson are familiar territory to English teachers, while the unfamiliar curricular context – the fact that this is a History lesson and not an English one – makes it easier, in some ways, to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the pedagogical interventions that are made in the lesson.  

=== 3.3 Changing Teachers - Finland Comes to England – Secondary ===

We see her difficulties with classroom management and her reflection on these difficulties (as she says, it is hard for her to command attention when she doesn’t know the girls’ names). The classroom footage thus demonstrates very clearly the centrality of relationships to the whole process of teaching.  

Equally fascinating is Maija’s reflection on her experiences - reflection that might serve as a model of that which we would encourage in our student teachers: in a lesson on respiration, she expects that what will enthuse the students is the practical activity of dissecting lungs, whereas what catches their attention is her first-hand account of her experience as a diver. (And here, too, all the questions that might be posed in relation to the primary art lesson in [http://www.ite.org.uk/ite_topics/identifying_digital_video_clips_of_good_pedagogic_practice/003.html#3_1 Section 3.1] would be equally relevant.)

=== 3.4 KS3/4 Drama – Engaging with a Difficult Text – Dr Faustus ===

* the significance of the Drama Studio as a pedagogic space (what difference would it make if this lesson were in a ‘normal’ classroom?);

* evidence of the teacher’s knowledge of the students;

* the teacher’s skill in organising and structuring activities;

* the teacher’s skill in questioning – and in listening to what students say;

* the space for the students to draw on and share their own funds of knowledge (Bedazzled, The Simpsons, etc.) as cultural resources that enable them to engage with Marlowe’s play;

[http://www.teachers.tv/video/5475 This 15-minute programme] provides an example of the CLPE’s (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) Power of Reading project in action. We see Catherine Gdula, a Year 2 teacher at a school in Lewisham, South London, working with her class in a range of literacy activities. Classroom footage is interspersed with the teacher’s reflections and with expert commentary from Olivia O’Sullivan, Assistant Director at CLPE.

The first – very obvious – point is that there is an insistence on the importance of enjoyment and on the connection between affective and motivational factors and understanding. So the emphasis is on the ''involvement'' of children in books and in stories, for intrinsic purposes (the pleasure of the text) as well as extrinsic purposes (raising standards).  

This point is made explicit in the voiceover, but it is made more eloquently in what we see – in the engagement of the children in books and in conversations about books. Enjoyment is here seen not as a soft alternative to the standards agenda but as an essential precondition for literacy and learning.

The reading of the text is thus embedded in many different kinds of semiotic work. Children’s classroom experience – their learning – thus becomes coherent; meanings and meaning-making extend over time and across activities.  

Vital to this approach is the choice of text: the book has to be a rich enough resource to invite (and reward) the children’s intellectual and emotional engagement with it.  

Children get to know the story well by retelling it – by making their own versions of the story that they have shared. In this activity, children become makers of multimodal texts, storytellers as well as listeners and readers.

Children’s talk about the images enables them to think about characters’ motivations and feelings, origins and perspectives. The shared text thus becomes a resource that encourages children to draw on all kinds of prior knowledge and experience, to make hypotheses and speculations as well as engaging them in empathetic and imaginative work.  

The teacher’s reading of the story aloud to the class is presented here as a vital pedagogic intervention. Olivia O’Sullivan describes this process as ‘essential for children to be drawn into a book, to feel enthusiastic about the story, and for all children, whether they can read the book or not, to actually hear the words on the page, read by a teacher who is giving a real tune to the story’. (This point – like much of the pedagogy that is represented in the video footage – is developed in more detail in Barrs and Cork, 2001.)

=== 4.6 A little at a time – and time to talk ===

Get them to be that person in the book and it becomes real, it becomes meaningful’ as Catherine Gdula says. What the footage demonstrates, very powerfully, is the developmental potential that is unlocked by imaginative play: drama is a means of entering into the world of the story.

The teacher uses the children’s ideas in such a way that the diary writing is genuinely collaborative – and simultaneously a product of their intellectual/imaginative work and a validation of it.  

Similarly, when the children have been working on their own diary entries, the teacher’s reading of the diaries to the class is a celebration of what has been achieved and a way of enhancing the learning that has taken place.

===== Sabrina Broadbent at Hornsey Girls’ SchoolYear 9 (mixed ability) =====

<nowiki>Just watching an experienced teacher really helps because you kind of think ‘What can I do with that?’ and apply it to me as a person, me as a teacher; and the tasks that she did or the way she moves around the room – it’s made me think – maybe I should be more vocal or sometimes step back and let them do it; and the pace [of Sabrina’s lesson] is fantastic … I guess it comes with experience </nowiki>

In [http://www.teachers.tv/video/2733 Macbeth in the Classroom 2], a group of newly-qualified English teachers watch [http://www.teachers.tv/video/132 Macbeth in the Classroom 1]. They identify and comment on the approaches to teaching Shakespeare that they have observed. The list of strategies emerges from the NQTs’ discussion – it is not something that should be presented as a tick-list. It is also important that there is space in this discussion for the new teachers to be critical of the practice they are observing – to say what they would do differently, or not do at all, and to be honest about the activities that would not work in their own classrooms.

=== 5.2 Quotes – speaking, knowing and owning the lines ===

* ‘Key quote’

* ‘I want you to know and own this quote’

* ‘Mutter it to yourself’

* Then jabbering without listening – repetition of your own quote

''What this does is to give students – all students – confidence in handling Shakespearean language. What it also does – simultaneously – is to open up an interpretive space, to suggest that '''performance''' matters and is part of the meaning of the play: the lines are not simply on the page, but are there to be spoken, performed and interpreted by actors.''

* ‘If you’re not sure you can check with your partner’ (thereby giving responsibility to students and allowing SB to intervene with individuals who need more support/guidance)

* ‘Is it the kind of thing the witches would have said?’

* Each of the 3 groups says their lines – then SB turns to the group in the middle and says ‘Shall we help you sort out your quotes?’

* Use of idiomatic translation ‘It kind of means ‘whatever’ … I think Macbeth is a very ‘whatever’ kind of bloke…’

* ‘What’s really good about this is that our confusion is really part of the play’

''In this activity, students are already drawing on – and hence developing collaboratively – their knowledge of the text, the play …''

* Casting – and actors who are reading through at the front.

* ‘Shakespeare is giving you a bit of time to wander onto the stage…’

* ‘Do you see, you got a stage direction from Banquo’s speech?’

''From the start, there is an '''emphasis on staging – not just text, but how the performance creates/communicates meaning''' – so the question ‘I don’t think the witches are visible to Macbeth and Banquo, are they?’ or ‘What do you think we should advise at this point?’ both directs attention of the students to staging issues and also positions SB and the students as co-constructors of the performance.''

'''''It is also worth emphasising that the translation into modern equivalents that occurs in the lesson focuses attention not on the words but on the ideas:''' a focus on translating the language emphasises what is difficult – and hence tends to solidify the barriers to understanding; translating the ideas into a modern context/contemporary frames of reference, on the other hand, enables students to make sense of the play.''

''(SB asks the class then to come up with an overarching explanation: she is self-critical of this – could just have said – ‘This is a play about uncertainty and confusion and good and evil.’)''

* ‘What we have been trying to dig for is meaning, but there is another place that the meaning sits in and that, strangely enough is the punctuation’

* Class divided into two groups – choral reading – change of readers at punctuation mark.  

* Then discussion of the meaning – arouse curiosity by encouraging speculation about psychology – close reading

* Stage production – choice of adaptation (Anthony Sher) to bring out the modernity

''There is also the point that the students have now been exposed to two different productions. Again, this foregrounds the issue of '''interpretation''' – and helps to ensure that students do not simply identify the play with a single realisation in performance.''

Some schools are now equipped with observation rooms, complete with built-in cameras and a range of other gadgetry. My very strong advice would be not to use them. The benefits of filming in usual classrooms – the places where teachers and their students are used to having their lessons – far outweigh the disadvantages, particularly when the objective is to provide a record of something that is as close as possible to normal practice. (School students will, of course, behave differently in the presence of a video camera – but it is surprising how little notice they take of it, particularly if it is mounted on a tripod in a corner of the classroom.)

We show very short clips – usually the beginnings and endings of the lessons – to our student teachers in one of the sessions before the start of their school placements. Here our focus is on '''lesson observation''' and the DV footage is used to develop in our student teachers the skills of focused observation. Before showing the footage, we ask the student teachers to read '''transcripts''' of the first few minutes of each lesson and talk about the transcript as evidence of what was happening in the lesson. Then we show the clips and engage students in discussion about what they have observed.  

BOURNE, Jill, & JEWITT, Carey (2003) Orchestrating debate: a multimodal analysis of classroom interaction. ''Reading literacy and language'', 64–72.