The poster aims at introducing the CPV Video Study projects that are being carried out by the Educational Research Centre, Faculty of Education, Masaryk University, Czech Republic. The project aims to describe and analyse the current state of teaching Physics, Geography, English and Physical Education at lower-secondary schools in the Czech Republic. It is designed as explorative research of realised curriculum. There are two dimensions of aspects that will be in the focus of analyses. One hand there are, general aspects of every lesson in all subjects can be observed that concern the organisation of teaching, temporal development and verbal realisation. On the other hand, a variety of subject specific aspects can be observed in every lesson (e.g. experimentig in Physics, using authentic materials in English). This list of general or subject specific aspects that will be observed in the recorded lessons is by no means complete or comprehensive. Rather, the nature of the collected data allows for welcoming various additional ideas for analyses and in the future. As a theoretical base for studying teaching practices the concept of “teaching as providing opportunities to learn” was introduced (Seidel & Prenzel 2006). Opportunities to learn enable pupils to become engaged in the subject matter. Careful analysis of “opportunities to learn” can show us the potential of the lesson for pupils’ learning process. The video study methodology was successfully employed for studying opportunities to learn not only on an international scale in the TIMSS 1995 (Stigler et al. 1999), TIMSS 1999 (Roth et al. 2006), LPS Video Study (Clarke 2006) research projects but also by other research teams in Europe (IPN, DIPF) (Seidel et al., 2005, Klieme et al., 2006). Following these projects, the CPV team launched four video study projects between 2004 and 2007: CPV Video Study of Physics, CPV Video Study of Geography, CPV Video Study of Physical Education and CPV Video Study of English. The key element of the methodology is the fact that lesson observation and coding are not carried out in the classroom. Rather, lessons are videotaped and all observation and analysis are carried out subsequently. A randomised sample of lower-secondary lessons has been acquired using standardised 2-camera methodology (Janík, Miková 2006). The sample consists of the total of 249 recorded lessons (62 lessons of Physics, 50 lessons of Geography, 79 lessons of English and 58 lessons of Physical Education). The preliminary findings show that physics teaching is controlled by the teacher and little space is allowed for individual and group activities. The teacher mainly communicates with the students by means of monologue, dictation or dialogue. When phases of teaching are concerned, practising and application are typically employed, while motivation or metacognition based phases appear rather rarely. Modern didactic media are also employed very rarely. Teachers mainly use the blackboard and they do so during all phases of the lesson. Textbooks were used in less then 50 per cent of lessons that were analysed. They were approached as the source of information and tasks that were read aloud or copied. The findings indicate that Geography lessons are to a great extent controlled by the teacher while limited time is allowed for students‘ group activities. Individual Work, Class Discussion and Teacher’s Talk are the most frequent modes of organisation, while Developing New Content and Testing are the most frequent phases of instruction. Considerable amount of time is dedicated to working with previously introduced content (Revision, Practicing, Summarising), while little time is allowed for those phases which involve applying content or metacognitive reflection of the learning process.

The video study methodology was successfully employed for studying opportunities to learn not only on an international scale in the TIMSS 1995 (Stigler et al. 1999), TIMSS 1999 (Roth et al. 2006), LPS Video Study (Clarke 2006) research projects but also by other research teams in Europe (IPN, DIPF) (Seidel et al., 2005, Klieme et al., 2006). Following these projects, the CPV team launched four video study projects between 2004 and 2007: CPV Video Study of Physics, CPV Video Study of Geography, CPV Video Study of Physical Education and CPV Video Study of English. The key element of the methodology is the fact that lesson observation and coding are not carried out in the classroom. Rather, lessons are videotaped and all observation and analysis are carried out subsequently. A randomised sample of lower-secondary lessons has been acquired using standardised 2-camera methodology (Janík, Miková 2006). The sample consists of the total of 249 recorded lessons (62 lessons of Physics, 50 lessons of Geography, 79 lessons of English and 58 lessons of Physical Education).

There are two dimensions of aspects that will be in the focus of analyses. We claim that on the one hand, general aspects of every lesson in all subjects can be observed that concern the organisation of teaching, temporal development and verbal realisation. On the other hand, a variety of subject specific aspects can be observed in every lesson (for example experimenting in Physics, using authentic materials in English, etc.). The findings show that physics teaching is controlled by the teacher and little space is allowed for individual and group activities. The teacher mainly communicates with the students by means of monologue, dictation or dialogue. When phases of teaching are concerned, practising and application are typically employed, while motivation or metacognition based phases appear rather rarely. Modern didactic media are also employed very rarely. Teachers mainly use the blackboard and they do so during all phases of the lesson. Textbooks were used in less then 50 per cent of lessons that were analysed. They were approached as the source of information and tasks that were read aloud or copied. The findings indicate that Geography lessons are to a great extent controlled by the teacher while limited time is allowed for students‘ group activities. Individual Work, Class Discussion and Teacher’s Talk are the most frequent modes of organisation, while Developing New Content and Testing are the most frequent phases of instruction. Considerable amount of time is dedicated to working with previously introduced content (Revision, Practicing, Summarising), while little time is allowed for those phases which involve applying content or metacognitive reflection of the learning process. The analysis of opportunities to talk shows that on average, teacher‘s talking time amounts to six times the time of student talk; however, there are significant differences between individual teachers. The analyses of CPV Video Study of English and CPV Video Study of Physical Education are being carried out, findings will be reported in the future.