The combination of a didactic model, Didethics, and videopapers to visualize ethics in teaching
Author(s):
Marita Cronqvist (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
10. Teacher Education Research
Format:
Paper

Session Information

10 SES 02 A, Professional Knowledge & Teacher Identity: Ways of knowing

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-22
15:15-16:45
Room:
K5.18
Chair:
Itxaso Tellado

Contribution

A study of professional ethics in teacher education indicated that student teachers in their didactic plans mostly did not attend to ethics (Cronqvist, 2015) and therefore, a new didactic model could be needed. A didactic model called Didethics was created theoretically in order to visualize ethical aspects of teaching. Since ethics is embedded in all teaching, it is crucial to pay attention to ethics in planning, but also in implementation and follow-up, which the model does. The theoretical model Didethics was tried in practice in combination with videopapers, a multimodal text covering selected recorded video sequences with associated reflective texts. During student teachers´ school-based education they were filming some sequence when they were acting and then chose different clips and reflected on them in a paper. As a follow-up on campus, student teachers showed their clips and told about their reflections. As part of the work, student teachers were asked to use the clips to reflect on didactic questions from the model and the function of the model as a tool. The aim of this study is to try how the theoretically created didactic model, Didethics, functions in practice to visualize ethics. Student teachers´ videopapers are analyzed in order to find answers to the following questions:

  • How do student teachers use the model?
  • How does the model affect the expressions of ethics, implicit and explicit?
  • How do student teachers experience the didactic model, Didethics, in the education of children?
  • How do student teachers experience the didactic model, Didethics, in their own learning?

Previous research on teacher education and students´ learning, relevant to the need to make ethics in teaching visible, is about the importance of students´ dispositions and earlier experiences in teacher education (Schussler & Knarr, 2013; Johnson, 2008; Sockett, 2009; Dottin, 2009).There seems to be a lack of attention to how dispositions and previous understandings influence education and the shaping of professional role. Researchers demand a teacher education that systematically attends to students´self-consciousness about what values they express and their judgment in context (Schussler, Stooksberry & Bercaw, 2010). Values verbalized by students are not always aligned to how they act in context (Johnson, 2008). They often enact values unaware of how children perceive their actions and therefore, self-awareness need to be supported (Schussler & Knarr, 2013).

Lazarus & Olivero (2009) state that “videopapers are multimedia documents that integrate and synchronise video, images and text in one non-linear, cohesive document” (p 256). The combination of words and acting, seeing and verbalizing can be a useful tool in teacher education in order to visualize and make explicit tacit knowledge (Smith & Krumsvik, 2007). Ethics of teaching is often mentioned as tacit knowledge, both difficult to notice in actions and to verbalize. Therefore, the combination of the didactic model and videopaper is interesting to try.  Previous research in the area of teacher education has shown that videopapers can lead to increased reflection among the involved participants (Almås & Krumsvik, 2008; Smith & Krumsvik, 2007). They can also help bridging theory and practice (Lazarus & Olivero, 2009). In this study, videopaper is used as empirical data to examine how the didactic model, Didethics functions in order to visualize ethics. The ability of videopapers to represent practice is highly interesting.

The combination of videopapers and the didactic model, Didethics, to visualize ethics in teaching, to find different strategies to support reflection and to bridge the gap between theory and practice makes the study most relevant to development of teacher education internationally.

Method

The study was implemented in a course in Swedish with focus on didactics for teachers working in grades 7-9 (pupils from 13 to 16 years old). This course is held in the second semester of teacher education but three of the students were in their sixth semester, studying together with students from the second semester out of economical reasons. Altogether, nineteen student teachers were participating. In preparation for the assignment, a combined lecture and workshop about the model was given. In the workshop, students made concrete planning of their teaching, using the model. Problems that occurred were that the students had not met their supervisors yet and therefore did not know if they were able to use the planning and no one of the supervisors participated in their own lecture about the model and therefore were not able to support the students in using the model. It is unclear how this affected student teachers´ abilities to use the model. When students came back from school-based education, they got technical help to make clips from their recordings. Out of these clips, they wrote reflections on their choices of teaching methods, content, judgment and meanings of professional ethics. The analysis was made phenomenologically with the aim to understand the didactic model´s ability to visualize ethics in teaching as a phenomenon. At first, videopapers were read carefully several times to get a grasp on the whole. Thereafter, meaning units out of research questions were marked for each paper (Dahlberg, Dahlberg & Nyström, 2008). The analysis was thereby moving from the whole to the part and then back to the whole again. Out of this movement in the analysis and the meaning units, a division was made, based on whether the model was mentioned, reflected on, if ethics or professional ethics were mentioned, if meanings of professional ethics could be identified more or less distinctly as they are formulated in the model and if meanings of professional ethics were mentioned even if connections to the model were missing. Papers without any connections to the model, ethics or meanings of professional ethics at all, were separated. Words in the markings of meaning units are “model”, “method” and “reflection” and these meaning units form patterns (clusters) in the material (Dahlberg et al., 2008).

Expected Outcomes

The model is used but visualize ethics in different ways The model is sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit through mentioning questions or professional ethical meanings. This is interesting since the aim of the study is to visualize ethics but what does it mean to visualize ethics? Must ethics be explicit or is it enough that something “breathes” ethics, that it is implicit? The methods are prominent The result does not only indicate what student teachers want to achieve in terms of professional ethical meanings but in several cases the meanings are also connected to concrete methods and how students in different ways have acted in the situation. It is this cooperation between content, ethics and methods that the model endeavors. The methods can be named but in most cases the action is described with common words. The meanings are clear Methods are needed in implementation and they are concrete tools that make a difference in acting when meeting children. However, it is not the methods themselves that make the teaching ethical but rather how the pedagogue manages to act based on professional ethical meanings. In this study, a limited number of meanings are mentioned. The meaning, formulated with some different variations, most frequently mentioned, is about inclusion of each child. The questions of the model can be followed Only in the group of papers where meanings are clear, the questions of the model emerge. In other groups there have only been comments about knowledge requirements. In groups where meanings, ethics and model are prominent, the questions are presented. However, terms like values and norms are quite few.

References

Almås, A. G. & Krumsvik, R. (2008). Teaching in Technology-Rich Classrooms: is there a gap between teachers´ intentions and ICT practices? Research in Comparative and International Education, 3(2),103-121 Cronqvist, M. (2015). Yrkesetik i lärarutbildning - en balanskonst. Diss. Göteborg : Göteborgs universitet, 2015. Göteborg. Tillgänglig på Internet: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/38771 Dahlberg, K., Dahlberg, H. & Nyström, M. (2008). Reflective life world research. 2. ed. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Dottin, E. S. (2009). Professional judgment and dispositions in teacher education, Teaching and teacher education 25(1), 83-88. Johnson, L. E. (2008). Teacher candidate disposition: moral judgement, or regurgitation? Journal of moral education 37(4), 429-444. Lazarus E. & Olivero F. (2009). Videopapers as a tool for reflection on practice in initial teacher education, Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 18(3), 255-267 Schussler, D.L., Stooksberry, L. M. & Bercaw, L. A. (2010). Understanding Teacher Candidate Dispositions: Reflecting to Build Self-Awareness. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(4), 350-363. Schussler, D., & Knarr, L. (2013). Building awareness of dispositions: enhancing moral sensibilities in teaching, Journal of Moral Education, 42(1), 71-87. Smith, K. & Krumsvik, R. (2007). Video Papers – a Means for Documenting Practioners´ Reflections on Practical Experiences: the story of two teacher educators, Research in Comparative and International Education, 2(4), 272-282 Sockett, H. (2009). Dispositions as Virtues: The Complexity of the Construct, Journal of Teacher Education, 60(3), 291-303.

Author Information

Marita Cronqvist (presenting / submitting)
University of Borås
Borås

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