Session Information
10 SES 04 A, Teacher Inquiry and Engagement when Learning to Teach
Paper Session
Contribution
The aim of this study is to examine how the combination of a digital observation tool and a didactic tool, focusing on the ethical aspects of teaching, can stimulate student teachers´ reflections on their teaching during their internship. The research question is what characterizes student teachers´ reflections on teaching connected to their possibility to observe themselves and to the questions raised by the didactic tool. The question is important in order to understand how reflections can be developed through teacher education. According to Dewey (1933), reflections make teaching more responsible and thoughtful. Reflections can be different in many ways, quite superficial, more profound and about different contents. The content can be, for example subject, performance or ethics. Reflections can also be critical (Gun, 2011) and should then include questions like what and why in order to get a deeper understanding of teaching. Reflection is central to learning and developing in teacher education. Everybody involved are concerned and contributions from different countries are valuable.
The use of video in teacher education is well established (e.g. Sherin 2004) and its use allows the possibility of capturing, viewing and reviewing processes of teaching and learning. Video technology can be used to analyze teaching-learning moments from the perspective of both the teacher and learner (Richardson and Kile, 1999). One area of application in teacher education is where teachers or student teachers enable themselves to be filmed and then use the footage for analyzing their own teaching in private or in cooperation with colleagues. In this area of application, video technology is used as a trigger for reflection.
A number of studies have shown that video can enable student teachers to reflect more deeply and overtly on their practice (Sherin,2003, Lazarus and Olivero 2009, Smith and Krumsvik, 2007). At the same time, many researchers conclude that video technology is not effective in itself. Blomberg et al (2013) for example, conclude that “…. it is the details of how a video is integrated into instruction that seem to determine its effectiveness” (p. 94). In this study, an additional didactic tool was used in order to further encourage student teacher reflection and to focus on ethical aspects of teaching. The tool is based on common didactic questions but expands the understanding of the questions (Cronqvist, 2017). The question “what” can for example include aspects of values and attitudes that can be presented together with a specific content. When, for example you speak to children about healthy living, what values and attitudes can and do you want to add to this content?
As far as reflection is concerned, Schussler, Stooksberry and Bercaw (2010) describe how teacher students´ reflections showed more awareness of their teaching through questioning the how and why of their thinking and actions, through focus on both pupils and themselves and through the ability to adopt several perspectives. Research indicates suggestions about different levels of reflection. Sockett and LePage (2002) mention three levels of reflection: A) Narrative, descriptions of what happened and explanations of circumstances. B) Self-justifying, focusing on your own qualities, not being able to see your shortcomings C) Self-critical, focusing on improvement and change. The teacher is willing to try new things and moral issues of teaching are central. Another view describes the first level as reacting personally to your own experiences, the second level implies comparing two experiences and to suggest a general principle or theory. The third level implies concern for educational issues, ethical or moral matters (Surbeck, Han & Moyer, 1991). Van Manen (1997) too describes the third level as dealing with moral and ethics, which he calls critical reflection.
Method
The empirical material consists of video observation papers created during a course about educational aspects of pre-school in the second semester of teacher education. In this course, students do their internship for four weeks. As a preparation, the didactic tool is presented and used in a workshop. Students also read an article about reflection, which is discussed. A lecture about using video for observation is given. During their internship, students use the didactic tool in their planning and are filmed in a teaching situation by their supervisor. Back at campus, they receive information about how to select sequences from this film. They produce a text-embedded video by putting together sequences of the film with their own reflections. The total number of video reflections that will be available is at present unknown, but there are about 150 student teachers participating in the course. The analysis of the video observations can be carried out in several steps, inspired by phenomenological and hermeneutical processes (Dahlberg, Dahlberg & Nyström, 2008). The aim is to identify how reflections have been stimulated through video observation and the use of the didactic tool. The influence from these tools can then be compared to different levels of reflection from other research. However, in the analysis, the texts must be looked at first from a stand-alone perspective. It is not until meanings and patterns of these meanings (Dahlberg et al., 2008) have been searched for that comparisons with earlier research can be made. The analysis is a process of looking for the parts of reflections but also to constantly compare the parts to the whole (Dahlberg et al., 2008). The movement between the parts and the whole can be understood as the hermeneutical rule (Gadamer, 1981); a way of understanding different meanings of reflections. To identify and to understand different meanings of reflections, video embedded texts must be read over and over again, with an openness to new meanings, meanings that have not been expected, in an ongoing, reflective process (Dahlberg et al., 2008).
Expected Outcomes
Based on earlier development work using video observation techniques and the didactic tool, in courses oriented to teaching older children, we expect to see student teacher reflections which focus on performance and ability to communicate with and to reach children. Performance and communication are easier to reflect on when you have filmed sequences to look at. You do not have to rely on memory. Since the student teachers in this current study are placed in pre-school, reflections might cover more questions relating to outdoor education and aesthetic learning processes for example. In pre-school, a tradition of care is more explicit than in school and it will be interesting to see if this tradition has an effect on reflections on ethical and moral matters. When student teachers have taught older children, inclusion has been the most frequent ethical issue. According to research, moral and ethical issues are connected to critical reflections (van Manen, 1997) or a specific level (Surbeck, Han & Moyer, 1991). In earlier development work, questions about ethics from the didactic tool have been slightly and indirectly indicated but not so often clearly explicit, by using terms like values, ethics and so on.
References
Blomberg G, Renkl A, Gamoran Sherin M, Borko H and Seidel T (2013) Five research-based heuristics for using video in preservice teacher education. Journal for Educational Research Online 5(1): 90–114. Cronqvist, M. (2017). Didethics – a didactic model including professional ethics. Nordisk Tidskrift för Allmän Didaktik, 3(1), 68-85 Dahlberg, K., Dahlberg, H. & Nyström, M. (2008). Reflective life world research. 2. ed. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: a restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. Boston: Heath. Gadamer H-G. (1981) "Om förståelsens cirkel". I K. Marc-Wogau (red.), Filosofin genom tiderna, band 5, Stockholm Gun, B. (2011) Quality Self-Reflection through Reflection Training. ELT Journal, 65(2) 126-135 Lazarus, E. and Olivero, F. (2009) Videopapers as a tool for reflection on practice in initial teacher education, Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 18 (3), 255-267. Richardson, V., & Kile, R. (1999). Learning from videocases. In M. A. Lunderberg, B. B. Levin & H. L. Harrington (Eds.), Who learns what from cases and how?: The research base for teaching and learning with cases (pp. 121-136). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 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. Sherin, M. G. (2004). New perspectives on the role of video in teacher education. In J. Brophy (Ed.), Using video in teacher education (pp. 1–28). Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier 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. & LePage, P. (2002). The missing language of the classroom. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18, 159-171 Surbeck, E., Park Han, E., Moyer, J. (1991). Assessing Reflective Responses in Journals. Educational Leadership. 48(6), 25-27. Van Manen, M. (1997). Researching lived experience: human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. (2. ed.) Ontario: Althouse press.
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