What were you thinking?! Designing video cases to provide novices access to experienced elementary teachers’ reasoned decision-making during science teaching Abstract: Video cases have become used extensively in teacher education as one approach for illustrating best practices to novice teachers. Those video cases that include access to experienced teachers’ decision making during teaching have proven to be particularly powerful because they reveal the complex and reasoned decision making that experienced teachers engage in during instruction – in essence making the transparent visible. In this brief paper session, the rationale for and design of a video case system for teaching elementary school science will be described. Examples of how cases have been integrated into a science methods course will be provided. Finally, a summary of findings from research on the impact of using cases on the development of preservice teachers’ understanding of teaching science will be presented. Brief Paper: Issues associated with teaching science effectively, particularly at the elementary level, are well documented (Appleton, 2005; Davis, Petish & Smithey, 2006). Learning to teach science is particularly challenging for novices given that there are relatively few models of effective science teaching available to serve as “images of the possible” (Hammerness, Darling-Hammond, Bransford, Berliner, Cochrane-Smith, McDonald & Zeichner, 2005). When preservice teachers are able to observe experienced teachers who engage in reform oriented teaching practices there are still issues. Widely studied is that novices tend to focus on surface level features of classrooms (Borko, Livingston, McCaleb & Mauro, 1988; Calderhead, 1989; Dollas, 1996; Feiman-Nemser & Buchmann, 1987; Gore and Zeichner, 1991; Vonk, 1996; Weinstein, 1990), missing the more complex and nuanced interactions among teachers and students. This tendency is further complicated by the fact that on the surface, effective science teaching looks easy and the teacher’s role in supporting meaningful learning may appear passive. Preservice teachers often describe the role of teacher as facilitator with very limited understanding of what that actually means. Video cases have become used extensively in teacher education as one approach for illustrating best practices to novice teachers (Barnett, 2006; Harris, Pinnegar, & Teemant, 2005; Teale, Leu, & Labboo, 2002; Trier, 2003). Those video cases that include access to experienced teachers’ decision making during teaching have proven to be particularly powerful because they reveal the complex and reasoned decision making that experienced teachers engage in during instruction (Author, 2007; Lampert & Ball, 1998) – in essence making the transparent visible. A central aspect of the TESSA: Teaching Elementary School Science as Inquiry project has involved creating a collection of video cases of classroom science teaching that reflect reform-oriented discourse and practices (Author 2007, 2005). These cases are integrated into a science methods course. Engaging education majors in analyzing video cases of experienced teachers is aimed at providing them with access to images of
effective classroom science teaching and to experts’ reasoned decision-making during practice, which as noted previously is often transparent to novices. Through this type of analysis, we also hope to foster a commitment to examining classroom practice as a central activity of professional educators. The research component of the TESSA project involves studying preservice teachers’ responses to cases over time in an attempt to monitor the development of their understandings about teaching science. In this brief paper session, the rationale for and design of the TESSA video case system will be described. Examples of how TESSA cases have been integrated into an elementary science methods course will be provided. Finally, a summary of findings from research on the impact of using cases on the development of preservice teachers’ understanding of teaching science will be presented. Emphasis will be placed on findings associated with how cases mediate the uptake of particular ideas about teaching science and the influence of access to experienced teachers’ decision making. Participants will be encouraged to engage in discussion about the benefits and limitations of using video cases in teacher education. TESSA Case Design: In the TESSA environment, a case does not refer to a video, but rather a complete set of instructional materials, including one or more videos of classroom teaching, reflection questions (also known as prompts), one or more teacher reflection videos, access to selected peer responses, and access to related teaching resources (e.g., lesson plans, links to relevant URL’s). The design elements around which TESSA cases are constructed include the following: 1. Contextualized Teaching Episodes – In recent years, content and methods courses have attempted to include opportunities for preservice teachers to experience learning science in ways that reflect various aspects of reform-oriented pedagogy. While these science learning experiences are powerful in that preservice teachers are engaged in ways that are often very different from how they learned science in schools, the connection to children and classrooms is still absent. The purpose of having contextualized teaching episodes drive the TESSA online environment is to provide preservice teachers with a shared experience with classroom practices that emphasize giving priority to evidence and explanation in science teaching to serve as the foci of discussion and reflection. 2. Scaffolded Reflection – The literature suggests that novice teachers’ reflections are often superficial because they experience difficulty focusing on the substantive aspects of teaching and learning in complex classroom environments. Reflection questions associated with each case are intended to assist preservice teachers in attending to fundamental aspects of teaching science as argument.
3. Monitoring Learning – TESSA users have the opportunity to make modifications to their responses to the reflection questions over time, as new information comes to light. For example, Modification 1 is not available until the preservice teacher views the Teacher Reflection Video(s). Various iterations of each user’s responses are saved and available for review when drafting modifications. In this way, preservice teachers can monitor changes in their own thinking across the development of a case. 4. Access to More Experienced Others – The development of the TESSA environment is heavily influenced by the notion of communities of practice. Each teaching video is connected with a teacher reflection video that highlights the classroom teacher discussing aspects of her lesson that are related to giving priority to evidence and explanation in science teaching. In this way, novices have access to more expert thinking and decision-making – an aspect of learning to teach that is typically transparent and unavailable for consideration. Another way in which preservice teachers have access to other members of the teaching community is by viewing selected peer responses. Instructors identify and make public particular responses based on their potential to promote lively discussion and advance the thinking of the group. Unlike many multimedia case resources, TESSA cases are designed to be flexible in ways that allow instructors to intentionally intervene at various points in preservice teachers’ development with tailored support for learning to teach science as argument. Cases can be constructed using the following: • Individual lesson or an episode from that lesson • Multiple lessons that vary by content and/or grade level • Multiple lessons from a single unit of instruction Moreover, cases can be constructed to reflect the following emphases, which reflect differing instructional purposes: • Demonstrate a particular “best practice” associated with teaching science as argument; • Highlight a “critical incident” (issues commonly associated with teaching science as argument); • Provide illustrations of classroom practices that require the user to inductively generate fundamental “themes” associated with teaching science as argument. Instructors must approach the Case Constructor tool with a particular pedagogical purpose in mind. They can either select from a library of existing cases, modify an existing case to suit their needs, or construct a new case. To build a new case, the instructor uses the Case Constructor tool to guide the process described below: • Search the video library for one or more examples aligned with instructional goals;
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Select prompts from the collection that support the focus of reflection for the case, and/or develop unique prompts for the case; Select reflection video(s) from the library that are related to the teaching videos in the database; and Select additional teaching resources that are related to the purpose of the case.
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