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Sara Lacy

Empowering Teachers Through VideoReView was a NSF funded research and development project to enhance elementary science teachers’ attention to students’ science thinking. The VideoReView program involved teams of teachers in school-based, video-supported professional learning, and a technology to capture and study classroom videos. In the VideoReView program, teachers participated in a four-part sequence: PLAN, ENACT, STUDY, and MEET. First, teachers planned science discussions to lead with their students. Then, they enacted the discussions in their classrooms and used a classroom-friendly technology—a camera and software tool—to capture the discussions. Next, teachers used the software tool to study and analyze videos of their science discussions, and prepared video cases for deeper reflection. Finally, they met with colleagues in teacher-led Video Clubs to discuss the cases, and to plan next steps in instruction.

The VideoReView research investigated how school-based, video-supported professional learning helped teachers to notice students’ science thinking. The research was based on a theory of change in which teachers videotape science discussions, and then study the video on their own (with a program coach) and with colleagues, with the explicit intent of understanding their students’ ideas and reasoning. This video reflection was hypothesized to increase teachers’ reflection on students’ learning, and teachers were likely to develop new ways of attending, interpreting and deciding how to respond to students’ thinking. Additionally, increased teacher reflection is hypothesized to improve classroom interactions. Changes in teachers’ facilitation and students’ participation in science discussions are expected. Improved teacher reflection and classroom interactions, ultimately, were hypothesized to increase students’ scientific conceptual understandings.

The findings revealed that with supports targeted explicitly at noticing students’ ideas and reasoning about the subject matter, teachers can develop sophisticated skills in attending to and making sense of students’ thinking. Additionally, teachers developed increased inclinations to focus on specific student ideas, thus shifting away from perceiving their students’ understandings as undifferentiated events to identifying specific ideas that lend themselves to further scrutiny. Sharpening their focus on students’ thinking was also accompanied by a greater consideration of science pedagogy as it related to students’ thinking (during Video Club meetings), and a shift away from thinking about generic pedagogical matters. Finally, teachers adopted an interpretive stance more frequently as they engaged in sense-making of students’ ideas (during Video Study meetings with a program coach).

Bopardikar, A., Carlson, J., Kimber, E., Loper, S., Pareja Roblin, N., & Rostovtseva, T. (2018). Educational Designer, 3(10). Bopardikar, A., & Doubler, S. J. (2018). In proceedings of the 13th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (pp.1005-1008), London, UK, June 25-June 27. Castle, C.E. (2018). Measuring multidimensional science learning: Item design, scoring, and psychometric considerations (). Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA.