Deepen Student Teachers' Self-Reflection

VIDEO TESTIMONIAL

Jill Wood
Instructor and TA Coordinator
Kansas State University

David Allen
Director of Field Experiences and Associate Professor in Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Kansas State University

About

Jill Wood is an Instructor in the College of Education at Kansas State University. She teaches methods courses at both the elementary and secondary level and oversees the supervision of undergraduate and graduate student interns placed locally as well as nationally. Mrs. Wood is currently investigating and developing best practices for technology-mediated supervision which support the College’s undergraduate practicum courses as well as the Master of Arts in Teaching program.

Dr. David S. Allen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Kansas State University. As a mathematics educator, he also serves as the Director of the STEM Center. His research with video originated in professional development models for in-service teachers of elementary mathematics and has evolved into working with digitally-mediated supervision models for pre-service teachers. His current research focuses on cloud-based management and storage of large video-based feedback systems and the interplay of the supervision triad as a factor of teacher development.

Transcript

How do you use video to support teacher preparation?

David: One of the things that we've seen over the last few years as we've done this is that our  students are at reflecting deeper levels on the video rather than their remembered reality. They actually can reflect and mesh that with what they're actually seeing happening in the classroom. So I think there are the reflections are deeper and more accurate. We have less inconsistencies between a cooperating teacher reported evaluation, a lesson or a reflection on the lesson, and a student's reflection of the lesson.

Jill: Because video doesn't lie. It is out there and that helps our students to see things that they missed.

David:  But at the same time, our students come into this as novice teachers and their first semester... The second semester of their sophomore year they're doing video centered around microteaches where they have ownership over that video. They can keep that video. And each semester they're recording video so that by the time their student teaching they've got four semesters of video now and you could go back to their first video and you see where they were at that point. And they see the growth model or the growth that they've experienced over four semesters and they say "Wow." And then they can share that in their teacher work sample their portfolios: little snippets of video and say, "Hey you compare where I was and in my ability to ask students questions then and look at me now look in this growth that I've experienced." So yeah. So they're pretty novice when they first come in. But by the time they're done, they've had the experience.

Jill: You always need to be improving. And you know I've been teaching for over 20 years. And you do get into a groove you know what works with students. But you should always be open to something that's new and going to be potentially better and more effective. I mean there are some basics that are always going to work. And the content isn't necessarily going to change. But but there's your students are always changing the engagement today is so much different in this digital world than it was 20 years ago. There's so many more things that that distract our students. And so we're always which should always be looking for something better and new that's going to just address all the issues that our students come to school with.

David: You know as Tyack and Cuban say when they when they looked at education reform throughout the 20th century, you keep the best of the old and you create the new and then you move forward. And we as educators and we as an educational profession need to take pride in that. We continue to evolve our practice. Video is just another element of that evolution process.