The Teaching Channel is hosting two day workshop/colloquium at Northwestern University focused on the use of video and on line learning in support of the College and CAREER Readiness Standards. The three research questions are: 1) How can these tools increase discussion, inquiry and reporting of teacher progress on the standards through data sharing and writing? (2) What research tools can be deployed to determine the efficacy of these tools and their potential for scale? and (3) How can video and on line professional development tools best support teachers in a time of increasing accountability and change?
The outcomes of the workshop include research briefs and a summary paper. These will be posted on the Teaching Channel resource cite.
With the widespread adoption of the CCSS and the NGSS, school systems are under more pressure than ever to provide teachers with the kinds of high-quality professional learning called for by the CPE and the NCCTQ. The report from the National Staff Development Council ("A Status Report on Professional Development in the US and Abroad") notes that the United States is far behind in providing public school teachers with opportunities to participate in extended learning opportunities and productive collaborative communities beyond face-to-face professional development meetings (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Adree, Richardson, Orphanos, 2009). Simultaneously, the use of the Internet, social media, online communities of practice, and multimodal, digital media has opened doors to collaborative learning never before possible (National Education Technology Plan 2010). In October of 2013, funded by the National Science Foundation, Teaching Channel, in collaboration with Drs. Elham Kazemi and Jessica Thompson of the University of Washington College of Education and Dr. Miriam Sherin of Northwestern University, convened a small conference at Northwestern University that gathered researchers and practitioners from across the nation in dialogue about teachers’ digital learning practices. Participants included, among others, Dr. Hilda Borko of Stanford University, Dr. Frederick Erickson of UCLA, and Dr. Jeff Rozelle of the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation. We asked participants to bring to the conference their own research and research questions in the form of a position paper on the broader impact video learning has for teachers. The questions we set out to answer were: What does the research tell us about video as a tool to promote teacher learning? To what extent can video-based professional learning help teachers meet the new demands of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)? How do we best measure the learning that results from this new form of professional growth? We also aimed, by answering these questions, to challenge Tch’s organizational theory of learning. This theory posits that to improve instruction, teachers need to see new practices in action, in real classrooms, and think deeply about these practices before translating or adapting them for use in their own work. They also need multiple opportunities to practice new skills in ways that produce evidence of their progress, to reflect on the strategy attempted and to receive feedback on their efforts. Teaching Channel's collaborative platform is designed in accordance with these principles. The research compiled in this conference on video-based professional learning affirms the theory that informs our work at Teaching Channel (and is described in greater detail in our accompanying white paper). The research suggests that teacher professional learning must be engaging, collaborative, focused on student learning, and grounded in everyday problems of practice. It must model new techniques, provide support for implementation, and afford teachers plenty of feedback. Teaching Channel's video-based web platform provides participants with a chance to watch, analyze, and discuss new practices before adapting them for use in their own classrooms. In addition, mindful of cautions from Erickson, Thompson, Williams, and others, Teaching Channel is developing tools that help teachers practice analyzing video effectively. These tools prompt users to observe teaching strategies closely, interpret student thinking effectively, and seek to understand the impact of classroom events on student learning. This has broader impact on the scope of professional learning as it pushes teachers out of a scenario where they merely watch a demonstration, but, instead, interact with the strategy. Finally, by examining the context of key contributions—which indicate when teachers seem to be learning—Teaching Channel hopes to draw inferences concerning why learning has occurred. We plan to look at the way study groups evolve over time: examining interactions within the groups, the extent to which norms of participation are developed and evolve, the factors in play when key ideas are taken up and shared among group members, and the quality of the conversations. In the position paper Rozelle et. al. (2013) submitted for this conference, they comment that classroom video doesn’t only make it possible for us to study the complexity of teaching, but to appreciate it. The distinction is important. Teachers, administrators, parents, and policymakers must recognize and understand this complexity if we are to move professional learning to the top of our national agenda. In addition, widespread recognition of the real challenges of teaching might go a long way toward creating a culture in which our school systems ceased to approach professional learning as a remedy for some unfortunate deficit and treated it instead as an ongoing, vital, and meaningful part of any serious educator’s professional life. By providing educators with pictures of practice, video enhances dialogue about learning. It enables educators to come to a common understanding of tools and frameworks, and to develop shared definitions for the words they use to describe teaching (Thompson, 2013).
