How can I support a productive conversation after viewing a clip?

Prior research has suggested that it is not enough for teachers to watch and reflect on classroom learning (Brophy, 2004), rather teacher educators must actively support teachers and teacher candidates to engage with the video.

Facilitation Framework for Supporting Conversations with Video

 Van Es et al. (2014) give four categories of facilitation moves that support productive use of video for mathematics teacher learning (see diagram below). The authors find that productive discussions occurred when each dimension was enacted in an integrated manner.
Additionally, specific suggestions for facilitating productive conversations around video include:

• Identify goals for the learning, select clips that align to those goals, and carefully craft questions to support the discussion (Borko et al., 2014).
• In order to redirect the conversation away from judgment or evaluative statements, the facilitator needs to provide teachers in the moment feedback about the kind of statements they are making (Cole, 2019).

Specific Example: Extending Research from K-12 to Teacher Ed

 Research on K-12 mathematics classrooms have identified practices to orchestrate productive discussions (Stein et al. 2008). Extending this research, Tekkumru-Kisa and Stein (2017) unpack how facilitators use the practices of monitoring, selecting, and connecting within the context of video-based professional development for science teachers. Descriptions of each practice are found below:

Facilitation Practice	Description (Tekkumru-Kisa & Stein, 2017)
Monitoring	The facilitator monitors the participants as they engage with the professional development task. A facilitator may clarify participant ideas through restating or revoicing moves.
Selecting	The facilitator selects participant ideas and video clips that move the conversation toward the intended learning goal of  the professional development.
Connecting	The facilitator connects participant ideas to the bigger ideas of the professional development.

The goal of the professional development studied by Tekkumru-Kisa and Stein was to increase science teachers’ capacity to use cognitively demanding tasks and to maintain high levels of student thinking throughout a lesson. During the discussion of the video clips, the facilitator made specific efforts to meet that goal. She selected participant responses that contributed to maintaining the group’s focus on student thinking and what the teacher in the video did in relation to it. She pressed participants to expand on their ideas so they related to cognitive demandt. Further, in a concerted effort to connect participant ideas to the goal, the facilitator also made use of a co-constructed chart to record participant ideas around factors that maintained high level demand during the lesson. 

 

References

Borko, H., Jacobs, J., Seago, N., & Mangram, C. (2014). Facilitating video-based professional development: Planning and orchestrating productive discussions. In Transforming mathematics instruction (pp. 259-281). Springer, Cham.

Brophy, J. E. (Ed.). (2004). Using video in teacher education. JAI Press Incorporated. Elsevier.

Coles, A. (2019). Facilitating the use of video with teachers of mathematics: Learning from staying with the detail. International Journal of STEM Education, 6(1), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-018-0155-y

Stein, M. K., Engle, R. A., Smith, M. S., & Hughes, E. K. (2008). Orchestrating productive mathematical discussions: Five practices for helping teachers move beyond show and tell. Mathematical thinking and learning, 10(4), 313-340. https://doi.org/10.1080/10986060802229675

Tekkumru-Kisa, M., & Stein, M. K. (2017). A framework for planning and facilitating video-based professional development. International Journal of STEM education, 4(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40594-017-0086-z

Van Es, E. A., Tunney, J., Goldsmith, L. T., & Seago, N. (2014). A framework for the facilitation of teachers’ analysis of video. Journal of teacher education, 65(4), 340-356. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487114534266