Standards frameworks as a lens to assess videos of teaching
Posted by Art Recesso on Thu, Feb 24, 2011 @ 04:15 PM
In the United States, the standards-based reform movement in science education has generated many national and state frameworks delineating expectations of classroom practices and student learning, for example the Benchmarks for Science Literacy (AAAS, 1993) and National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, 1996, 2000). Working from the metaphor of a lens, such frameworks can help to magnify a focal point for analysis while simultaneously suppressing the distractions of other events (Hill, Hannafin, & Recesso, 2007). Even a series of purposefully designed questions may serve as a lens for analysis; for example, a science teacher educator designs a series of questions to guide her student teachers’ analyses of practice. In the complex environment of a classroom, lenses facilitate the analysis of practice. Adding a continuum of discreet stages of development further enhances the utility of a lens to define growth and needs for support. A faculty supervisor and a preservice teacher individually or collectively may apply the NSTA Standards (1998), for example, as a lens to interpret the evidence linked to teaching and learning events. Through the lens they are able to focus clearly on a specific attribute of the preservice teacher’s practice (e.g., uses open ended questioning strategies in inquiry based practices). During the process of interpretation, they generate an explanation about how the evidence that they
have marshalled supports the claim that they made about a specific attribute of practice. In essence, the fine-grained attribute of practice is separated from the complex events of the classroom and then purposely deconstructed, making it manageable for one to more clearly construct solutions or alternatives to issues of teaching and/or learning.
Integrating the standards framework into a video analysis tool merges two powerful tools. The framework can now be placed along side the teaching events, as they happened, and without interruption we can rewind and playback while aligning practice with a level of performance on the scale. The evaluator (e.g., faculty, mentor, school leader) generates feedback using the common framework and the teacher (inservice or preservice) sees their practice and the assessment. Both can see through the lens progress being made towards the expectations defined in the framework.
