Videopaper and teacher education Student teachers create ...

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4. Findings and discussion 255 4.1. Creating a Videopaper to reflect on practice: the case of Kate 3 Kate, one of the three trainee teachers that were involved in the study, had short experience in teaching before entering the PGCE English programme. She was involved in the study as she was very interested in improving her practice. As she commented in her interview: ‘I thought the Videopaper was a great opportunity because I would be able to see what observers see when they are in my lesson. I think it can be difficult to have a sense of yourself and how you’re teaching when you’re at the front of the classroom, because you’re usually so busy worrying if everyone is listening – wondering if you’re talking too much. There’s a lot that goes on in a classroom that it’s not possible to see when you’re the one at the front giving instructions.’ Video being a permanent record, gives teachers the potential to isolate and capture important and puzzling moments that can occur and might slip their attention in the constantly moving place the classroom is (Galvis & Nemirovsky, 2003). Kate was able to step back and view her teaching through the angle of the observer. As she explains, by viewing the video you are able to observe minor things that you cannot focus on while teaching. She somehow moved from the position of the teacher who is immersed in teaching to the position of the observer. This is evidence of dialogical reflection as ‘it demonstrates a "stepping back" from the events/ actions leading to a different level of mulling about’ 4 . The PGCE tutor commented that the Videopaper was building on the reflection the student’s had already done during the course. ‘They have to step back and look what they’ve being doing quite often I think. That happens in schools as well. They are constantly being asked with feedback with their mentors, with one of the classroom teacher. So, what did you do there? Where do you think you could have done that better or whatever? I suppose the Videopaper was building on that reflection they’ve already done.’ 3 The name of the participant was changed in order to secure anonymity. 4 Hatton & Smith (1995: 48)
256 Beardsley et al. (2007) suggest that the creation of a Videopaper can be a valuable method for teachers to reflect, as it helps them to reconsider moments in their teaching that might otherwise escape investigations. According to Kate, the process of viewing her video turned out to be revealing, as it helped her to notice new ‘things’ regarding her teaching that she had not thought about before. ‘I had chosen things to focus on which had been picked up in my lesson observations though my focus became more specific after watching the film… (I had done some work on questioning, and whole class instruction generally) but watching the video highlighted the specific ‘problem’ within that, as well as showing up a few other things I had not focused on before.’ Having the video as a permanent record of the lesson, gave the opportunity to the students to watch the lesson over and over again before deciding which issues they wanted to focus on. It is very difficult even for the most experienced teacher to remember everything that happened in the lesson after it has taken place. This is an important issue raised in Kate’s sayings during individual interviewing: ‘I really liked the fact that we could watch the footage many times – I don’t think there is a substitute for having ‘hard evidence’ of the lesson – an unchanging record of how things went. Even when you reflect on a lesson after it has finished, you never remember it exactly how it was at the time.’ Apart from the important role of the video, it is important to comment that the combination of the text and the video gave the trainee teachers the potential to give a more realistic picture of their teaching and be more analytical than descriptive (Daniil & Olivero, 2008). Kate used the text to identify the issues in her practice which were highlighted in the video. Her writing was analytical, although at some points she tended to describe bits of the video before analysing them. She found video more important than the text, as it stimulated thinking about her practice and enhanced her reflection. However, she realised that by writing the text she managed to analyse the video more in depth. ‘I think the video was most important, the text was just a record of the reflections that were prompted by it. Though I suppose having to write about the video encouraged me to focus on the clips in more detail.’
Page 1 and 2: Περίληψη 246 Videopaper and
Page 3 and 4: 248 through video and analyse it th
Page 5 and 6: 250 The second model was developed
Page 7 and 8: 2.4.1. The process of creating a Vi
Page 9: 254 Figure 2. The three-step proces
Page 13 and 14: 4.2.2. Dialogical/process reflectio
Page 15 and 16: 5. CONCLUSIONS 260 As derived from
Page 17 and 18: 262 References Beardsley, L., Cogan

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