Results of an Experiment Evaluating the Use of Video Cases to Help Pre-Service Teachers Become Better Teachers of Literacy

In this paper, we describe a videoand case-based software designed to help pre-service teachers become skilled teachers of literacy, and how this software was used in one pre-service education course. We present the results of one evaluation study that seeks to understand the extent to which video-case experiences helped pre-service teachers to acquire knowledge, analyze classroom situations, and develop these skills within the context of actual classrooms. We introduce methodology that has participants talk about literacy practices they see in target video clips as a means of assessing their knowledge and analytic skills. Using case studies of pre-service teachers who used the video-case software, and those who did not, we show that our video rich, case-based approach shows promise for the professional development of pre-service literacy teachers. Case-based approaches have been used in the fields of business, medicine, law, and education to bridge the gap between theory and practice throughout the last century (Shulman 1986; Williams 1992). There have been many advantages suggested for the case-method for teacher education, including increased opportunities to critically think and reflect about teaching (Merseth 1999), produce reasoning like actual teachers (Lampert & Ball 1998), and present a broader range of knowledge that teachers need to practice their craft (Shulman 1986). Traditionally, cases have been text narratives about hypothetical and real situations that allow pre -service teachers to reflect upon the pedagogy of teaching. More recently, video has been explored as a means for enhancing the effectiveness of case-based approaches because video seems to offer a more realistic and authentic context for exploring teaching practices (Brophy 2004; Lundeberg, Levin & Harrington 1999). In short, seeing a video classroom is more like “being there” than reading a written account of a classroom or some text book description of general principles (Koehler 2002; Lampert & Ball 1998). Furthermore, researchers have pointed to the potential of video to be a more motivating format that may facilitate remembering (CGTV 1990; Petrosino & Koehler in press). Over the past few years, a small group of faculty at Michigan State University have collaborated in the design of the Interactive Video Analysis Neighborhood (IVAN), a piece of software developed by Charles Ruggiero. IVAN was designed as a general-purpose set of tools to provide support to faculty’s developing interest in conducting videoand case-based research and classroom usage. Within this context, we have worked to design, implement and study a case-based approach to pre-service teachers’ education in literacy that uses video “anchors” (CGTV 1990; Petrosino & Koehler in press) to provide the context for students’ development of theoretical knowledge, analytical skills and reflective practices. A screen shot of the software that was used throughout the semester for one of the literacy methods courses for this study is shown in Figure 1. In the upper panel, the library displays the list of videos to be used in the case analysis. Students are able to select clips, browse forward and back, and to become familiar with all the materials in the case. Each clip has an associated text with background information regarding the literacy practices seen in the video in the form of expert commentary. Students can drag and drop portions of the clip onto the Timeline (the lower part of the screen with the video) to make their edited movie from the larger library segments. Students can use the text -box (labeled “Work Area”) at the bottom of the screen to write text – including any analyses that the course instructor might ask for. Any work the student does may be easily exported as html files for the web, so that instructors (and fellow students) may evaluate their work. Figure 1: A screen shot of an IVAN case study. As part of the teacher education program at Michigan State University, seniors are required to take two methods courses – the first course, TE 401, focuses on literacy and mathematics and the second, TE 402, focuses on science and social studies. During these two courses, students are given limited opportunity to visit and observe field placement classrooms a couple of hours a week. Prior to this point in the program, teacher education students have even less opportunity to visit actual classrooms. The focus of the literacy portion of the TE 401 course is to introduce students to teaching and learning in English language arts (reading, writing, speaking, listening, viewing, and literature). Traditionally, a textbook is used to introduce many of the core concepts to students, and teacher education faculty have individually been creative in devising curriculum that connects the students with course content and their field placements. It is within this context that we collaborated with the 5th author to devise activities that would utilize IVAN video cases to bridge the gap between the conceptual knowledge introduced by the textbook, and the practical knowledge of actual classrooms. As part of a wider study and evaluation of our approach, we report the results from one analysis that targeted the development of the analytic skills of pre-service teachers using the IVAN software and our case-based approach. In this study, we had students view three video clips at differing times throughout the semester to see what they noticed about literacy instruction (more details in the sections to follow). Our goal was to find out – to what extent the IVAN experiences changed the experimental groups’ ability to see, notice, reflect, or analyze video clips in our study. We report our results as case-studies of two groups, one who used our case-based IVAN software and a control-participant who did not.