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Videotaped lessons accelerate learning for teachers and coaches
New technologies can dramatically change the way people live and work. Jet engines transformed travel. Television revolutionized news and entertainment. Computers and the Internet have transformed just about everything else. And now small video cameras have the potential to transform professional learning.
While teachers have used video to review their lessons for decades, cameras were, until recently, complicated to use and so large and cumbersome that they interrupted the learning taking place in the classroom. Now, cameras are tiny - half the size of a deck of cards - and easy to use, often controlled by the push of a single button.
Recognizing the potential of this new technology, researchers at the Kansas Coaching Project at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning conducted a three-year study to analyze what happens when coaches and teachers watch themselves on video. The results of this study show why these cameras are important and how they can be used by instructional coaches, individual learners, and teachers in the classroom and in study groups.
Why cameras are important
Cameras serve four important functions within professional learning:
1. Cameras help educators (teachers, coaches, administrators, and others) obtain an objective, accurate view of themselves at work. In analyzing teachers watching themselves on tape, researchers found that teachers are often surprised by what they see.
Research conducted by change expert Prochaska and his colleagues (Prochaska, Norcross, & DiClemente, 1994) demonstrates that people are often unaware of the true nature of their professional practice. According to these researchers, people are often unaware of their need to improve. Video gives educators an honest picture of their professional practice.
2. Video recordings propel educators forward into change. After watching themselves on video, many teachers feel compelled to improve learning in their classrooms almost immediately. Stacy Cohen, an instructional coach for a Kansas Coaching Project study, reported that the night one of her collaborating teachers first saw a video of her lesson, the teacher stayed up until 2 a.m. reworking her lesson plans because "she couldn't stand to see how bored her students looked."
3. Video recordings are important for goal setting within coaching. Because the information recorded on video provides a rich picture...