What Beginning Teachers’ Narratives about Video-Based Instruction Tell Us about Learning to Teach Science and Literacy

Abstract

Purpose

To demonstrate how teacher candidate narratives in response to videos depicting science and literacy instruction can be used to both teach and evaluate beginning teachers’ emerging conceptions of disciplinary literacy.

Methodology/approach

Teacher candidates viewed and responded to videos depicting exemplary practice in science education and then videos of their own practice. Qualitative discourse analysis was used to investigate the science teacher candidates’ interpretations of problems of practice, their views of scientific literacy and understandings of their students.

Findings

The teacher candidates displayed distaste for textbooks, reinforced by negative experiences with textbooks in school settings, and yet they viewed textbooks as essential for effectively teaching knowledge about science. At the same time, each viewed the natural world as the ideal “text” for teaching knowledge about science, at times compensating for the weaknesses of textbooks and at other times entirely replacing textbooks as the source of knowledge about science. We consider what this means for preparing teachers for effective subject matter and literacy practice.

Practical implications

Video reflections like these demonstrate that what teacher candidates understand about video representations of others’ and their own teaching are far from literal and are interpreted through the educational and background lenses of the teacher candidates’ themselves. We suggest that a great deal more work needs to be done to better understand how to use video reflection to best develop teacher candidates’ conceptions of subject matter and literacy practice.

Citation

Conley, M.W. and Kang, H. (2015), "What Beginning Teachers’ Narratives about Video-Based Instruction Tell Us about Learning to Teach Science and Literacy", Video Research in Disciplinary Literacies (Literacy Research, Practice and Evaluation, Vol. 6), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 21-39. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2048-045820150000006001