Coaching using video – developing teachers internationally: challenges and opportunities

by Anna Donnelly and Jonty Leese

What we did:

Whilst there is tremendous value in learning face to face, there are some situations in which online learning is the only viable option: international teacher education is a case in point. With the growth of demand for HEIs in the UK to undertake teacher education and development internationally, the University of Warwick sought some practical solutions to developing teachers, often thousands of miles and many time zones away.

Using video to support teacher learning (Major and Watson, 2017) and reflection (Hamel and Viau-Guay, 2019) is not a new practice, but the teacher values (Centre for Teacher Education, 2022) that thread through our course and the bespoke approach to coaching at the University of Warwick shaped how we approached using this technology.

We wanted to develop some tools so that when video was utilised on platforms that had the capability to time stamp or pause either pre-recorded or live recordings of teachers, then make a variety of learning comments on this. We shaped the responses to encourage supportive, nurturing and developmental feed forward.

Where is it?

We selected a platform which had the capability for key stakeholders to live-record content (trainee teachers teaching, mentor and trainee coaching meetings) and / or examine pre-recorded content with a reflective and intellectually curious lens (Centre for Teacher Education, 2022). Comments from all stakeholders could then be time-stamped to aspects of practice and specific coaching or teaching attributes could be flagged and discussed within the platform comment facility. These were linked to our Professional Practice Units (PPU) which have a specific emphasis relating to their teacher education. This gave the opportunity for focussed, evidence-based reflections from mentor, mentee, and university professional; integrating closely theory and practice, as well as providing the opportunity to relate learner with readings and other content to support strengthening of the theory-practice link for all involved.

How it will be integrated into future practice?

As we develop our international course as well as look to expanding our remote programme into teacher education ‘cold spots’ across the UK, this platform could provide a useful tool for both teacher education and professional mentor development as well as a step change in how HEI colleagues may undertake part of their role as teacher educators.

Lessons Learnt:

Challenges

• When recording involved people under 16, there were significant barriers in terms of negotiating safeguarding concerns and approaches of individual schools across multiple legal jurisdictions. This is a challenge that the company providing the online platform is still developing in terms of support materials for schools.
• The wider issue around ethics for collecting data GDPR policies and CCTV protocols for under 16s proved to be an ongoing challenge and not one that was solved within the scope of this project.

Opportunities

• There were tremendous gains to be had in terms of purposeful and focussed teacher reflection on practice, as video proved a rich source of statistics and evidence on which to base a coaching conversation. It had the potential to give agency to teacher construction of their own learning as well as supporting coaches in their examinations of the ‘reality’ of the impact of the student teaching on the children’s learning (Knight, 2021).

References:

Centre for Teacher Education (2022) Developing an ambitious ITE Curriculum. Available at: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/cte/about/ite-curriculum/ (Accessed: 3 March 2023).

Hamel, C. and Viau-Guay, A. (2019) ‘Using video to support teachers’ reflective practice: A literature review’, Cogent Education. Edited by B. Nkuyubwatsi, 6(1), p. 1673689. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2019.1673689.

Major, L. and Watson, S. (2017) ‘Using video to support in-service teacher professional development: the state of the field, limitations and possibilities’, Technology Pedagogy and Education, 27, p. In Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2017.1361469.

Abigail Ball : 20 Mar 2023 12:02 |  Tags: Anna Donnelly Jonty Leese Mentoring Teaching |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem