Chapter 19: Interpretations and Uses of Classroom Video in Teacher Education: Comparisons Across Three Perspectives

Teachers can and should learn about teaching from investigating the work of teaching (Ball & Forzani, 2009). In addition to face-to-face classroom experiences, teacher educators commonly turn to classroom video as a representation of the work of teaching. Roth McDuffie and colleagues (2014) found that K–8 classroom video successfully bridges school classrooms and university mathematics methods classrooms, providing a context for approximation and decomposition of the practice of teaching (Grossman et al., 2009). However, effective use of classroom video must be embedded in structured instructional activities that support prospective teachers (PTs) in meeting clearly defined learning objectives identified by the mathematics teacher educator (MTE) and include prompts that focus PTs’ attention on specific features of mathematics teaching and learning that are represented in the video (Roth McDuffie et al., 2014; Star & Strickland, 2008). MTEs’ choices of specific features on which to focus are influential to PTs’ learning. Seidel, Blomberg, and Renkl (2013) asked two groups of PTs to view and analyze the same video, but with two different instructional approaches aligned with different learning goals. The researchers reported that differences in learning goals and instruction seemed to result in differences in PTs’ learning. This highlights the fact that PTs’ learning from classroom video case analysis is influenced by instructional activities MTEs design.