Supporting secondary rural teachers’ development of noticing and pedagogical design capacity through video clubs

Abstract

Professional support in the form of a year-long video club based on teacher noticing of student thinking was provided to three rural teachers who comprised the entire mathematics department of one secondary school (grades six through twelve). The focus of the study was to understand how participation in a video club structure for rural secondary teachers supports the development of noticing and to understand how the content of what rural teachers notice influences their pedagogical design capacity. Assuming a situative perspective, findings suggest video club participation influenced the teachers’ curricular vision, their pedagogical design capacity, and their view of collaboration, as well as increasing their ability to notice and utilize student thinking for instructional decisions.

Appendices

Appendix 1: van Es (2011), p. 139, learning to notice framework

	Level 1 baseline	Level 2 mixed	Level 3 focused	Level 4 extended
What teachers notice How teachers notice	Attend to whole class environment, behavior, and learning and to teacher pedagogy Form general impressions of what occurred Provide descriptive and evaluative comments Provide little or no evidence to support analysis	Primarily attend to teacher pedagogy Begin to attend to particular students’ mathematical thinking and behaviors Form general impressions and highlight noteworthy events. Provide primarily evaluative with some interpretive comments Begin to refer to specific events and interactions as evidence	Attend to particular students’ mathematical thinking Highlight noteworthy events Provide interpretive comments Refer to specific events and interactions as evidence Elaborate on events and interactions	Attend to the relationship between particular students’ mathematical thinking and between teaching strategies and student mathematical thinking Highlight noteworthy events Provide interpretive comments Refer to specific events and interactions as evidence Elaborate on events and interactions Make connections between events and principles of teaching and learning On the basis of interpretations, propose alternative pedagogical solutions

Appendix 2: Video club protocol

• 1. Researcher provides a brief outline for the meeting including videos to be observed and the projected ending time. Video club observations forms (“Appendix 3”) are given to each teacher (no more than 5 min).

• 2. Teachers are provided 5 min to complete page one of the video club observation form in order to reflect on their individual tasks and consider content they wanted to highlight with the group.

• 3. All video content is shown to the group; the teachers and researcher take notes using the additional pages of the video club observation form. The video is paused briefly between each instructional episode so that teachers can record any additional thoughts before moving on to the next teacher’s video (time varies depending on number of video episodes 15–35 min).

• 4. Teachers are prompted to discuss what they noticed while watching the videos. This discussion is led by the teachers with the researcher facilitating the conversation through occasional questioning to highlight larger concepts. The researcher attempts to provide all teachers with opportunities to discuss and when specific teachers are less active, the researcher will address a question specifically to that individual (most discussions take approximately 60 min depending on content).

• 5. The researcher ends the meeting with scheduling observations, subsequent meetings, and addressing any additional concerns raised by the teachers.

Appendix 3: Video club observation form