Whether you’ve been teaching for twenty years or just repeating that same year twenty times makes a big difference to your development as a teacher. If you’ve continued to learn and develop each year for 5 years then you will be a better teacher than someone who has replicated that same year of teaching twenty times. As Dylan Wiliam said, ‘every teacher needs to improve, not because they’re not good enough but because they can be even better’. This is a maxim I strive to live by throughout my teaching and in leading others.
Since I stepped into the classroom, I have found filming my lessons a valuable opportunity to identify strengths and areas of improvement, if a little daunting at first. I could improve individual lessons, my approach to specific pupils and consider my wider pedagogy. I believe that the habits and attitudes that one develops in the early stages of one’s career need to be sustainable if they are to be continued as the realities of life kick in, especially in light of workload pressures (I try to film at least one lesson every term). This blog post is an attempt to highlight some relevant literature and summarise why I think videoing one’s own lessons can be an effective means of professional development.
Improving teaching through filming and reflecting on your lessons is hardly a new idea (Rodgers, 1987; Bennett, 2010). However, there is relatively little specific literature other than that commissioned by companies who sell video hardware and software themselves (such as IRIS Connect). Traditional models of teacher development which take place in blocks (such as INSET sessions once or twice a year) have limited evidence supporting their effectiveness (Hodkinson 2006). Using film, on the other hand, allows for the possibility of CPD being spread out with greater ease.
It is important for teachers to actively pursue their continuing development and learning throughout their careers whilst it is the responsibility of school leaders to help facilitate this. One ‘easy’ and effective means of doing this is through reflections on daily practice (Runhaar & Sanders 2017). According to Clotfelter, Ladd and Vigdor (2006) teachers improve and hone their craft up to the first five years of their career, at which point many plateau. What is less clear is the cause of this plateau. When considering how useful videoing your own lessons can be, the issue of feedback is key. To what extent can individuals evaluate their own instructional leadership and to what extent is there a need for external feedback? For me, the answer to these questions comes in two forms.
Killeavy argues that ‘improvement of self and others is a fundamental expectation’ of effective teaching and learning in schools (2006: 168); however, as we have seen, reflections on one’s own teaching can be limited by prior knowledge. If we don’t know what good teaching looks like, then how can we identify areas for improvement? To what extent can they effectively critique and improve their own performance? Are they sufficiently objective? To what extent does it depend on an individual’s self-awareness? It is well established that collaboration with colleagues is important to teacher development (Butler et al. 2004). It is also well established that teachers must be reflective practitioners if they are to be effective (Sammons et al. 2014). “A fundamental objective of student teachers’ professional learning is development of their ability to analyse and evaluate their own pedagogic practice” (Lofthouse & Birmingham 2010: 3). This would suggest that it might be better for teachers to work better, at least in the early stages, as they reflect on videos of their own teaching. Alternatively, Harrison et al. (2005) suggest that teachers might consider adopting a reflective practice scaffold for their reflections, much in the same way that an experienced colleague or tutor may use a template to guide their feedback for trainee teachers. This could help to guide their reflections and ensure a more useful reflective critique. In Practice Perfect, Lemov, Woolway & Yezi (2012) outline a series of rules that individuals should follow in order to isolate skills and systematically improve them through deliberate practice. Whilst many of these rules focus on deliberate practice with others and collaboratively improving performance, the principles remain sound for an individual reflecting on their own practice. Lemov et al. describe how video can be used by teachers to identify things that are going well in their performance and ‘invest in their own development’ (2012: 179). It is acknowledged that this is partly a strategy in place because senior leaders and managers cannot always be in lessons; they also point out that over time it normalises a culture of identifying and correcting errors, rather than hiding them away because there is no one else in the classroom. They describe a culture in which teachers set their own goals, with some guidance from managers, to focus on specific targets and hold themselves accountable. This is only possible because they have normalised such a culture of using video to improve performance. I would recommend every teacher read Practice Perfect in full, but there are a few rules outlined by the authors which I think are notable to highlight. They are:
While videoing one’s own performance is common place in other graduate professions, including medicine it is still relatively uncommon in teaching. The reasons for this are not clear: perhaps it is a result of historic fears centering on observation culture or perhaps it is because of the financial pressures on schools (Buck, Tomlinson and Toop, 2015) which do not allow sufficient time for professional development or the purchase of the necessary camera equipment. Since videoing one’s own lessons is still relatively rare, I would also suggest that many teachers are skeptical or would feel nervous about filming their own lessons (although this is more anecdotal than anything!).
In medicine, the use of video is increasingly used to train trainee doctors on procedures and help them review their performance (Spence et al., 2016). They use defined structures to help scaffold their reflections and research by Hawkins et al., (2012) suggests that this has improved performance and doctors’ self-awareness. One such structure was the introduction of benchmark performance indicators which helped students to more accurately assess their own performance and brought them in line with the assessments of their tutors. Whilst providing objective performance indicators, free from ideology, might prove problematic in education, this would be an avenue worthy of further exploration if video analysis and self-reflection were to be used systematically to improve instructional leadership. We require our medical professionals to review their performance to set targets to improve, yet the teaching profession largely lags behind. One of the central functions of leadership is to improve teaching and learning; however, leaders must make choices: it is not financially possible in most schools to pursue every avenue of potential improvement, therefore strategic decisions must be made as to which possibilities are pursued. Teachers’ time is financially valuable, whilst the capital investment in camera equipment is also a factor. If equipment is to be used, it must be available when staff need it, which then also raises the question of how much equipment to buy and what other purchases might not be possible if there is substantial expenditure in this area. Perhaps the greatest cost of filming lessons is time. Many schools will already have some equipment available with which to film lessons – iPads, cameras, even the webcam on a laptop – although there is also bespoke camera hardware and software available which will track a teacher as they move around the classroom and other solutions which provide more flexibility (personally, I’ve used IRIS Connect in the past but other companies such as Swivl appear to offer similar solutions). Whether schools buy in ready-made solutions or use existing technology already in school it is possible to develop a culture of reflection through video which can be a cost-effective addition to the teacher development armoury. In his book Drive, Dan Pink (2009) argues that motivation is determined by three factors: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Filming one’s own lessons has the potential to tick all of these boxes. Teachers can be empowered to make change and have power over their own improvement; they have the opportunity to work towards being the best teacher possible; and their improvements should lead to better outcomes for pupils. Autonomy, mastery and purpose. Check. On a whole school level, filming lessons presents opportunities for sharing good practice, regular coaching conversations, and systematic development of staff throughout the year. Video is not limited to the traditional INSET training or one off course that many traditional development opportunities provide but instead can provide a drip feed approach to working with staff on a group and/or individual level throughout the year. Furthermore, for the individual teacher, there is the opportunity to take ownership of one’s own targets and develop one’s self-awareness in the classroom. Perhaps the biggest challenge, for both the individual and for school level implementation is finding the time to watch footage back. How much footage would be manageable? How much would be useful? Is there a tipping point after which one might over analyse one’s performance? The answer to such questions is likely to differ between individual schools depending on their context and circumstances. So what are the challenges and why should we try filming our lessons anyway?
References
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
March 2020
|