What Successful Science Teachers Do by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1051545
Publisher: Corwin Press
Published: 2010-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Precautions and Possible Pitfalls

Teaching is a deeply personal practice and requires real risk to share one’s events that are usually practiced behind closed doors. Because teachers’ work environments are not highly collaborative and visitors from outside the classroom often function in an evaluative capacity, teachers do not trust how these accounts may be used by others. In order to use video as a tool for professional development, trusted learning communities of teachers must be developed with those who have expertise in examining practice while honoring the participants’ perspective and efforts (Yerrick, Thompson, McLaughlin, & McDonald, in press). Typically it requires the involvement of teacher educators who are familiar with the teachers’ settings in order to support them in designing, developing, implementing, taping, and reviewing the lesson. However, outsiders need not be involved if only a few local teachers want to share their practice. If a teacher purchases or borrows camera equipment, most laptops and media labs have equipment to edit quickly.

It is not an easy path teachers choose to engage in a deeper reflection to examine classroom dilemmas. Each issue we explore about our teaching has the inherent potential to confront our own discrepancies between teaching beliefs and actual practices. In addition, since school environments are generally not supportive or helpful to teachers to provide time, equipment, and teacher space for reflection, some of the issues teachers find may have no simple solution.

Another issue about using cameras in the classroom that teachers will need to overcome is getting permissions from students’ parents. Students cannot be filmed without parents’ permission if the video will be seen by anyone outside the classroom, and specific permission must be gained by teachers to show video on venues like the Internet where they can be identified by viewers outside of school. Signed permissions should be multi-tiered with possible responses ranging from (1) “No, I do not want my student recorded, “to (2) “Yes, my student and her work can be recorded but any identification must be removed before it is posted on the Internet,” to (3) “Yes, my student and his work can be shared outside the classroom, including use by the media.” For their own protection, teachers should keep these forms on file in case of dispute. Teachers also must be certain that the camera does not impose an inequitable context for students who do not choose to be filmed. This is easily resolved by pointing the camera away from the group of students who are sitting together who do not give their permission, and by using wireless microphones to selectively collect audio.

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