Teacher Candidate Tool-Supported Video Analysis of Students’ Science Thinking

ABSTRACT

Practice-based approaches to teacher education should emphasize strategies that help teacher candidates centralize student thinking in instructional practice while providing a rationale for why student thinking is integral to student learning. This study describes how secondary science teacher candidates engage in tool-supported analysis of student thinking in their own teaching practice through their participation in video clubs. It is empirically grounded in the context of 2 teacher education programs that adopted the Ambitious Science Teaching framework. The framework was leveraged to support teacher candidates to notice student thinking that is made explicit during instruction, and plan how to respond to student thinking in instructional practice. Analyses of teacher candidates’ critical reflections on their own enactments through video show that teacher candidates have the capacity to notice different categories of student thinking in their own practice with the support of the tool at relatively high levels of sophistication. Furthermore, we found that general pedagogical ideas, knowledge of science activities, and familiarity with strategies that support ambitious teaching influenced how teacher candidates planned to modify instruction based on evidence of student thinking from video clips. Teacher candidates were also able to provide reasoning for these future instructional decisions at medium to high levels of sophistication.

KEYWORDS:

• ambitious science teaching
• practice-based teacher education
• science teacher education
• secondary science
• student thinking
• video club