Participants' Roles in the Context of a Video Club

Abstract

This study examines the nature of teacher participation in the context of a video club. Video clubs are professional development meetings in which teachers watch and discuss excerpts of video from their classrooms. In this study, I adopt a situative perspective to examine how teachers develop in their participation to accomplish the goals of the video club. In particular, I examine the roles participants play and explore teachers' participation in four roles that correspond with key goals of the video club. Analysis revealed that teachers' participation shifted in qualitatively different ways over time, with the teachers coming to prompt the group to discuss student mathematical thinking, to propose a variety of interpretations of student ideas, to build on one another's ideas, and to challenge one another's thinking in order to advance the group's conversations. This analysis suggests that the group learned how to participate in roles central to accomplishing the goals of the video club. Studying teacher learning through a lens of participation provides insight into the ways in which teachers coordinate themselves to engage with the goals of professional development and has implications for designing professional development that helps teachers develop practices for teaching mathematics for understanding.

Notes

¹Mapleton is pseudonym for the school in which this research was conducted.

²For 7 of the 10 meetings, I was the facilitator. Another researcher on the research project facilitated the other three meetings.

³One of the fifth-grade classroom teachers elected not to participate because she was seeking medical care during the year of the study. Two of the participants, Elena and Linda, were certified to teach special education, and they were assigned to coteach with two fourth-grade classroom teachers as part of the district inclusion program. Pseudonyms are used to protect the teachers' identities.

^aCertified to teach special education.

^a N = 194.

⁴In general, I coded participation at the level of the idea unit. For the role of Builder, I also looked at the rate of participation within an idea unit. Increased participation in this role within idea units over time would suggest that the teachers provided more explanation to further develop an idea under discussion.