Pre-service Teachers’ Use of Tools to Systematically Analyze Teaching and Learning

Source: Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice, Vol. 20, No. 2, 113–135, 2014
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)

In this study, the authors explore how pre-service teachers who were introduced to a framework for analyzing teaching in a video-based teacher education course. The authors drew on this tool to analyze their own practice after the conclusion of the course.

Methods
The authors used research-based frameworks on teaching. They conceptualized the framework as a conceptual tool that scaffolds pre-service teachers to learn to attend to particular dimensions of teaching and learning and to analyze how their teaching influences student learning. They used the Portfolio Assessment for California Teachers-Teaching Event of 14 English language arts pre-service teachers.

Discussion 
The findings reveal that providing pre-service teachers with tools to analyze teaching can support them in learning to systematically study teaching and learning. 

In addition, the authors identified the ways that participants construct substantive analyses that meet this criteria.
Moreover, they identified alternative approaches participants use for analyzing practice.

These findings have implications for both research and teacher education.
The results suggest a framework for characterizing pre-service teachers’ analyses of teaching. Hence, this framework can be used to study pre-service teachers’ progress on developing conceptual tools to study practice.
Furthermore, teacher educators can use these findings to target particular dimensions for instruction.
Finally, the findings suggests that participants made progress toward this goal and that only a few demonstrated strategies that are more characteristic of novices across the four facets.