International Portal of Teacher Education

Source: Teaching and Teacher Education 33 (2013), p. 24-33.
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)

The purpose of this study was to analyze the implementation of the Video Assessment of Interactions in Learning (VAIL) as a standardized measure of preservice teacher learning.
Based on the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, the VAIL measures participants’ ability to identify effective teaching strategies and interactions related to emotional supports, classroom organization, and instructional supports.
The Video Assessment of Interactions and Learning (VAIL) was administered to preservice teachers in mid-Atlantic university’s teacher education program located in the United States.

Method
Three distinct groups of preservice teachers participated in this study.
The first cohort consisted of 109 students enrolled in an introductory education class.
The second cohort of 78 students included students in the spring semester prior to student teaching the following fall.
The third cohort of students included 80 students who completed their one-semester student-teaching experience.
The data included the VAIL (2010) assessment and a demographic survey.

The results indicate three main conclusions can be made.
First, wide-scale, standardized assessment is possible in teacher education.
Second, the VAIL is sensitive to variability that can be partially explained by program factors. Third, large variability in preservice teachers’ ability to identify effective teaching strategies and behaviors remains unexplained by this model.

The analyzes suggest that the VAIL may be a useful tool in examining preservice teacher learning.
The VAIL offers promise for measuring preservice teacher learning and growth throughout a teacher education program.
The study found a negative relationship between the participant’s years in the teacher education program and their ability to detect both teaching behaviors and teaching strategies in the instructional supports domain.

Additionally, the participants were most successful at identifying classroom organization domain teaching strategies compared to the other domains.
However, they were no more successful in identifying effective teaching behaviors in this domain compared to the other domain skill variables.
They had a better grasp of the theory underlying classroom organization, but were no better at finding examples of the related behaviors.
They appear to have a sense of what good teaching looks like and can identify those behaviors; however, they are not as skilled at identifying effective teaching strategies underlying those actions.

Data also indicate that the VAIL can detect variability in participants that can partially be explained by expected program factors.
The analysis showed consistent associations in the programmatic characteristics with participants’ performance on the assessment.
The fact that the specific predictors with the programmatic characteristics changed from video to video was encouraging.

The lack of consistent predictors across all the outcome variables suggest that the performance of each participant is based on individual differences more than group membership as defined by demographic and programmatic characteristics.
While the programmatic factors help explain some of the variation in preservice performance on the VAIL, most of the variance remains unexplained.