VIDEO ANALYSIS OF TEACHING

Video Analysis of Teaching

Brittnay Schuster

Teaching and Learning in Content Field

Spring 2019

Dr. Binyao Zheng

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Video Analysis of Teaching (VAT) Assessment of Clinical Practice

Initial Observations

When the teacher was reviewing with the students not everyone participated. This is

likely because the method in which she chose to review was not one that was engaging or

inclusive. She randomly calls on students who, some, demonstrated reluctance to be in the

“spotlight” of writing their answers on the board. The teacher, while reviewing the questions

with students, only demonstrates one way to deconstruct the words they were working on, but

implied that there are other ways to do it. The few students who are called on to come to the

front of the board are the students who are engaged. Other students have no obligation or interest

in being engaged in the lesson because they can get away with being a passive observer. During

the beginning of the video, when the teacher is reviewing prefixes, suffixes, and roots, there is a

lot of time wasted with the chosen instructional strategy. There is wait time in between each

student who is called to the board and while the students way for their classmates to put the

answer up. Additionally, there is no true check for understanding because not every student has

to or wants to participate in the review. The teacher does not keep track of student responses so

there is no way for her to assess or measure how well the students understand the material before

their assessment. When the teacher begins to hand out the project, she is projecting it in a

negative light before she even begins to explain it. As would be expected, it seems that the

students follow and pick up on her attitude towards the assignment and show a lack of interest. In

no way is this project authentic to the students real-world experiences. Additionally, the project

does not require students to think, discuss, or truly collaborate. Since it is a group project, she

promotes that they split up the material—which means that each person in the group is really

only engaging with part of the content. Additionally, the project does not required students to
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think, especially after she promotes students to copy and paste for their project. The likely

outcome is that the students complete the project but do not remember any of the material (or

very little) after the test. As the teacher assigns their projects, students are given an exorbitant

amount of information and are not given time to process what is being asked of them.

VAT Plan One: Formative Assessment

When the teacher is reviewing the prefixes, suffixes, and roots, she gave students a

worksheet and had them practice deconstructing the words. This particular choice of review

leaves many students at a disadvantage because they are not engaged. When the teacher calls on

students to write their answers on the board the teacher is able to observe their ability to

deconstruct the words. However, since there are only a few students called to the board, only

those students are providing data for understanding. Additionally, the teacher wastes significant

class time having the students complete the practice in class. She could have had the students

complete the practice questions the day before or as a “ticket out” so that she could evaluate the

understanding of all students. If she would have had students do this ahead of time, she could

have spent more time working through common misunderstandings with her students.

A better approach to this would be to integrate instructional technology. The teacher

could have used a more effective formative assessment tool such as Quizlet Live, Quizzizz, or

Pear Deck where she would receive data on what students were struggling with most. The other

benefit of this method is that she would be able to see, in real time, who is struggling and with

what specifically. She would then take that data and remediate on the significant disparities from

each group. The end goal would be a better data set helping her to use to help students be more

successful on their summative assessment. In addition, she would see an increase in student

engagement during the lesson. Lee Revere and Jamison Kovach (2011) discuss this shift in
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instructional practice in their article, “Online Technologies for Engaged Learning: A Meaningful

Synthesis for Educators” when they state, “the traditional approach to instructor led pedagogy is

quickly being refuted in light of continuing research in student-centered learning. This research

suggests ‘learning depends wholly on what the student does; (and) only indirectly on what the

teacher or university does” (pp. 114). With this statement in mind—if the students who were not

called to the board did not have to do anything, they also did not learn anything. By changing her

approach to this type of lesson and including instructional technology, this teacher would likely

see more engagement and success among all of her students.

Vat Plan Two: Student Engagement

In the lesson, the teacher called on some students to work at the board. Even though we

cannot see the whole classroom or very many students, based on the students who are seen, the

engagement in that classroom is not very high. There are a couple of ways that this teacher could

improve student engagement and thereby see better achievement from her students. First, she

could use a grouping or jigsaw strategy to let students co-construct knowledge with their peers.

This social cognitive approach seems that it would be helpful to allow all students the

opportunity to work with their peers and figure out the answers together. Choosing this review

style would also be a better transition into the project that was going to be done in groups

anyway. This grouping at the beginning of class would have saved transition time at the end of

class. As stated above, the teacher likely does not have a true understanding of how well students

have or have not approached mastery of this content. Simply having a few students write answers

on the board allows those few students to be engaged, and everyone else gets to sit back. The

formative assessment strategies would really boost the engagement levels of her students.

According to Ulrich Boser (2013), “There is no question that technology holds significant
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potential when it comes to improving classroom practices and encouraging more effective

learning.” Since there is no evidence of technology, this teacher has extreme potential to

transform her classroom.

The teacher seems to have a traditional approach to teaching and learning, which is

proven to be less effective for 21st century learners. Rever et. al. (2011) explain that

“conventional wisdom suggests that engaged and relational learning is far more likely to grow

out of a learner-centered (rather than a teacher-centered) instructional environment” (pp. 115).

Additionally, the learning tasks are inauthentic to the everyday lives of the students so students

are not going to be eager to learn or engaged. Michael Rowe, Vivenne Bozalek, and Jose Frantz

(2013) emphasize the impact of engagement in their article “Authentic Learning and Google

Drive” when they state “engagement with contextually relevant problems using the tools of the

profession that enables the student to move from a legitimate peripheral participant to a

practicing member of the community.” (pp. 595).

Vat Plan Three: Authenticity

Towards the end of the video, the teacher assigns her students a group project. Students

seem uninterested in the project, likely due to the fact that there is zero authenticity to the task.

The teacher tells the students that for (parts) of the project, students can simply copy and paste

onto their project. Not only does this not demonstrate any learning, the teacher tells the students

to divide up the content; so, each student is only going to engage with part of the project and

since they are copying and pasting they will likely forget the material after their summative

assessment for that unit. Rowe et. al (2013) go on to explain the importance of authenticity when

they state “Using principles od authentic learning, teachers can create environments that reflect

the context of the real world activity, encouraging students to think and behave as [practicing]
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members of the community” (pp. 595).

Conclusion

Video analyses of teaching is extremely important throughout a teacher’s career. Many

teacher engage in some kind of video analysis during their college training, but most of them do

not continue the practice once they are employed. However, analyzing a teaching video (whether

it is of yourself or another teacher) allows you to see if/how well you are implementing best

teaching practice. From this experience, I will try to complete more video analyses of myself and

of my peers so that I can continuously grow and improve. It will affect my teaching because it

gives me the opportunity to reflect on so many different elements of the lesson and I can take

what I see and turn it in to what it should be. Student learning will be impacted because the more

times I analyze the better their learning opportunities will be.

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References

Boser, U. (2013, June 14). Are Schools Getting a Big Enough Bang for Their Education

Technology Buck? Retrieved March 14, 2019.

Revere, L., & Kovach, J. V. (2011). ONLINE TECHNOLOGIES FOR ENGAGED

LEARNING A Meaningful Synthesis for Educators. Quarterly Review of Distance

Education, 12(2), 113–124. Retrieved from http://proxygsu-

sgwi.galileo.usg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a

9h&AN=66173718&site=ehost-live

Rowe, M., Bozalek, V., & Frantz, J. (2013). Using Google Drive to facilitate a blended approach

to authentic learning. British Journal of Educational Technology, 44(4), 594–606.

https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12063