This project works with students to trial the use of video collaboration software for enabling reflective practice. This software provides an opportunity to record behaviour and interactions in any practice-based setting. It is often used to capture classroom-based teaching and learning. Practitioners can then use the video collaboration tools to reflect on their own teaching, give peer feedback or gain feedback from a mentor or tutor. The viability of the software is explored within Initial Teacher Training (ITT) as students co-create video content with postgraduate education students. We then look at how it might inform practice based reflection within other university courses.
Project aims and objectives
- To explore the potential for IRIS Connect to be used with ITT students as a pedagogic tool
- To support ITT students to work with postgraduate education students to co-create a set of video resources that can be used in synchronous and asynchronous sessions with students and school-based partners
- To analyse the interactions between novice and expert teachers to determine the impact of the video collaboration software on student attitudes and pedagogic behaviours.
- To evaluate the potential for video collaboration software to be used as a reflective practice tool within other university courses.
This is an innovative project in that it uses video software to provide an opportunity to build critical reflection skills in the context of authentic teaching and learning scenarios. It also addresses various issues connected with placement-based observation, such as limited placement opportunities, remote mentoring, and training new mentors. Increasingly in ITT we are seeing students electing to complete their work placements near to their parental home. In addition, the consequence of COVID-safe practices means that allowing assessing tutors into school can be problematic. There is strong evidence from Iris Connect’s previous research that video collaboration software can have a powerful impact on the quality of reflection and feedback, and lead to improved practice. A project output is a set of resources that exemplify high quality modelling and feedback on teaching practice using use local partners that represent the issues faced by our local young people. The use of undergraduate and postgraduate students to co-create examples of reflective practice and analyse the interactions that stem from sharing practice demonstrates a commitment to the university’s strategic plan and research ethic.
IRIS Connect is a collaborative teacher development tool that allows users to tag videos with customised observations and that automatically collects data on teaching behaviours. It is often used in lesson observations, for sharing strategies and for supporting teacher development. It also has applications to other practice based contexts such as health. This project sees postgraduate students working with undergraduate students to create a set of materials that can be used in an ABL context to support ITT students, mentors and partner school staff to develop their teaching and mentoring skills, yielding a set of resources and strategies that embrace features of ABL such as personalised learning, sense-making, knowledge construction, developing critical thinking skills and student centredness. The videos are created along common pedagogic themes or government priorities, such as questioning, dialogic talk, behaviour management, or working with children with additional needs. Both the novice and the expert teachers will annotate the videos and will then be filmed engaging in reflective professional dialogue. The result will be a set of student created, real life scenarios that can scaffold discussion and dialogue in teaching activities, and facilitate metacognition and actualisation of learning and teaching theory in practice.
IRIS Connect has been involved in a number of Erasmus+ projects relevant to the proposal. These projects involved universities from across Europe but did not explore in depth the emerging anecdotal evidence that students valued the feedback from both peers and more skilled practitioners in the development of skills and resources. Nor did they explore in depth how the software can support reflections from multidisciplinary practitioners, the Team Around the Child, and positively impact the teaching and learning of children with additional needs. The second phase of this project will demonstrate how the software can be used to develop students’ reflective practice skills across a range of disciplines by focusing on special education and the professionals who work with children in support services such as educational psychologists and speech therapists.