Teacher PD – Week 5 – Reading Notes

Borko, H., Jacobs, J., Seago, N. & Mangram, C. (2014). Facilitating video-based professional development: Planning and orchestrating productive discussions. In Y. Li, E.A.Silver & S. Li (Eds.) Transforming mathematics instruction: Multiple approaches and practices (pp. 259-281). Dordrecht: Springer.

  • Use of video to discuss the teaching practice
  • Video watching must be skillfully guided
    • “To successfully lead such discussions requires that teachers have deeps knowledge of the relevant content, of student thinking about that content, and of instructional moves that are likely to guide the discussion in fruitful directions.” (Borko, Jacobs, Seago, & Mangram, 2014, p.261)
  • Best practices
    • Anticipating student responses
    • Monitoring their thinking
    • Selecting approaches for the class to explore
    • Sequencing student’s shared work
    • Connecting student responses to one another and to key ideas
  • Three decision points when planning a video-based discussion
    • Determine goals of discussion and select video clips
    • Identify goal relevant features of the video clip
    • Create questions to guide the discussion
  • Three practices for orchestrating productive discussions
    • Think about lesson segment
    • Probe for evidences of their claims
    • Connect analysis to key mathematical and pedagogical ideas
  • Content accompanying video for PD facilitators
    • Time-coded transcript
    • Lesson graph
    • Guiding questions to ask
    • Notes on the clip
      • “Back pocket” questions
      • Mathematical support
      • Cautionary notes
  • The need for a PD for PD facilitators

Gaudin, C., & Chaliès, S. (2015). Video viewing in teacher education and professional development: A literature review. Educational Research Review, 16, 41-67.

  • The need for facilitation in video-based PD
    • “How can teaching teachers to identify and interpret relevant classroom events on video clips improve their capacity to perform the same activities in the classroom?” (Gaudin & Chaliès, 2015, p.41)
  • Teachers must be trained to identify relevant events
    • “Most authors agree that enriching selective attention should be an objective of both teacher education and professional development. Indeed, both PTs and ITs suffer from an inability to identify relevant classroom events without training and focus.” (Gaudin & Chaliès, 2015, p.46)
  • Teachers must be able to
    • Describe
    • Explain
    • Predict
  • “Disposition to notice” and “capacities to reason”
  • Objectives of video viewing in teacher education and professional development
    • Show example of good teaching practices
    • Show characteristic professional situations
    • Analyze the diversity of classroom practices from different perspectives
    • Stimulate personal reflections
    • Guide/coach teaching
    • Evaluate competencies
  • Two main categories of video use
    • Developmentalist – how to interpret and reflect on classroom practices
    • Normative – what to do in the classroom
  • Select videos of “‘examples’ not ‘exemplars’”
  • Videos of
    • unknown teacher activity
    • peer activity
    • own practice
  • Effect of video viewing in TE & PD
    • Motivation
    • Cognition
    • Classroom practice

Gröschner, A., Seidel, T., Kiemer, K., & Pehmer, A.-K. (2014). Through the lens of teacher professional development components: The ‘Dialogic Video Cycle’ as an innovative program to foster classroom video. Professional Development in Education, DOI: 10.1080/19415257.2014.939692

  • How to teach “Productive classroom dialogue”
    • “Productive classroom dialogue refers to approaches to classroom communication in which teacher and students, through purposeful classroom talk, engage in a continual process of the co-construction of knowledge (Wells and Arauz 2006, Mercer and Littleton 2007, Alexander 2008).” (Gröschner, Seidel, Kiemer, & Pehmer, 2014, p.2)
  • Effective components of professional development
    • Content focus
    • Active learning
    • Collective participation
    • Duration
    • Coherence
  • Self-determination Theory (SDT)
    • “teachers’ abilities to foster perceptions of autonomy, competence and (social) relatedness.” (Gröschner, Seidel, Kiemer, & Pehmer, 2014, p.8)
    • “In the field of PD and workplace learning, studies found that autonomous motivation also supports job satisfaction and predicts the quality of transfer of PD experiences in daily work (Gegenfurtner et al. 2009).” (Gröschner, Seidel, Kiemer, & Pehmer, 2014, p.8)
  • Problem-Solving Cycle (PSC)
    • Iterative, long-term PD approach (Borko) focused on CK and PCK
  • Dialogic Video Cycle (DVC)
    • Builds upon PSC model
    • Focuses on verbal interactions between teachers and students
    • “In the DVC the focus is on the implementation of the two activities student activation and clarifying discourse rights and scaffolding student ideas and feedback (Walshaw and Anthony 2008). By helping teachers implement both activities in the classroom, the DVC aims to change the perspective of teachers towards engaging students in classroom dialogue and to support student learning processes.” (Gröschner, Seidel, Kiemer, & Pehmer, 2014, p.9)
  • “Therefore, through the lens of teacher PD components, video-based reflections as well as collaborative learning opportunities seem to be crucial aspects for teacher learning.” (Gröschner, Seidel, Kiemer, & Pehmer, 2014, p.25)

Kiemer, K., Gröschner, A., Pehmer, A.-K., & Seidel, T. (2015). Effects of a classroom discourse intervention on teachers’ practice and students’ motivation to learn mathematics and science. Learning and Instruction, 35, 94-103.

  • Motivation to learn
    • “Motivational concepts such as interest in the subject are important outcomes of educational processes (Krapp & Prenzel, 2011) and are key elements regarding the young generations’ preparedness for life-long learning as a core-skill in knowledge-based societies.” (Kiemer, Gröschner, Pehmer, & Seidel, 2015, p. 94)
  • DVC worked
    • “This study shows that after successful implementation (Gro€schner, Seidel, Kiemer, et al., 2014), the video-based TPD approach of the DVC was effective in changing teachers’ behaviour towards more productive classroom discourse.” (Kiemer, Gröschner, Pehmer, & Seidel, 2015, p.101)
    • “The results of this study further show positive changes in students’ experiences of autonomy, competence and social relatedness as well as intrinsic learning motivation, when their teachers participated in the DVC intervention.” (Kiemer, Gröschner, Pehmer, & Seidel, 2015, p.101)
    • “The results demonstrate the importance of productive classroom discourse in promoting positive learning outcomes for students’ motivational orientations and its role in fostering student interest in STEM subjects.” (Kiemer, Gröschner, Pehmer, & Seidel, 2015, p.101)

LDT Seminar – Master's Project Milestone Assignment

Prompts

Approach: Theories

There are several different “approaches” to address in your proposal.  One is your theoretical perspective on the challenge you address.

What approach to learning informs your design? Explain your theoretical framework – a mile-high view of the big ideas in your proposal about how people learn. The point is not to show that you read everything in 333A or 328, but rather to help your reader understand where you’re coming from. Explain how this approach has potential to help learners reach the learning goals.

It can be challenging to know what to include here. It might help to look at past projects. For instance:

  • Contrasting cases is a core mechanic in Feeling Talk
  • Creative confidence is the key outcome in Kibuni
  • Periscope uses augmented reality to promote theory of mind 
  • TandemArt facilitates conversations between kids and caregivers, because that’s how they learn
  • NatureQuest supports close observations of nature through narrative and family interactions.

For more examples, I strongly recommend reading some past project reports (at sdr.stanford.edu) to get a sense of how this might look for different types of projects. 

Approach: design of the solution

Another way to address “approach” is to think about how you will arrive at your final design. You probably identify more with one or the other of two scenarios:

  1. You know (pretty much) what you will be making. You might find it useful to list the key features of the proposed project, with brief explanation and rationale for each feature. You will want to explain why this is the right technology for this problem.
  2. You need to learn more (or much more!) about the learner before you can say anything about what your solution will look like.You will probably focus more on the design principles that you will use to focus your efforts and inform your design decisions. Somewhere later down the line you will need to decide what technologies to use; what can you say now about which ones will be most likely and/or how you will decide

If you expect any challenges, discuss how you might address them.


Response 

Approach:

The approach to learning that informs my design is a combination of the Protege Effect, project-based learning, and TPACK. The expert, teacher, or content creator is here called the “user” insofar as it is the person who is interacting with LXD during the course creation process.

The Protege Effect will be elicited through a virtual student who will prompt the user to teach him by asking leading questions, making suggestions, and warning the user about excessive use of one style of teaching as well as the lack of content, reflection opportunities, or detailing of previous knowledge. The virtual-student closes the gap between the content ideation and the actual student’s experience. Through immediate feedback, the virtual student will elicit the user to think deeply about content choices and aid in the process of deciding the learning progression that must be in place.

The project-based learning approach simply entails that the user is engaged in a project while using LXD itself. The project is the course creation process itself, within which scaffolds are presented to the user. In addition, the approach utilizes backwards design principles embedded in the interactions the virtual student has with the user. The idea being that the heuristics and strategies invoked by the virtual student are guided by these approaches without necessarily making them explicit.

Finally, LXD aims at increasing the user’s Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) by offering simple media editing tools, pedagogical scaffolds, as well as content produced by other users that can be incorporated into the course creation process. LXD in itself is a technological tool that will increase the user’s TPACK by presenting the necessary information, background knowledge, and content that supports the user’s ideation and publication strategies.

DESIGN OF THE LEARNING EXPERIENCE

Existing solutions (“competition”):

LXD is a construct that for the purposes of this project, will build upon an existing LMS or CMS – let’s call it LCMS for simplicity. This LCMS provides a base from which to start off with. Creating an entirely new LCMS from scratch is unfeasible and not necessary in order to test LXD’s effectiveness. I am currently analyzing which platform will be the best suited for this project. Here’s a list of the ones I have shortlisted:

  • Moodle – open-source CMS
    • Positives
      • Total freedom to create
      • Mature platform with thousands of plugins
      • Large community to interact with
    • Negatives
      • Cumbersome to customize
      • Old looking base interface
      • Old HTML base – no use of HTML5 affordances
  • Coursera
    • Positives
      • Could work with existing content publishers on Stanford
    • Negatives
      • The focus is curating online courses done with any online tool (I think)
  • Udemy
    • Positives
      • Content publishing tools is one of the most user friendly I’ve seen
    • Negatives
      • Would have to negotiate with Udemy access to their platform’s source code
  • Udacity
    • Positive
      • Focused on tech courses – familiar to me
    • Negative
      • Have never seen their course publication tool
      • Would have to negotiate with Udacity access to their platform’s source code
  • EdX
    • Positive
      • Candace Thille might have contacts to get access to the company
    • Negative
      • Have never seen their course publication tool
      • Would have to negotiate with EdX access to their platform’s source code

At the moment, Udemy is looking like my favorite candidate.

I also intend to talk to VPTL at Stanford to understand what are the usual difficulties professor have in the process of creating their online tools.

Approach:

LDX will be a web-based tool which will overlay the existing LCMS with text, image, and video triggered by analyzing the steps and content being published in the course. This is where artificial intelligence comes to play. Let’s say that the user has published a 30 minute video – LDX might suggest that the video should be shorter. If the user publishes 50 pages of text with no images, LDX might suggest that images illustrate concepts more powerfully that text alone. LDX might prompt the user to insert a knowledge-check or reflection activity once the user has published 5 pieces of content. The idea is to provoke the user to think about how the learner will be processing the content towards learning.  

The key features of LDX are:

  • Virtual Student
    • 3D character that talks to the user
    • Guides the user through the process of creating the content
    • Asks questions about the content and format of the course as it is created
  • Media Editing Suite
    • Video editor
    • Image editor
    • Text editor
  • Course Publication Tool
    • Create course structure and progression
    • Add media
    • Create assessments (quizzes, multiple choice, reflections, and etc)
  • Curated Content
    • Access to similar courses to get examples
    • Ability to link to external material for student’s reference
  • Coaching
    • Peer-to-peer help to go through courses

This is definitely ambitious for the time and resources I have for this project. The biggest challenge, other than the sheer volume of features, is the Virtual Student. I would have to partner up with someone who has experience and access to such technology in order to create a prototype.