There are five activities this week, including an assignment (Activity 3.3) for your portfolio of participation that focuses on giving and receiving feedback.
In order to complete the assignment effectively you will need to identify a peer or colleague who is willing to work with you on the task. They may not have heard of TESS-India or OER, and you need to think about how you can introduce your colleague to them prior to working with you on your assignment. For example, you may wish to discuss how the TESS-India OER position teachers and teacher educators as active learners and how they bring together theory and practice to support educators in implementing active participatory approaches to learning.
The focus this week is on using videos to support teachers in developing more active approaches to teaching and learning in their classrooms. Classroom videos have the potential to be a valuable resource for teacher educators. You will be looking at some of the TESS-India videos in detail and sharing your ideas with others.
Videos of teachers working with students in genuine situations provide a ‘window’ into different classrooms. They are able to show how teachers use active learning approaches with their students.
A number of videos have been created for the TESS-India project, which provide helpful exemplars to use with teachers. The videos have been filmed in primary and secondary schools in India. They show teachers trying out more learner-centred, participatory approaches with their students. Their aim is to inspire teachers to experiment with similar approaches and techniques in their own classroom. Although these excerpts from lessons are not perfect – no lesson is – they show that it is possible for teachers working in authentic situations to develop more interactive teaching approaches.
As well as using online videos, you can also make your own videos by recording in classrooms in your locality and use these as a prompt for discussion with teachers. Before making such recordings, it is important to check that everyone is comfortable with the process and that you have obtained the necessary permissions.
What particular classroom practices or actions would you like to show teachers through video clips?
The TESS-India OER video below shows a primary school teacher working with a multigrade class. He is the only teacher in the school and teaches 90 pupils spanning Class I to Class V.
You probably watched the video from the point of view of the teacher and noted aspects such as how he managed the pupils and how he organised the activities.
Note your responses to the following questions:
What teachers notice in a classroom or from a video will reflect their knowledge, beliefs and experience of teaching and learning, what they value, and their views about effective practice. This forms the ‘framework’ in which they operate as teachers. Trainee teachers have limited experience and are starting to develop their own individual teacher framework. As a teacher educator, you can guide teachers to develop and change their frameworks that incorporate active, participatory approaches through using videos as a starting point for discussion and reflection. Your role includes helping teachers notice the things that they might otherwise miss.
Videoing a teacher in their classroom provides the basis for discussion with the teacher and feedback on the teaching and learning that is taking place. Research shows that people benefit from getting feedback on their work and that this can have more impact on their development than almost anything else (Hattie, 2012). However, often it is not well implemented, thereby reducing the potentially beneficial effects (Petty, 2009). This applies to feedback we give teachers on their classroom practices and on their written work.
Effective feedback is informative. It is composed in such a way that the effort that the individual has made is appreciated. It makes explicit what has been done well and it provides guidance on how to improve. Good feedback helps the student or teacher to prepare for the next assignment or lesson. Phrases such as these can be helpful:
These statements are more likely to motivate and encourage the individual to take risks in the future. Feedback that is judgemental and compares them unfavourably to others is more likely to lead to individuals becoming apprehensive about their work in the future. It may also discourage them from taking risks.
You can read more about giving feedback in the TESS-India Key Resource ‘Monitoring and giving feedback’ (English) and the same document in Hindi.
In this activity you will consider some different examples of feedback. These were given to a student teacher who had written about assessment.
Example 1: ‘Very good work.’
Example 2: ‘You have explained the difference between formative and summative assessment very clearly, although a few more examples of formative assessment would be helpful. Think about how summative assessment might be used formatively. This will help you with the next assignment, which is about using assessment in the classroom.’
Example 3: ‘More detail needed. There are some typographical errors and you need to pay attention to your grammar.’
Example 4: ‘Well done. A clear explanation of the difference between formative and summative assessment.’
Activity 3.3 is a peer assessment that is part of your portfolio of participation. In the second part of the assessment use the ideas from Activity 3.2 when you give feedback. Think about how your feedback will be received.
In order to complete this assignment effectively you will need to identify a peer or colleague who is willing to work with you on the task. They may not have heard of TESS-India or OER, and you need to think about how you can introduce your colleague to them prior to working with you on your assignment. For example, you may wish to discuss how the TESS-India OER position teachers and teacher educators as active learners and how they bring together theory and practice to support educators in implementing active participatory approaches to learning.
If your colleague is willing, repeat the activity with the roles reversed – ask them to select and write a brief paragraph on a TESS-India video, and then provide them with feedback using the questions above to guide your response.
In your notebook, record their response and the feedback you provided.
You will receive feedback from a peer or colleague on your response to Activity 3.3. It is easy to become defensive about feedback, especially if you feel that it is not very positive. The main purpose of feedback is to help you to improve your work. There will be another chance to give and receive feedback in Week 5.
Reflect on the feedback that you received on your task. How did this make you feel? Was it helpful? What was not helpful? How effectively did the feedback make you think about active approaches to teaching?
What feedback would you give to yourself? What would you do differently?
In your study notebook, summarise what you learnt from this experience and how you will approach giving feedback in the future.
If possible, try the activity that you described in Activity 3.3 with teachers. Make sure that you take note of the feedback that you receive.
Evaluate the experience with the following prompts:
Think about the following questions and record the answers in your notebook:
Other useful sources of videos of Indian classrooms are:
Videos have the potential to help teachers to learn both from and through classroom practice. As well as using online videos, such as the TESS-India OER, you can also make your own short videos of classrooms using simple mobile recording equipment such as a tablet or a mobile phone.
Teachers find it very helpful to see a recording of part of their lesson; this can help them to talk about what happened in a lesson. You can ask them to talk about what they observe about their behaviour and the participation of all the students. Teachers can show each other video from their classroom and talk about parts of the lesson that went well, such as productive student learning, and areas where they could change their practice to improve student learning. This model of professional development encourages collaboration between teachers working in schools, and is very different from formal courses based on an expert providing information.
In formal teacher training courses the use of video provides teacher educators with the opportunity to introduce student teachers to classrooms early in their training and make the theoretical ideas more concrete. They also allow students and experienced teachers to observe and discuss the same teaching experience, thereby promoting reflection.
Next week you consider how you might use other OER materials to support the teachers you work with.
Except for third party materials and otherwise stated, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence.
Specific content from the TESS-India OER, including images from the TESS-India video resources, are made available under this licence unless otherwise stated.
The TESS-India project is led by The Open University, UK and is funded by UK AID from the UK government.