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?
Allow approximately 20 minutes
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.
OpenLearn - Week 3: Using video to support teacher development Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.