10 Ways to Use Video Reflection within Teacher Professional Learning

Personalized professional development is not just a buzzword. It’s a key principle of the Future Ready Schools framework. And for good reason… how can we ask teachers to utilize the best types of learning for their students without giving them similarly tailored experiences to their individual learning needs.

We believe that use of video within professional learning is a powerful ingredient to enable personalization since the learning becomes about the teacher’s practice instead of generic content consumption and isolated implementation.

Here are ten scenarios where using the Edthena Explorations tool-sets can help facilitate a structured teacher professional learning process.

Before & After Snapshots

Want to see growth? Capture a before and after snapshot of classroom practices. If you add a framework or set of teaching standards by which to analyze and assess these practices, you and your teachers will be able to measure growth and have more meaningful discussions. Explorations can assist in the facilitation of this process of before and after.

Student Sense-making

Understanding how students think and seeing how they grapple with concepts and ideas can be powerful. Rather than inferring student thought from work product, instead, capture the actual work on video. Then, analyze the video (solo or with a team) to unpack what you’re seeing. 

Vertical & Horizontal Articulation

It is often hard to see into each other’s classrooms between and across grade bands with the goal of gaining consistency in instruction, as well as ensuring that there is proper academic trajectory between grade levels. Explorations offer a structure to watch and analyze instructional and curricular similarities and differences in order to assure proper alignment.

Signature Strategies, Curriculum, & Standards Spotlighting

Teachers want to see their colleagues teach. This is particularly true with new curriculum adoptions, new standards, and new initiatives and instructional emphasizes inside a district. Teachers want to know what these new initiatives looks like, and they want to see how their colleagues respond to these shifts in practice. Explorations can structure such sharing in a simple and organized way, along with providing supplementary non-video resources.

Prepare for National Board for Professional Teaching Standards process

Teachers need a way to practice and log their videos for deep analysis of their own pedagogy in order to become NBPTS-certified. Explorations can provide teachers with a simple way to engage in inquiry as they sharpen their craft. All-in-one safe place for sharing with trusted peers.

Competency Based Micro-credentials & Pathways

Because Explorations provides structure while also providing a way for teachers to go on their own professional journey, it provides flexibility to professional learning. It isn’t sit-and-get; it is try-and-apply for each individual user. Explorations offer a mechanism to design and implement skill-focused learning events that can be completed at flexible times by teachers and submitted to someone for approval.

Video Clubs

Less formal than PLCs, video clubs provide teachers with time to come together to lead their own professional learning. One member will showcase a problem or puzzle of practice they are having in their classroom by bringing a video artifact from their classroom for discussion. Through Explorations, the protocol for analyzing the video and sharing feedback is easily outlined, and group progress can be documented.

Coaching

Explorations provides both unity and flexibility to a district’s coaching model. With Explorations, it is also easy way to track coaching progress and distribute the proper materials. Explorations add efficiency to the whole process and gets everyone on the same page.

Video PLCs

Seeing instructional changes in response to student data is hugely helpful in understanding weather the new approaches are working. Explorations can be used as part of PLCs to gain consistent and unified pathways for video-infused PLCs to follow, leading to deeper teacher learning. Through Explorations, the PLC process across your organization are more easily monitored.

Lesson Study

Working together as part of a team that collectively designs, teaches, and refines a lesson takes time and commitment, and it is also hard to see into each other’s classroom to observe. Explorations can provide pathways into guiding this process of intense team collaboration.
Instructional Rounds

This method of instructional improvement provides teachers with a way to observe and compare their own instructional practices with those of their peers. The chief benefit of this approach resides in the discussion that takes place among observing teachers at the end of the observation as well as in subsequent self-reflection. Having a video artifact, along all the proper protocols for engaging with one another in one place, seamlessly connects and deepens observation though Explorations.