Over the past 15 years I have spent countless hours with a video camera on my shoulder capturing records of teaching and learning in K-6 grade classrooms.  As a result of this work I have developed very strong right arm muscles, an MO as the “invisible camera lady”, and most of all an incredible respect for teachers who are willing to step out of their comfort zone to allow their practice to be permanently captured and shared with others. During the last five years, in particular, I have been part of a collaborative effort to provide K-3rd grade literacy educators with on-demand access to an extensive database of MRTs and associated resources through the development of a web-based professional development support system (PDS2- see the “Works of Interest” section of the MRT conference website for a link to the PDS2 system).  This on-going collaboration includes a research and design team led by Tony Bryk and Louis Gomez, literacy content specialists at OSU and Lesley University, and with Mark Atkinson and his team at Teachscape.

In addition to content development and platform design work, the team creating PDS2 has also worked with diverse cohorts of literacy professional developers, ranging from novice to very experienced, to design and test social practices around the use MRTs to promote and support reflective, evidence-based teaching and learning. Throughout these iterative design activities we have debated a number of questions including: what learning purposes are best served through the use of  MRTs; what are the optimal characteristics of MRTs for these purposes; when, how and in what contexts are these MRTs most effective for learners at different developmental stages; and what kind of structures and supports did we need to develop around the use of MRTs to maximize their value as learning tools?

Targeted learning purposes

We undertook this project believing that MRTs can be particularly effective tools for helping:

1) Establish a stance of inquiry and reflective habits of mind by:

1. •Developing learners’ skills as acute observers and analysts of teaching and learning
   

2. •Providing multiple and varied “vicarious” opportunities to practice evidence-based instructional decision making and problem solving, as well as become more comfortable using the language of critical dialogue
   

3. •Promoting investigation of multiple perspectives and instructional strategies
   

4. 
   

2) Develop pedagogical and content knowledge by:

1. •Grounding theory in practice and building a strong working knowledge of the reading and writing process
   

2. •Increasing awareness of new instructional approaches and motivating teachers to experiment with them
   

3) Support learning communities by:

1. •Providing opportunities for learning from and with others and breaking out of the norm of teaching in isolation
   

2. •Developing common language around shared experiences
   

Decisions about MRT characteristics

Based on these stated learning purposes we have, over time, formulated a set of characteristics we believe the MRTs we select for inclusion in the database should possess.  Currently the PDS2 database houses 126 video cases.  These cases are built around anchor videos which are un-narrated and minimally edited records of literacy instruction including such components as interactive read alouds, small group guided reading lessons, phonics and word study lessons, and reading and writing workshops. Wherever possible we have tried to capture at least two consecutive days of instruction in classrooms and have also included: videotaped interviews with, or written reflections by, the participating teachers; collections of student work artifacts; snapshots of the physical environment; and basic contextual information. Based on feedback from our initial cohorts of users we have plans to do more longitudinal captures in select classrooms and, when possible, to include more formal and informal student data (such as running records, observational, and formative assessment data).  This, we hope, will add more contextual depth to the MRTs as well as help focus the analysis and discussion of the teaching on richer evidence of student behavior, needs, and learning. 

Perhaps the key design decision we have made is to include but not limit our selection to records that might be described as exemplars of best practices.  Instead we have made an effort to include records that capture authentic, everyday practice in a diverse range of classrooms that include the complexities and commonly encountered problems of classroom practice as they unfold.  This decision was guided by the reality that the “exemplary lesson” is such a rare bird that it is seldom sighted or captured, and by our observations that teachers respond to the credibility of the everyday records of practice. The dilemmas they present are “real world” and can be particularly motivating and provocative tools for stimulating analysis, debate, decision making, and reflection.  This decision does however challenge a prevailing norm of using video records to model best practices for the purposes of encouraging emulation, and although it may not have induced nightmares it does pose certain risks.  What if unquestioning viewers began to adopt what some worried were “problematic” aspects captured in the MRTs, or what if judgmental viewers simply dismissed the practice as sub-par and of no educative value?  Our on-going challenge is figuring out how to best assure that the MRTs will be used in a way that supports critical inquiry into teaching and learning while at the same time being respectful to the professionals whose work is represented in them.

Facilitating the use of MRTs

As Lee and others have already pointed out, using MRTs well is difficult and time consuming. Realizing this, and acknowledging that the in-service professional developers and literacy coaches we were designing PDS2 for would come to the task with different levels of expertise, we decided to author additional components for each MRT that we hoped would help professional developers facilitate their use in the reflective manner we intended.  These components include analytic commentary, possible questions for inquiry, suggestions for embedding the use of the MRTs in more structured learning sessions, annotated reference materials, and frequently asked questions.

Creating a case-based professional development curriculum for professional developers

In the process of helping professional developers and literacy coaches plan how they would facilitate MRT case discussions in their own school-based contexts we have learned that these components are helpful but often insufficient scaffolds.  We have come to the conclusion that before we can expect professional developers to use MRTs to have a deep impact on teacher development they need to first have more opportunities to engage in skillfully facilitated case discussions as learners.  This realization has prompted us to shift our focus away from using PDS2 MRTs for teacher development to concentrating first on using them for the professional development of the professional developers themselves.  We are currently developing longitudinal multimedia records of coaching, teaching and learning which we hope to develop into a well specified case-based curriculum for the development of highly effective school-based coaches and teacher educators.

Looming issues

I would echo Barry’s concerns about the need to work through quality control, privacy, and intellectual property issues, particularly if we hope to make these resources accessible at scale through some sort of commercialization.