Video Research in the Learning Sciences
Video Research in the Learning Sciences
Monday, March 3, 2008
An affiliated wiki-based portal for video researchers is being designed at NYU.
Ricki Goldman: My submission for our meeting on multimedia records of teaching meeting is the 2007 book Video Research in the Learning Sciences edited by Ricki Goldman, Roy Pea, Bridget Barron, and Sharon Derry as a case in point. Learning science researchers from diverse perspectives and methodological approaches explore how they use digital video and a range of online software technologies in studies concerning learning and teaching. The chapters include rich cases of multimedia records, analysis tools, and digital archives. Several of the authors in this book are attending the meeting and others may already be familiar with the book.
Here is a short excerpt from the preface of the book.
Video Research in the Learning Sciences aims to deepen our understanding of theory, methods, and practices for using video to add new layers of meaning to scholarship in the learning sciences. Our authors explore the breadth of work underway in the learning sciences that is devoted to fostering the art, science and practices of video as a way of knowing about and sharing learning, teaching, and educational processes. As a community of authors using video, we seek to advance what takes place when researchers use video to record, annotate and reflect on their work with teachers and learners in reflexive, epistemological, and hermeneutical collaborative learning endeavors.
Our primary concern is to contribute both to the science of learning through in-depth video studies of human interaction in learning environments—whether classrooms or other contexts—and the uses of video for creating descriptive, explanatory, or expository accounts of learning and teaching. Our volume is dedicated to taking stock of the growing field and frontiers of video research, both theoretically and methodologically, and to push the technological envelope in designing the next generation of digital video tools.
The book is designed around four main sections with a cornerstone chapter in each part written by one of the four editors; each editor has taken the lead role in shaping one of the sections. A cornerstone chapter to each part introduces and synthesizes the cluster of chapters articulating the major themes common to that cornerstone. This design acts as a unifying role for readers to get a handle on a complex subject. The four cornerstones chapters are:
I. Theoretical frameworks for video research
This cornerstone chapter invites readers to think about how video affects the nature of conducting research when it is used not only to describe, represent, analyze, interpret data on learning and teaching, but also to build learning communities and cultures. In this section, authors discuss a range of theoretical and methodological frames and visions—from ethnography, semiotics, conversational analysis, aesthetics, pleasure, and phenomenology— to conduct and present research on learning and teaching in the learning sciences.
II. Video research on peer, family, and informal learning
This cornerstone chapter illustrates how video based analysis has been an important tool for advancing theories and understanding of learning that takes place in peer-based or family-based interactions, and for capturing learning processes that arise in informal learning settings such as after-school clubs, museums and technology learning centers.
III. Video research on classroom and teacher learning
This cornerstone chapter focuses on research and theory regarding how and what teachers and students learn through study of complex, real world practices that are captured and represented through digital video media. Implications for the design of video-based environments and activities for classroom learning and teacher professional development will also be addressed.
III. Video collaboratories and technical futures
This cornerstone chapter explores and researchers the value of new functionalities for representation, reflection, interaction and collaboration with digital video to support research and communications in the learning sciences.
The chapters within the cornerstones are by researchers who have made what we consider to be lasting contributions to video research. These authors are currently engaged in advanced theoretical, methodological, and design projects, and each has addressed fundamental topics in digital video use in the learning sciences within research studies over the past few decades. Moreover, each has been and is currently engaged in using video and designing video-based research environments for research purposes.