LessonLab Research Institute

HOW TEACHERS LEARN FROM CLASSROOM VIDEO

Many programs are built to give teachers the opportunity to learn from "Best Practices." LessonLab also believes that much can be learned by studying examples of effective teaching. However, we do not believe in the common view that underlies most programs. This common view of how teachers learn from studying "best practices" goes something like this: Best practices are captured on video. Teachers watch the video, and then imitate the practice in their own classroom. One thing we are certain of is that teachers do not learn in this way. If only it were so simple.

LessonLab believes, first of all, that watching best practices may or may not be valuable, depending on what processes one engages in while watching them. Watching video can be like watching television-a passive experience. LessonLab's approach is to structure teachers' interactions with video examples and other artifacts of practice, coupled with highly-optimized application tools for interacting with video - the Visibility platform. With Visibility application tools, teachers learn disciplined ways of:

•	Describing practice-resulting in a shared language for discussing teaching and sharing professional knowledge, and in an expanding knowledge base of alternative pedagogical strategies; and
•	Analyzing practice-resulting in the ability to analyze content, students' learning, and pedagogical strategies; the inter-relationships among these domains; and in the professional judgment required to link what they learn to their own classroom practice.

They learn these skills through structured tasks that are derived from research-based analytical frameworks. Based on this view of how teachers learn is LessonLab's view of the kinds of examples teachers can learn from. Examples of effective practice are important, but equally important is that teachers are exposed to a variety of alternative examples, and that teachers study problematic classroom situations as well as examples of effective practice. The goal is not to imitate the examples but to analyze them, and by doing so to improve one's own practice.

The Visibility platform was developed specifically to support the kinds of professional learning activities described above. We started by identifying the barriers that impede bringing high quality professional development programs to scale, and then designed technology to overcome these barriers.

LessonLab Research Institute is the independent research arm of Achievement Solutions at Pearson. Our mission is to improve teaching and learning in K-12 classrooms.

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