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Strategy Three: Reflection on Practice
The third strategy also relies on digital video to document prospective teachers' practices and reflections. In light of McDiarmid's (1990) claim that we cannot shape young teachers' practices until we have helped novice teachers understand the limits of their own learning, methods students are required to tell their own personal autobiographies of science learning. Most of my methods students have reported experiencing poor science instruction and have had few positive science-teaching models in their personal histories. In an attempt to help pre-service elementary teachers express their widespread frustration with science and their desire to learn alternative methods, I ask students to produce autobiographical iMovies in the first week of the science methods course as they read from such provocative authors as Kohl (1984), Jackson (1986), Ayers (1990), Ball (1988) and other teacher-scholars and reflect upon their own science experiences. Preservice teachers also tape each other teaching children and then reflect on their lessons as they edit their videos with two peers. After producing their own desktop videos, prospective teachers are better able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their own knowledge and experiences. In accord with narrative inquiry methods (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Cortazzi, 1993), they identify specific aspects of strong science teaching and create their own personal metaphors for science teaching that connect with assigned readings. For example, having students describe their learning about their teaching as similar to "riding a bike" or "grinding gears" helps preservice teachers to communicate their struggles and insights from literature more poignantly. They also share their personal histories with the class, which seems to establish camaraderie amongst collaborative small groups.
As a culminating task for the methods course, preservice teachers edit a final five-minute video that depicts their learning process as an emerging science teacher. In these videos prospective teachers illustrate their understanding of children's thinking (strategy one), defend their pedagogical choices (strategy two), and provide evidence of their success. This third strategy serves as a way they communicate to one another how well they have addressed children's thinking in the lessons they had spent the semester planning and teaching. Rich discussions follow when the students share videos depicting themselves employing a variety of strategies, exploring children's thinking through open-ended questions, providing evidence contrary to common-sense thinking, and soliciting commentary between children about competing ideas. (Link to iMovie, example 3.)
As a result of these assignments, I have observed changes in actual teaching practices. Prospective teachers not only attend to the children's ideas they record in interviews, they also attempt to emulate in their lessons the teaching practices observed earlier in the semester. They incorporate in their lessons more mathematics and writing strategies than past students have done, and they report applying strategies learned in science methods to other lessons in their teaching placements (e.g.; facilitating a math or reading lesson). Students also author lessons that represent more authentic inquiry for children. In addition, students are better able to use alternative frameworks to place teaching issues within a larger context of value-laden educational settings. For example, students have always been asked in this methods course to critique available teaching resources with respect to topics of their choice. After interviewing students and conducting their analyses using iMovie, prospective science teachers are more astute at identifying weaknesses in available lesson plans.
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