Pause and Reflect

How can teachers use video technology to accelerate their professional development?

One key approach, outlined in the Best Foot Forward Video Observation Toolkit released by the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard, is self-reflection: teachers reviewing videos of themselves in the classroom in order to assess accurately and deliberately their teaching style and lesson plans.

In general, self-reflection is challenging. It requires educators to analyze specific problems that they notice — and be ready to confront problems that they don’t notice. It also requires time to consider the best course of action. The toolkit offers three main ways that video self-analysis can help overcome both of those challenges:

• The positioning of cameras or microphones in a classroom allows a teacher to see and hear actions and comments that she otherwise might have missed.
• The ability to literally press “pause” gives her the time to carefully reflect on an obstacle she encountered during the lesson.
• The video recording retains all of the minute details of the lesson that she otherwise might have forgotten in the gap between teaching and reflecting.

Anticipating that some teachers may have trouble objectively analyzing their videos — who hasn’t cringed when hearing her own voice on an answering machine? — the toolkit offers assessment tips:

• Try not to be distracted by irrelevant details (no one is concerned with your haircut!), and try to keep your focus on your students’ learning, rather than on your actions.
• Establish a goal for your teaching, such as “I want to increase the frequency of higher order thinking questions I ask in class.”
• Focus on specific evidence in the video that pertains to your goal — but when making an assessment of your lesson, don’t forget the background knowledge you already have about your students.
• At the end of your self-analysis, make a plan to implement changes you want to make. Even better, videotape yourself making the changes.

Self-Reflection Resources

• Teacher Video Selfie Module [PDF]. Best Foot Forward’s guided instructional module for teachers to practice effective self-reflection.
• Self-Analysis Rubric [PDF]. A simple rubric for teachers to assess how well they’ve filtered out noisy or distracting details to focus on what matters.

Additional Resources

• Read a Usable Knowledge summary of the Best Foot Forward project.
• Read about the release of the Video Observation Toolkit.
• Peruse the Best Foot Forward project’s latest research results.
• Download the full video observation toolkit.

Graphic courtesy of the Best Foot Forward project at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University.

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