CIDREE 2014

"International Seminar on Teacher Video-training : Design, uses and study of video-training devices"

(Lyon, January 21-22-23rd, 2014)

Topic context and project rationale
Program of the seminar 2014

Video materials are more and more used in initial and long-life teacher training at an international scale, so that “video-based professional development” has become a common term in the scientific literature of the field, despite of a lack of research evidence (Brophy, 2004 ; Gaudin & Chaliès, 2011 ; Sherin, 2004). A plurality of training practices can be observed and systematic studies are being conducted in order to try to identify the most efficient ones. The literature is full of quantitative studies evaluating the differential effects generated by two or three independent variables, most of the time judging from the nature of the video materials: video of oneself vs video of another (Seidel, Stürmer, Blomberg, Kobarg & Schwindt, 2011), video of a known colleague vs video of an unknown colleague (Zhang, Lundeberg, Koehler, & Eberhardt, 2011), subject of the video vs subject of the teacher (Blomberg, Stürmer & Seidel, 2011), etc. Other studies, fewer, deal with training and educational practices (e.g. Seidel, Blomberg & Renkl, 2013) or learning goals (e.g. Blomberg, Sherin, Renkl, Glogger, & Seidel, 2013). Moreover, despite a few publications synthetizing training effects and advices (e.g. Blomberg, Renkl, Sherin, Borko & Seidel, 2013), the field remains atomized although teacher video-training has been studied for fifteen years. This is due to the recurrent difficulty of linking multiple variables influencing practices with multiple possible effects on professional development. Also, the latest researches focus on the effects on the development of their ability to observe and reflect from teaching situations, considered as a key indicator of learning (e.g. Blomberg, Sherin, Renkl, Glogger & Seidel, 2013). This ability is considered as evidence of one’s skill in thinking productively about instruction (Davis, 2006) and is strongly linked to teaching efficiency (Kersting, Givvin, Sotelo, & Stigler, 2010 ; Santagata, Gallimore, & Stigler, 2005 ; van Es & Sherin, 2002), experts being better than novices in doing it (Hammerness, Darling- Hammond & Shulman, 2002 ; Berliner, 1991). Authors even think that the development of the skill to reflect and deliberate judging from a teaching situation should be at the center of teacher education (e.g. Hiebert et al. 2007), whereas others highlight rather the importance of training teachers with materials adapted from real work activity and work rules and concerns (e.g. Flandin & Ria, 2012 ; Gaudin & Chaliès, 2011), and design video-training devices with such theoretical backgrounds1 (Picard & Ria, 2011 ; Leblanc & Ria, accepted). It seems very important now to take stock of this emerging body of research evidence and to discuss it at a European scale so that evidence based video-training instructions could be operationalised within various cultural, theoretical and methodological settings.

As an prolongation of these two study days, the second consensus conference will devoted to video training.

CIDREE 2013

27, 28 and 29 March 2013, the first CIDREE network meeting took place in the IFE of Lyon. The theme focused on accelerating the professional development of teachers through video training.

Context elements

Judging from the actual and global necessity to foster innovation concerning teachers’ training, Estonian and Scottish research teams solicited French colleagues of IFÉ-ENS de Lyon for collaborations on video-training issues, being aware of IFÉ’s work on these questions (thanks to last CIDREE event in France, November 2011). That is why, as a first milestone, we decided to organize an international study visit aiming to make European researchers and training device designers share their knowledge and practices about teachers video-training, and to present the design workflow of IFÉ’s NéoPass@ction platform.

Participants concerns

The participants filled in a form to explain their concerns and expectations towards this study visit: the results show that these are mostly about theory, methodology and, most of all, trainers training. Therefore, we ask within the NéoPass@ction Scientific Steering Group the most skilled persons in each of those topics to participate. Moreover, the study visit is planned during IFÉ’s national trainers’ training on video-training (March 27-28th), that will permit visitors to see how NéoPass@ction design is continued in trainer’s training on one hand, and in taking trainers’ feedbacks into account on the other hand, in order to understand how they use it in their everyday professional activity and what are their needs to design efficient training sessions.

Aim of the study visit

By explicating IFÉ’s NéoPass@ction design experience and mutualising different European design experiences or projects, the aim is to :

• share different approaches and present to the visitors IFÉ’s scientific programme based on the analysis of real work activity of teachers
• acculturate the visitors to IFÉ’s method of designing video-training resources, continued in the study of trainers and trainees’ uses
• collectively discuss current, future and possible collaborations and studies about video-training to enrich each others and open new fields of research and resources conception

To do this, visitors will especially be precisely informed about the different and complementary tasks that have to be led together to ensure the coherence of the whole NéoPass@ction engineering.

At the end of the three days, in the final meeting, we will take stock of what the study visit has brought both to the visitors and to the hosts and imagine together a relevant form of follow-up to promote innovative teachers training devices such as video-training at a national and international scale (technology transfer, tutoring in training design, comparative studies on teaching intervention, on teachers’ training, etc.)