The use of Video Analysis in a Personnel Preparation Program for Teachers of Students who are Visually Impaired

A school of education should be measured by the performance of its students in real classrooms. Too often, this is rarely the case: schools of education tend to focus on course work, and their graduates, not surprisingly, report that much of this preparation is irrelevant to the challenges they really face in front of children. (Hunter College School of Education, n.d., para 1) Video analysis affords the observer the opportunity to capture and analyze videos of teaching practices, so that the observer can review, analyze, and synthesize specific examples of teaching in authentic classroom settings (Rich & Hannafin, 2009). The student teaching experience is the prime opportunity during the personnel preparation program in which student teachers have the opportunity to practice the skills they acquired from all the course work and field observations they completed during the program. The use of video analysis as a tool documenting and evaluating the performance of student teachers during their student teaching placements is one powerful tool providing feedback and allowing student teachers to reflect on their performance with children in the classroom. This tool can be used to isolate individual moments of teaching excellence, which then can be shared with other student teachers to promote best practices. In the field of personnel preparation of teachers of students with visual impairments, little has been done to catalog and archive video clips that demonstrate best practices novice teachers to model. With the current shortage of teachers of students with visual impairments and orientation and mobility specialists in the United States, it is incumbent on personnel preparation programs to find creative and cost-effective approaches to increase the number of graduates. Given the huge time requirement instructors to be physically present when supervising student teachers, the use of video technology provides an opportunity supervisors to observe students remotely, which can save costs and time, and may ultimately produce more in the field. HUNTER COLLEGE VIDEO ANALYSIS OF TEACHING PROJECT The best research available suggests that what first-year teachers value most in their training and preparation are their in-school student teaching experiences (Calandra, Brantley-Dias, Lee, & Fox, 2009). Nothing else--the textbooks they read, the theories they study, or the examinations they take--comes close to being as highly valued. Yet, it is this aspect of preparation that many schools of education de-emphasize. Senior faculty members rarely participate in student teaching experiences; instead, adjuncts are sent to observe the student teachers a few times, and then, at some later date, share the notes they took during these observations with the students. With no formal training, inconsistent rubrics, and a natural desire not to embarrass their students in one-on-one discussions, the adjuncts present feedback to the students that is often fragmented. The Hunter College Video Analysis of Teaching Project initiative prepares faculty for the new era of value-added assessment of our graduates (Hunter College School of Education, n.d., para 4). Through the support of generous donations to the Hunter College School of Education, the Video Analysis of Teaching Project has grown into an innovative model of teacher preparation in which a digital video recording is made of each graduating student during a 45-minute session of his or her student teaching. In addition, all students are required to post and view 5-minute video clips of themselves teaching in the classroom. Accompanying each student teaching experience is a seminar that is designed to address all aspects of student teaching. This seminar can be held using a face-to-face, hybrid, or online model. The student teacher and a supervising faculty member analyze the 45-minute video recordings closely, with a focus on multiple aspects of content delivery and classroom techniques. …