New Applications for Multimedia Cases: Promoting Reflective Practice in Preservice Teacher Education

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the use of multimedia cases for the purposes of preservice teacher preparation. Case-based learning typically involves an analysis of a teaching scenario followed by a discussion of issues that emerge. While this kind of activity is consistent with theories of situated learning and social constructivism, it usually casts the preservice teacher in the role of a detached observer who studies and critiques some aspect of another teacher's lesson. It is proposed that it may be advantageous to personalize case methods by focusing preservice teachers more directly on their own pedagogical decision-making processes. This article describes an innovative study in which teacher candidates' immediate reactions to videotaped teaching scenarios were recorded and made the subject of personal and group analyses. Results from the research suggest that this approach has the potential to help candidates develop deeper insights into their own classroom practice. ********** Korthagen and Kessels (1999) argued that one of the central problems with teacher education is that the theoretical body of knowledge taught in schools of education is not the kind of knowledge that teachers draw upon while teaching. For the most part, teacher education programs emphasize knowledge that is abstract, systematized, and independent of specific instructional settings. Unfortunately, this kind of knowledge does not readily come to mind during classroom practice. Teachers are constantly immersed in complex situations in which they need quick, concrete answers to a wide range of pressing problems. In such circumstances, the decisions they make are rarely the product of careful deliberation or the judicious weighing of educational principles, constructivist or otherwise. Instead, decisions are often the split-second product of emotion, needs, values, habit, and a sense of the affordances and constraints of a situation. While on some occasions it may be possible to reflect briefly in the midst of acting ("reflection-inaction"; Schon, 1987), most teacher behavior during a lesson appears to be driven by the instructor's immediate personal perceptions (Korthagen & Kessels). Decisions are often made automatically in reaction to the situation-at-hand. Given the "in action" realities of teaching, Schon (1987) recommended that schools of education redesign their programs to help new teachers more deeply reflect upon their own classroom behaviors and their reactions to teaching situations. Accordingly, this article describes a professional development activity in which teacher candidates respond quickly to authentic instructional scenarios, and then analyze their responses in small groups. The activity is organized around a multimedia case study of an elementary science lesson. On four occasions while viewing the lesson, the candidates are asked to describe, as quickly as possible, how they would personally respond to the situation facing the onscreen teacher. They are to do this without consulting others, and with minimal reflection. Once these initial reactions are recorded, the preservice teachers meet in small groups to discuss the relative strengths and weaknesses of their responses. During this phase of the activity, the learners can construct, or coconstruct, new responses to replace their initial intuitive ones. The intent of the exercise is to help teacher candidates develop a deeper awareness of their own reactions to real-life instructional scenarios and to encourage them to consider alternative instructional strategies. The following questions guided the research: 1. To what extent do preservice teachers feel they have time to think about the decisions they make while teaching? Do they feel they have time to reflect on the problems they encounter? 2. To what extent, and in what ways, do preservice teachers modify their immediate personal responses to the case teaching scenarios after reflection and discussion? …