Welcome to the WJETT blog
What is WJETT?
The WJETT blog or Warwick Journal of Education - Transforming Teaching blog is designed to encourage staff and students to disseminate good practice and to engage with their peers on academic cultural critique or areas of research that they find interesting. With the increased focus on ‘teachers as researchers’ in the sector, many qualified teachers are expected to publish the outcomes of any action research projects they undertake. The WJETT blog can be the first step on your journey towards publishing and enables you to experience publishing and reviewing in a friendly and supportive environment.
You will need to scroll down the page below the tags to see the posts.
Coaching using video – developing teachers internationally: challenges and opportunities
What we did:
Whilst there is tremendous value in learning face to face, there are some situations in which online learning is the only viable option: international teacher education is a case in point. With the growth of demand for HEIs in the UK to undertake teacher education and development internationally, the University of Warwick sought some practical solutions to developing teachers, often thousands of miles and many time zones away.
Using video to support teacher learning (Major and Watson, 2017) and reflection (Hamel and Viau-Guay, 2019) is not a new practice, but the teacher values (Centre for Teacher Education, 2022) that thread through our course and the bespoke approach to coaching at the University of Warwick shaped how we approached using this technology.
We wanted to develop some tools so that when video was utilised on platforms that had the capability to time stamp or pause either pre-recorded or live recordings of teachers, then make a variety of learning comments on this. We shaped the responses to encourage supportive, nurturing and developmental feed forward.
Where is it?
We selected a platform which had the capability for key stakeholders to live-record content (trainee teachers teaching, mentor and trainee coaching meetings) and / or examine pre-recorded content with a reflective and intellectually curious lens (Centre for Teacher Education, 2022). Comments from all stakeholders could then be time-stamped to aspects of practice and specific coaching or teaching attributes could be flagged and discussed within the platform comment facility. These were linked to our Professional Practice Units (PPU) which have a specific emphasis relating to their teacher education. This gave the opportunity for focussed, evidence-based reflections from mentor, mentee, and university professional; integrating closely theory and practice, as well as providing the opportunity to relate learner with readings and other content to support strengthening of the theory-practice link for all involved.
How it will be integrated into future practice?
As we develop our international course as well as look to expanding our remote programme into teacher education ‘cold spots’ across the UK, this platform could provide a useful tool for both teacher education and professional mentor development as well as a step change in how HEI colleagues may undertake part of their role as teacher educators.
Lessons Learnt:
Challenges
- When recording involved people under 16, there were significant barriers in terms of negotiating safeguarding concerns and approaches of individual schools across multiple legal jurisdictions. This is a challenge that the company providing the online platform is still developing in terms of support materials for schools.
- The wider issue around ethics for collecting data GDPR policies and CCTV protocols for under 16s proved to be an ongoing challenge and not one that was solved within the scope of this project.
Opportunities
- There were tremendous gains to be had in terms of purposeful and focussed teacher reflection on practice, as video proved a rich source of statistics and evidence on which to base a coaching conversation. It had the potential to give agency to teacher construction of their own learning as well as supporting coaches in their examinations of the ‘reality’ of the impact of the student teaching on the children’s learning (Knight, 2021).
References:
Centre for Teacher Education (2022) Developing an ambitious ITE Curriculum. Available at: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/cte/about/ite-curriculum/Link opens in a new window (Accessed: 3 March 2023).
Hamel, C. and Viau-Guay, A. (2019) ‘Using video to support teachers’ reflective practice: A literature review’, Cogent Education. Edited by B. Nkuyubwatsi, 6(1), p. 1673689. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/2331186X.2019.1673689Link opens in a new window.
Major, L. and Watson, S. (2017) ‘Using video to support in-service teacher professional development: the state of the field, limitations and possibilities’, Technology Pedagogy and Education, 27, p. In Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1475939X.2017.1361469Link opens in a new window.
Writing guidance
Can I write about anything in my blog post?
Yes pretty much. Academic cultural critique (Thomson and Mewburn, 2013) is always a good source of content for academic blogs. This can include (but is not limited to) comments and reflections on funding; higher education policy or academic life. You might also want to consider blogging about:
- Academic practice (Saper, 2006)
- Information and/or self-help advice
- Technical, teaching and careers advice
- Your research or practice
- How you’ve undertaken research
- The impact of research on your practice
- An area of research/practice that interests you
- Your teaching experiences/reflections
How long can my blog post be?
Each individual blog post should be no longer than 500 words. Long blocks of text are sometimes hard for readers to digest. Break up your content into shorter paragraphs, bullet points and lists whenever possible. Also include a list of keywords or tags as this makes it easier for Google to find your work.
Do I need to use citations?
No, this is a reflective piece so it does not need to include citations (but you obviously can include them if they are relevant).
Can I include links or images?
We would encourage you to include links to any articles that you have considered whilst writing your blog post. We also welcome the use of images (as long as you have permission to use them) as they can often help to illustrate a point and obviously will not be included in the word limit. Please remember this is a public site so if you want to include images of your students in your classes then you will need permission to do this.
What is the process for submitting a piece of work?
Your blog post should be emailed to A.Ball.1@warwick.ac.uk. Once the submission has been reviewed it will either be uploaded at the beginning of the next available week or sent back to you for editing if it requires amendments. You should then send the amended work to me once again and I will then upload it.