Abstract:

The potential of using videotaped lesson sequences for teacher education has been investigated in multiple studies (Brouwer 2014; Beisiegel, Mitchell & Hill 2018). Videos are authentic, repeatedly viewable sources (Körkkö 2020; Santagata & Taylor 2018) that "represent both subject-specific and generic aspects of instruction and thus have the potential to activate knowledge of both these aspects" (Blomberg, Stürmer & Seidel 2011: 1133). In this regard, they are often used to promote student teachers' professional vision, which consists of selective attention or noticing and knowledge-based reasoning (Sherin & van Es 2008; Blomberg, Stürmer & Seidel 2011; Wyss, Rosenberg & Bührer 2021). Both processes, i.e., perceiving certain scenes and elaborating on professional knowledge, are regarded as central competencies of successful teachers.

In the preparatory seminar in Didactics of Literature (subject German) for the practical phase in the Master's program at TU Dortmund University, video analysis is used at several points, including an initial voluntary familiarization with the newly developed, accessible video platform. In the context of this first access at the beginning of the seminar, the students are asked to identify successful and less successful scenes within a short sequence by marking them with given and self-elaborated codes. Moreover, they had the task of writing down pro and opposing arguments in memos and noting didactic alternatives in further comments.

The proposed paper presents the results of a study in which student outcomes (n=45) arising in this assignment were examined, answering two research questions:
1) Do the students focus on overall design elements of the sequence on a general level, or do they analyze them specifically from a literature-didactic perspective? What situations do they identify as successful or less successful?
2) Can they suggest sufficiently reasonable didactic alternatives for the course?

For this purpose, a total of 175 codings and 116 annotations will be analyzed using computer-based content analysis (Kuckartz & Rädiker 2019). The results of the first research questions include a comparison of the students and an expert’s analysis. We see that the students noticed didactic relevant moments correctly. Nevertheless, the students hardly referred to literature didactical terms. This usage could have elicited the depth and quality of their argumentation. A sample scene for this is about transparency on the lesson's learning goal, which the students rarely evaluate correctly. The reason for this can be seen in their lack of subject didactic reference systems and vocabulary so that they are not precise in their analysis and had only a little wording for the formulation of adequate didactic alternatives.

Keywords:

Reflection, video-based learning, professional vision.