Observing Classrooms Using Technology

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Observing Classrooms Using Technology

• Heather C. Hill
• Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Why use technology to capture classroom
instruction?

• Define technology
• 1970s, Cooley and Leinhardt videotaped classrooms
  for the Instructional Dimensions Study
• Since then, many uses of recorded classroom
  observations to enrich / enlighten
• Deborah Loewenberg Ball / Magdalene Lamperts
  self-study of mathematics teaching
• TIMSS video study (Stigler and Hiebert)
• Video clubs (Sherin and colleagues) direct
  feedback on teaching (CLASS My Teaching Partner)

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Advantages of technology (2010)

• To understand instruction
• International comparisons
• Local comparisons
• Re-watching enables fine-grained analysis of what
  occurs in math classrooms

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Unpacking instruction

• Graciano
• 8th grade
• Students are supposed to find and interpret the
  slope of the line
• Going over homework
• Problem Phone company charges 0.25 per minute.
  Graphthe cost per minute, find the slope of the
  line
• Question What do you see upon watching the
  tape once? What would you want to know if you saw
  it again?

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Graciano
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Graciano

• What did you see?
• Do you want to see it again?

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Advantages of technology (2010)

• To understand
• International comparisons
• Local comparisons
• Re-watching enables fine-grained analysis of what
  occurs in math classrooms
• To improve
• Take teachers out of the moment to reflect on
  their own teaching
• Provide direct feedback to teachers for
  improvement
• Major advantage Objective

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Advantages of technology 2011?

• To monitor, evaluate and reward?
• Existing system of teacher evaluation is very,
  very broken
• Most evaluations not done by content experts
• Most teachers get positive evaluations (97 in
  Boston and LA)
• Anecdotal evidence that many principals do not
  even observe teachers, or observe for very long
• Yet we know from our studies and others that
  mathematics instruction in the U.S. is of
  variable quality
• Some very, very poor

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Advantages of technology 2011?

• Proposal Use technology to monitor performance
  of beginning teachers of mathematics
• Use information to
• Counsel some out of teaching, or teaching
  mathematics
• Funnel teachers to professional development
  specifically targeted to weaknesses
• Identify outstanding teachers for
  leadership/specialist positions

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Challenges to this vision

• Need a cheap but high-quality way to capture
  teaching
• Graciano lesson 800
• To scale this proposal, need captures at about
  150/lesson
• Need good-quality audio, also board capture
• Need capacity to handle/process video
• As it comes in
• As it is coded by objective raters (capacity)
• Need wrap-around data (teacher interviews,
  artifacts such as textbook materials)

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Challenges to this vision

• Need studies that show what video cannot capture
• What does live observation afford that videotape
  does not?
• Are we penalizing some teachers unfairly?
• Instruments (!)
• MQI, CLASS, PLATO, need others.
• Generalizability studies to determine teacher
  reliability, number of lessons required, best
  rater configurations
• Implementation
• How do you use this with real teachers, real
  principals, real HR departments?

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The Capacity to Support (2010)

• Lots of research projects experimenting with
  homemade solutions (Flips, laptops, iPhones)
• Companies like thereNow, Teachscape have made
  inroads into cheap, remote

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Trying this at homeissues

• Operator vs. no operator camera
• Former gives you much more flexibility, but is
  more expensive
• Level of video detail required for the type of
  information you wish to gather
• Do you need penstroke board capture? Do you need
  shots of student reactions? Just the teacher?
• One vs. two camera solutions
• The Make or Break Audio

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Conclusions

• Is this technologys time?
• Certainly for small- moderate-scale research
  projects, professional development
• For evaluation? Hard to tell
• History of reforms being eaten by the system
• But strong need for better identification and
  accountability