Teachers’ reflective practice via video enquiry: the usefulness of peers, teacher mentors and video as a method to enhance the enculturation and reflection of pre-service teachers

This paper describes a collaborative project between Stranmillis University College (HEI), Belfast and Lumen Christi College, Derry in Northern Ireland. The project involved a Community of Learners (CoL) made up of nine undergraduates in the first of the four years of their Bachelor of Education degree course. The aim was to explore the merits of engaging students with teacher mentors at the school, who would facilitate an observational and reflective role in relation to the students’ first-time teaching experience in the classroom. Additionally, the students were paired off and co-taught a lesson in both Science and Mathematics. Video recordings were carried out by each student while the other taught the lesson. The students then were required to edit the video and prepare a montage that demonstrated their competency in relation to the subject and the teaching methods. Furthermore, the students were then required to produce either and/or a VideoPaper (VP) or a multimedia learning object (MLO) (using the Generative Learning Object Maker [GLO] tool). The MLO’s encapsulate the video as evidence, augmented by audio reflective narrations; recordings of both their mentors observations and reflections and their peer observations and reflections. The VP, allowed the students to match theory to their practice by way of inserting play buttons at precise and predetermined timeslots on the video time line. The experiences of the students were captured by questionnaires and focus group interviews. This paper outlines the richness in terms of reflection from multiple interpretations of the video evidence or practice as recorded by the students in the classroom. It considers what actually constitutes feedback, situated learning, reflective practice and collaboration in terms of the holistic approach to the development of pre-service teacher training the in the U.K and Ireland.