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Some Exploratory Uses of InteractiveVideo in Teacher Education: Designingand Presenting Interactive VideoSequences to Primary Student TeachersGareth Rees Harvard aa School of Education , Exeter University , UKPublished online: 09 Jul 2006.

To cite this article: Gareth Rees Harvard (1990) Some Exploratory Uses of Interactive Videoin Teacher Education: Designing and Presenting Interactive Video Sequences to PrimaryStudent Teachers, Innovations in Education & Training International, 27:2, 155-173, DOI:10.1080/1355800900270204

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Some Exploratory Uses of Interactive Video in TeacherEducation: Designing and Presenting Interactive VideoSequences to Primary Student TeachersGareth Rees Harvard, School of Education, Exeter University, UK

SUMMARY

This study examines the potential use of interactive video in promoting Primary students'thinking about, and their interpretation of, various classroom episodes as a means of makingthem more aware of the processes of learning how to teach. Implicit in the design of teacher-education programmes are certain assumptions about the nature and growth of teacherknowledge. Our interactive video programmes are designed to explore the main features of thatknowledge using Shulman's distinction between subject-matter and pedagogical knowledge.Each programme has been designed to represent different aspects of both types of knowledgeby using a range of exemplars of typical primary classroom practices. The interactive learningtasks are intended to encourage students to describe, analyse and evaluate various teachingepisodes by comparing alternative images of practice, by considering the appropriateness ofparticular classroom activities and through discussing aspects of their own practice, using adetailed set of teaching-practice criteria.

INTRODUCTION — A CONTEXT FORLEARNING AND INTERACTIVE VIDEO

In this study we report on some preliminaryfindings on the potential use of interactive video(IV) in teacher education. An IV programmewas used with Primary students in the first phaseof their four-year BA (Hons) course, whicheffectively covers the first four terms of theirPrimary programme. Within this phase of theircourse the students spend considerable time inschools involved in a serial practice — schoolexperience in term one, a three-week block ofteaching experience in term two, and their firstteaching practice in term four. This pattern ofschool-based work is designed to give studentsincreasing familiarization with and responsibilityfor teaching in primary classrooms. Their PrimaryStudies course is made up of various curriculumcomponents — language, mathematics, science,

expressive arts and physical education. Thesecourses and the school-based programme are inte-grated with a core course on aspects of 'Teachingand Learning in Primary Classrooms'; this dealswith the concepts underpinning the basic skills ofclassroom management and organization, variousteaching skills and children's learning strategies.

The study is part of a more comprehensive investi-gation into how student teachers learn how toteach and acquire the necessary knowledge basefor teaching. The use of IV was an extension ofsome exploratory work that was already going onin one of our research centres — The InformationTechnology and Curriculum Centre — in whichconsiderable progress had already been madein designing IV programmes on mathematicalproblem-solving (Wright, 1987), and the trial useand evaluation of available videodiscs on a widerange of topics and subject matter, for bothprimary and secondary pupils.

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The IV system involved us in combining acomputer and videodisc player, and in selectingand editing relevant extracts from availabledatabases on videodisc as exemplars of typicalprimary classroom practice. The computerprogram consisted of a directory with a series ofmenus which could then be played in any sequence.We are still in the early stages of designing pro-grammes for different purposes and deciding onhow content should be sequenced and presented.More recently, we have considered how studentactivity should be provided for so that activelearning is taking place. Inevitably, this willinvolve us in exploiting the full technical potentialof IV systems for the educational purpose ofmoving up the levels of interactivity that changethe learner's role from that of passive respondentto controller of the programmes. Laurillard (1987)considers the structuring of IV sequences to becentral to the desired balance between studentand programme control. We are striving to givestudents a range of choices of content and greaterflexibility within video sequences. We see IVeventually becoming a means of independentlearning within the context of students' profes-sional learning.

This paper reports on the trial use of IV to locate,sequence and present exemplars and longerepisodes of typical, effective primary classroompractices. The exemplars are intended to portrayvarious classroom management and organizationskills, a range of teaching and pupil learningstrategies and to develop students' understandingof the concepts underpinning them. For thispurpose we decided to use video sequences as anintegral part of an interactive learning tutorial,involving other types of material to complementand extend the video programmes' content. Webelieve that this pattern of working has enabled usto develop the student teacher's inclination andcapacity to engage in the sort of intellectualdialogue and principled action required foreffective and reflective teaching. The main vehiclefor learning is discussion that fosters under-standings of knowledge about teaching anddevelops frameworks or 'schemas' (Desforges,1989) of teaching and learning. These techniquesare designed to elicit and develop such 'schemas'for learning how to teach, so that students canregularly think about, and frequently test, theirprofessional judgements. But first we need toknow more about the pedagogical design for IV

and how it can be introduced through existingforms of teaching and learning.

THE ADVANTAGES OF INTERACTIVEVIDEO AS A MEANS OF TEACHING ANDLEARNING

Interactive video seems to have some distinctadvantages as a teaching medium over more con-ventional methods: it assumes that an individuallearner will interact with a programme, althoughwe have used it with small and large groups ofstudents. Ultimately, when sufficient databasesbecome available on videodisc and more sophisti-cated software allows the students to plot theirown route through a programme, then we candefine several levels or forms of interactivity. Itwill become possible to move up the levels ofinteractivity so that the learner role changes fromthat of passive respondent to controller of theprogramme. We would hope, too, to vary thecomplexity of the programmes to involve moreevaluation of responses, embedded questions andpermanent records of students' thinking patternswhich determine the type, quality and sequence offurther learning, possibly by using Microtext tokeep a log of responses.

Interactive video also offers those who are respon-sible for designing professional course syllabusesand programmes within teacher education, asignificant conceptual-observational element thatallows students to become familiar with andinteract at various levels of abstraction with awhole range of varied models of teaching andclassroom procedures. These programmes can beintroduced at different strategic points in thestudents' professional training, for example, justprior to school or teaching experiences. It is notalways possible for tutors to provide students withany kind of worthwhile response on the validity oftheir observations: IV will allow groups of studentsto observe, discuss, compare and evaluate wholesets of classroom episodes both individually andwith those tutors who are directly responsiblefor their professional and curriculum coursesand teaching practices. This enables tutors andstudents to develop shared perspectives, acommon language to describe classroom eventsand a more comfortable familiarity with theinstitution's teaching criteria. A corollary of this isthat students, too, will have the opportunity to

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discuss the use of IV as a teaching medium along-side other more conventional techniques, therebyestablishing as a principle of procedure, thechance to question a particular course's or tutor'spedagogy.

More particularly, IV has the capacity to pursuesimultaneously the objectives of discussing theconceptual basis of various teaching skills •— suchas collaborative problem-solving, explanations,enquiry and investigation work — and presentvideotaped models of teacher activity for theacquisition of more basic teaching skills, such asthose to do with classroom organization andmanagement. Eventually, we hope to establish alibrary of systematically chosen tapes of classroomevents for use in tutorials and to accompanyindependent and distance-learning packages.Certainly, in initial training the availability oftapes of classroom episodes will accomplish manyof the objectives of students' early classroomobservation activities. We have also used suchsequences in a more sophisticated way as part of a'curriculum decision-making' course with fourth-year students, involving them in a conceptualanalysis and evaluation of different models ofteaching.

We intend to use such programmes more inten-sively with first- and second-year students to helpthem identify the content and configuration ofcritical activity structures and routines in effectiveprimary classrooms, as preparation for and,reflection on, their school-based experiences. Butdesigning IV programmes is a challenging anddemanding task. Crucial decisions need to bemade about the relative balance between visualimages and text as well as the general format forpresentation. More fundamental, is the need towork on the ratio of instructions, questions andexemplars, and their location and frequency withinthe programme. The purpose for thoughtfulediting of such programmes is to achieve a usefuland appropriate balance of these elements so thatwe finish up with a well-integrated sequence ofexemplars, episodes and interactive learningactivities. For example, we have found that anovercrowded or imbalanced programme caneffectively destroy the continuity and coherencethat IV is designed to achieve. Currently, we areexploring the varieties of computer-video playerformats and discovering the type of editorialexpertise required in the design of IV tutorials and

authoring software. We are trying to keep asensible balance between an emphasis on boththe technical and pedagogical design featuresof IV. For our purpose the programmes must beeducationally useful in that they help and en-courage students:

— to think constructively and reflect on their ownand others' practices by increasing familiari-zation with exemplars;

— to relate practice to basic principles of pro-cedure in classrooms;

— to make provisional generalizations aboutclassroom teaching;

— by promoting self-evaluation of the students'teaching competences and an understanding ofthe criteria that govern them;

— by acting out the roles of surrogate teacher andobserver.

In striving for the optimal settings for the use of IVin teacher education, we decided early on to test itsuse separately and as part of an integrated learningsystem. We are convinced that IV is best used tosupplement and not to supplant other teachingmethods. This decision freed us to explore thenature and quality of different forms and levels ofinteractivity by experimenting with the designformat for each individual programme — some ofthese will be described later on. Although thegeneral format we are currently using for IVprogrammes limits us to rather low levels of inter-activity, we have explored ways of augmenting theIV sequences with printed material, examples ofchildren's work and teacher case-studies; this is inorder to elaborate students' thinking on the variousvideo episodes, which has then enabled us toprompt students to reflect on what they have seen,heard and said. We refer to these extended con-versations, that contrast sharply with the moreimmediate and spontaneous responses to the IVprogramme, as 'reflective staging-posts' in anextended tutorial. Students are encouraged topractise a form of reflection called 'rehearsal'(Weiss and Loude, 1989), which involves students'discourse about events that have occurred, aboutevents presented by IV and their discussion of thepossibility of future actions. As students talk toother students or a tutor, or write about theirresponses, they begin to make sense of expectedand unexpected classroom events and draw pro-visional generalizations which can inform theirfuture practice.

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We are also trying out various formats to help uskeep permanent records of students' reactions andcomments by using tape recorders and word-processors. Students have already commentedon the usefulness of these sessions as a basisfor making plans for action, examining theirassumptions about teaching and learning, andeven of monitoring shifting attitudes, questioningtaken-for-granted values and reorganizing pro-fessional relevant 'schemas' (Desforges, 1989).We have tried to focus on the format and structureof the interaction as well as the information, withrelatively simple sets of images that can be playedin various sequences.

The other facet of planning and designing IVprogrammes is the nature of the students' learningtask. We have tried to vary the combinations ofvisual images, text and commentaries as a meansof controlling the nature and quality of the learningtasks on a gradient of less and more demandingthinking-learning processes. The simpler tasksinvolve the student in identifying or 'cueing-in' toparticular instances of teacher or pupil behaviourand in discriminating between formal and informalteaching strategies, before moving on to moreambitious tasks that involve generating hypothesesabout teacher and pupil behaviours and makingmore sophisticated judgements about under-pinning concepts. In this way we can ensure thatstudents' thinking about, or reflection on, class-room practices involves them examining some oftheir own assumptions about classroom teachingand learning.

The content of the IV programmes was madeup of a series of exemplars portraying typicaland real classroom episodes. We selected exem-plars for three categories of classroom practice —management, support and exchange routines —referring respectively to discipline routines, asuperstructure within which the social environ-ment and behaviours are either clearly denned andwell known, or not; to those behaviours andactions necessary for a teaching-learning episodeto take place; and to the purpose and quality ofthe interactive behaviours between pupils andteachers and among pupils while they are engagedin learning tasks. Table 1 shows a catalogue ofthe categories of classroom practice for whichwe gathered exemplars to include in our IVprogrammes.

Table 1. Exemplars of classroom practices andprocesses

Management and support routines with wholeclass or large groups:

— teachers' organization of materials and spacein different classrooms;

— teachers' basic classroom management pro-cedures before, during and after completionof children's work;

— teachers' monitoring of pupil activity onspecific tasks;

— teachers' expositions, demonstrations andexplanations.

Exchange routines with small groups:

— teachers' intervention strategies;

— teachers' monitoring individual pupils' work;

— pupils conducting their own investigations;

— pupils organizing and managing practicalwork in different curriculum areas;

— pupils' responding to questions and offeringexplanations;

— teachers extending pupils' thinking in scienceand maths;

— teachers' ineffective or inappropriate inter-ventions.

Physically, we set up the IV tutorial with thisconfiguration of hardware which allowed us tochoose different types of interaction betweencomputer, students and tutors (see Figure 1).Basically it allows for individual and group work;spontaneous and reflective comments both duringand after each sequence; and a tutor's presenceto adjudicate on disagreements and misunder-standings, and to monitor students' options tooverride parts of sequences. The structure ofthe video sequences did not depend on a linearpresentation and it was possible to stop the videoat any point and choose the next action from alimited menu of options or sample sequences fromanother videodisc that illustrated the same theme.

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Videodiscplayer

MONITOR

Microcomputer

i

STUDENT

Disc drive

±Individual responses to the programme and/ordiscussion with other students or a tutor, referringto appropriate resource material, eg teachingcriteria, samples of pupils' work, etc.

Discussions are taped, transcribed and usedin follow-up tutorials or teaching episodesrehearsed and practised in professional/curriculum workshops.

Figure 1. The interactive video learning system

Eventually, we hope to design a system thatincreases students' control in using videodiscsso that we are varying the teaching from fairlydidactic to more exploratory strategies. Theaccessibility of information on videodisc iscrucial, and even in this tutor-edited pro-gramme it is still possible to give students somedegree of control over what they do and when— especially when the tutorial also includesadditional materials to complement the videoprogramme.

THE DESIGN OF INTERACTIVE VIDEOPROGRAMMES: CONTENT AND TASKS

This IV learning system consists of four pro-grammes, all of which examine some aspect of theknowledge base for the student teacher. Inselecting and editing appropriate content for eachprogramme, we have adopted (but not rigidlyinterpreted) Shulman's distinction between

'subject-matter' and 'pedagogical' knowledge,and his further sub-division of pedagogical into'general' and 'content' knowledge. For thepurposes of this exploratory study, we interpretsubject matter knowledge simply as 'content'knowledge — factual information, centralconcepts and organizing principles. Pedagogical'general' knowledge refers to the strategies andbroad principles of classroom management andorganization; pedagogical 'content' knowledgegoes beyond subject matter per se to thedimension of subject matter knowledge forteaching and, refers particularly to the most usefulforms of representation of particular topics,the most powerful analogies, explanations,illustrations, examples and demonstrations. Ourchief aim was to test the usefulness of IV foreliciting the nature of students' knowledge baseabout classroom teaching and pupils' learningactivities, and to determine whether or howsubject matter knowledge critically influences

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students' pedagogical orientations and decisions.The following points and Table 2 give an outlineof the whole programme that was designed toinvestigate the research questions suggested byLaurillard (1987):

1. How should content be presented and sequenced?2. How should student activity be provided for?3. How should alternation between receptive and

active modes of learning be organized?

Programme 1: Pedagogical general knowledgeexemplified by four teacher-pupil interactionsand evaluated with criteria for 'structuredconversation'

The first IV programme was an ambitious attemptto elicit some of the more detailed aspects ofstudents' general schematic knowledge of thenature and purpose of teacher-pupil interaction,and more specific pedagogical knowledge ofconversation and dialogue. The purpose of theprogramme was to present students with a care-fully edited selection of teacher-pupil interactionsthat varied in the balance of teacher and pupilresponsibility for sustaining an activity and for thequality of conversation that particular social

participation structures (Erickson, 1982) allowedor discouraged. The critical feature in the effect-iveness or otherwise of the type of interaction andthe quality of any ensuing talk could be judged on:

— how the teachers gained access to the pupil-problem activity without disrupting it;

— having gained access, what role the teachersthen played in participating, ie, in becomingpart of the action and the problem;

— how the teachers consciously or inadvertentlydominated and therefore closed the exchange,or how they listened to pupils' perspectives,explanations and questions, thereby openingup conversations.

The teachers portrayed in the sequences adopteddifferent roles. Those ranged from direct inter-vention and control to more carefully negotiatedentries into the pupils' activity either by watching,listening and then deciding to join in, or by waitingto be invited into the conversation. The studentswere being asked to judge the effectiveness of theteachers' interventions and subsequent inter-actions and conversations: they were left to definethe purpose of the intervention, the nature andtype of interaction, and the level of conversation,

Table 2. The contents and pedagogical design aspects of an interactive video learning system to explore students'knowledge base for teaching

Categories of teacher knowledge: Pedagogical and Subject matter

Programme 1:

Pedagogical general Teacher-pupil interactions and 'structured' conversations

Programme 2:

Pedagogical general A visit to a primary classroom

Programme 3:

Pedagogical content knowledge An environmental studies visit to a local community

Programme 4:

Subject-matter knowledge and pedagogicalcontent knowledge

Primary Science topic of 'food chains'

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or any other relevant features of the exchanges.Four exemplars of teacher-pupil interaction fromdifferent curriculum areas were chosen and pre-sented in a random sequence which the studentswere free to reorganize if they wished to do so. Infact, we gave them the specific task of arrangingthe sequences of the least and most effectiveteaching strategies. The curriculum areas repre-sented in the sequence were mathematics, scienceand drama/movement. Table 3 gives a brief des-cription of each sequence.

Our purpose in choosing exemplars from differentcurriculum areas was to test students' judgementon the appropriateness or otherwise of teachers'strategies for monitoring and sustaining inde-pendent pupil learning on structured tasks and,more specifically, to consider how different formsof interaction and different social participationstructures determine the nature and quality ofteacher-pupil dialogue. We wondered whetherstudents would operate at a level of abstractionthat enabled them to distinguish between differentpatterns of teacher-pupil interaction by judging

the nature and quality of conversational processessuch as initiation, turn-taking, extending andelaborating thinking in the form of a Socraticdialogue. These features were represented in oneof our teaching dimensions called 'structuredconversation', with its levels of accompanyingcriteria for judging students' competence in it.Structured conversation refers to teaching that iscarried out through purposeful talk and throughdialogue that probes and extends pupils' thinking.It is often associated directly with investigative andpractical work. Its success is dependent on beingable to sustain atmosphere; it requires the agilityof mind afforded by flexibly stored knowledge;and it must acknowledge the importance of theteacher maintaining the children's engagement inexploring a variety of directions and in adopting achairperson's role in fostering a group's thoughtfulconsiderations of appropriate concepts and issues.

Erickson (1982) refers to the improvisationalnature of conversation as being especially relevantfor understanding interactive teaching becauseconversation is the major vehicle for teaching, and

Table 3. The contents of the four sequences designed to exemplify types of teacher-pupil interactions with a specific focuson the quality and purpose of the teachers' talk and dialogue with the pupils

Sequence 1: Mathematics investigation

A small group of pupils reach a point when they need to record the results of a measuringtask; the relevant resources and materials are available but the teacher assumes that thepupils need help in making the transition into recording.

Sequence 2: Science investigation

A small group of pupils are observing and identifying various artefacts of animals and birdsand actual samples of owl pellets, etc, with the help of a microscope. They are engrossedin the activity and the teacher approaches to ask how they are getting on.

Sequence 3: Science experiment

Two girls have constructed a variety of cogs and are being encouraged to speculate and totest some hypotheses about principles of movement of different types of cogs.

Sequence 4: A whole class are taking part in a music/dance/movement activity with benches andropes; the teacher tries to encourage them to imagine more precisely what movementscharacterize jungle animals.

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he applies this improvisational framework to ananalysis of classroom discourse. He locates schoollessons midway between formal forms of inter-action such as ritual and the informal spontaneityof everyday conversation in which the allocationof communicative rights and obligations arenegotiable among the participants. However, partof the teacher's skill lies in accommodating thisform of interaction within the context of subjectmatter and classroom constraints. Erickson (1982)views most lessons as 'structured conversations',in which such face-to-face interaction remainsimprovisational and locally produced. This inter-action is framed by the comprehensive task andparticipation structures that provide localizedcriteria for adequate performance.

We asked the students to offer their interpretationsof these samples of classroom discourse andthen to abstract the criteria they would use tojudge their appropriateness and to explain theirdecisions. We characterize interactions moreformally than Erickson (1982) and with studentteachers tend to play down but not reject theimprovisational character of conversations byassuming that teachers' interactions must bepurposeful and governed by the successfulcompletion of particular tasks and processes. Thequestion is whether students teachers are not onlysensitive to but aware of the effects of variousforms of social participation in judging their ownand others' effectiveness in classroom interactionsand conversations, as well as the necessary balancebetween spontaneous and directed discussion.

The IV tutorial was set up with a group of studentsand consisted of five types of tasks intended toengage them in different levels of abstractionand reasoning processes, from simpler to morecomplex reflexivity. The tasks were as follows:

— to describe what is seen and discuss its keyfeatures;

— to justify and explain those selections;— to compare judgements;— to relate to personal experiences;— to compare and examine critically the criteria

for judging this teaching dimension.

The interactive learning sequence invited studentsto follow the following activities:

— to view the four segments of teaching in theiroriginal sequence;

— to write down their initial judgements of the

nature and quality of the teachers' interactiveteaching;

— to review or replay the segments in a preferredorder so that they were able to compare andcontrast various teacher strategies.

— the students compared their initial commentsand judgements, discussing similarities anddifferences;

— each student then justified their rating ofteacher effectiveness in terms of the natureand quality of interaction.

— students categorized various statements toform criteria to judge more and less effectiveranges of teacher competence;

— they referred to a set of simplified criteria —four levels •— comparing them with their own,to define orientation and emphases.

— students referred to the complete set of criteriafor the teaching skill 'structured conversations'and evaluated their effectiveness — compre-hensibility, practical relevance, etc — forsupervising students on teaching practice;

— finally, they referred to the fully fledgedteaching practice criteria and judged theirappropriateness when compared with theirown; similarities and differences were discussedand suitable amendments made to produce afinal set of criteria.

We discovered some interesting differencesamong students in what Yinger (1987) calls the'language of practice', including its 'logic' or'grammar' for thought and action, and how suchstructures make up the students' system ofmeaning — in this case, guidelines for identifyingand judging effective practice in one dimension ofskilled teaching characterized as 'structuredconversations'. We started with students gener-ating their own guidelines for judging effectivepractice, before comparing them with others'guidelines for their intrinsic 'logic' or 'grammar'and localized system of meaning for competentpractice in this teaching dimension. This sequenceis part of a more comprehensive package ofprogrammes using IV, that is designed to test themedium's effectiveness in eliciting key features ofstudents' embedded structures of meaning forclassroom teaching and learning, as well as ameans of generating teaching practice criteria.

Although the chosen sequences differed in manysuperficial respects there were also more subtle

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differences, some of which could only be inferredby carefully examining the teachers' behaviour. Itwas also possible to distinguish some of the keyfeatures of the teachers' 'language of practice'both by what was being said and done, and by whatwas being represented chiefly in orientation,emphases, movement and manipulation. Theteachers varied in the nature and quality of theirpatterns of interaction and in the quality of guidedor improvised conversation, ranging from tellingpupils what to do, to supporting and extendingpupil activity, to probing pupils' understanding ofwhat they were doing. There was a clear contrastbetween two of the teachers in their strategies andpurpose for interaction: the one intervening ratherthan interacting to control and structure the pupils'activity and although what she says gives theimpression that she is making valuable enquiries ofthe children, her actions repudiate this; the otherteacher listening attentively before deciding howto gain access to the pupil-problem activity andfocusing his attention on one child's perspectives,prompting him or her to invite the teacher tojoin in his or her investigations. The remainingsequences contain elements of both teacher controland pupil autonomy, but in a more attenuatedform than the other two. Interestingly, all teachershave a specific agenda for the lesson but adhere toand deviate from it in varying degrees with theexception of one teacher who sticks rigidly anduncompromisingly to her script and activitystructure. It's important to note that structuredconversation cannot be totally scripted and whatdoes it mean, anyway, to follow a script?

The content and procedures used in this activityseemed to create the most interest in the studentsand the tutors: the use of a spiral sequence ofactivities beginning with IV and culminating inanalysing teaching practice criteria encouraged allparticipants to question some of the unexaminedassumptions about children, learning and subjectmatter, and teaching. A follow-up interviewwith students also revealed that they connectedknowledge to their own previous and futureactions, thereby avoiding the problems of over-emphasizing either action or knowledge that isnot tied to action (Barnes, 1989). The interviewfocused on the students' capacity to make senseof situations by comparing what they had seen tosituations that they had previously encounteredon their teaching practice. We think that thisprovides a platform from which students can

postulate alternative interpretations of, andways to respond to, situations, from which theycan reflect and possibly revise their initial under-standings.

Programme 2: Pedagogical general knowledgeexemplified by a visit to a primary classroombefore and during the day's work

The purpose of this IV programme was to discoverwhat students cue into and how when observingand interpreting various classroom practices,procedures and processes. Copeland (1980) andCalderhead (1987; 1989) describe how, in theinitial periods of classroom observation, studentteachers often have difficulty cueing into classroomprocesses. Calderhead (1989) concludes that,'They lack the concepts with which to perceivewhat is going on in classrooms . . . and needguidance to learn to discriminate the noise andactivity of classroom life.' The findings of theearlier studies prompted us to experiment with IVas a direct method of familiarizing students in theearly part of their course with classroom workingprocedures and, possibly more critically, ofeliciting students' prior conceptions of teaching,learning, learners and subject matter. When setin the wider context of an interactive learningtutorial, IV can offer immediate access to episodesof typical classrooms and help students developthe ability to see what is happening, to interpretevents, and ultimately, to generate and consideralternatives. But all this depends on buildingelaborate schemata (Nisbett and Ross, 1980;Posner, 1978; Desforges, 1989), that tie theoreticaland practical knowledge to action. This pro-gramme attempts to do that.

This particular programme consists of an extendedseries of teaching episodes and more general class-room events in a .typical but effectively managedand respectful primary classroom. It was used withfour groups of five Primary students representingdifferent main subjects: humanities, mathematics,science and English. The programme's contentswere described only as a visit to a primary class-room. They students were asked to view thevarious sequences, stopping and starting themwhenever they wished to do so. They were alsoasked to write down what they saw and to commenton the types of activities going on. The tutorpresent stopped the video sequence at threestrategic points in the programme to allow the

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students to reflect on what they had seen.

The content and structure of the programmeincluded two features of classroom practice:patterns of organization and general managementroutines and procedures; and pupils engaged inspecific learning activities (see Table 4).

After working through the IV programme duringwhich they were prompted to answer specificquestions that focused mainly on how the teachermonitored the pupils' activities and the nature ofpupil participation in various activities, eachstudent presented his or her comments andreactions to the group, after which there was ageneral discussion of similarities and differences instudents' interpretations of the sequences. It was atthis point that students revealed their conceptionsof teaching and learning, some of which weredeeply embedded in previous experiences aspupils, some of which were simple notions ofteaching as telling, but predominantly there was aconcern for pupils' engagement in and under-standing of what they were being asked or allowedto do. All students were sensitive to the dangers ofa teacher dominating exchanges and considered itessential for pupils to work independently, askquestions and learn through practical experiences.All discussions were recorded and subsequentlytranscribed, but we also envisage using a relatedtechnique that would lead naturally into using a'video statements' approach. We could justifyusing similar sequences to help students cue intosignificant events in classrooms and begin tounderstand the principles and concepts thatunderpin classroom processes and practices.

Programme 3: Students' pedagogical knowledgeexemplified in their responses to anenvironmental studies visit to a local community

The next two IV sequences in our study of students'pedagogical knowledge are more concerned withpedagogical content knowledge than with peda-gogical general knowledge (Grossman, 1987;Shulman, 1987). Shulman (1986) defines pedagog-ical content knowledge as those regularly taughttopics in one's subject area; the most useful formsof representation of these ideas; and the mostpowerful analogies, illustrations, examples,explanations and demonstrations that make itcomprehensible to others. It must also includeknowledge of children and of the curriculum; anunderstanding of what makes the learning of

Table 4. The contents of the programme exemplified insequences of classroom patterns of teaching and learning

General organization and management:

— the classroom's physical organization;

— the location and availability of resources;

— the composition of groups of pupils;

— basic procedures for using materials andequipment;

— basic working patterns in various areas of thecurriculum.

Specific curriculum activities:

— the teacher telling a story to the whole class;

— the teacher discussing a story with a group ofchildren;

— a practical mathematics activity;

— a drama and music activity;

— children practising painting and manipulativeskills;

— investigation work in science;

— an art and craft activity;

— elements of the day's structured programme.

specific topics easy or difficult; and the conceptionsand preconceptions that pupils of different agesand backgrounds bring with them to the learningof those most frequently taught lessons.

This first programme samples some of these aspectsof students' pedagogical content knowledge,but focuses particularly on the children's andteachers' forms of representation of key ideas intopics arising out of a visit to the local community.The whole programme is divided into two parts:the first consists of eight sequences showingchildren visiting different sites and locationsin the local community; the second shows threesequences of the children back in the classroompreparing for, organizing and conducting follow-up activities on their visit. This part of theprogramme is interesting in that it portrays varyingdegrees of teacher and pupil control over learning.For example, of the three follow-up activities only

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the first involves the direct supervision of theteacher; the others are prepared, organized andpresented by the pupils. The interactive pro-gramme was designed along rather different linesfrom previous programmes to include a morestructured learning sequence. The student had twomajor tasks: the first was to generate possible linesof enquiry and curriculum activities for classroomuse from each of the eight location visits shown onthe first interactive video sequence; to evaluate thenature and quality of the children's follow-upwork; and to suggest criteria to justify theirevaluations. The second task asked the students tomatch their criteria for judging the nature andquality of children's learning" against thoserecommended for use on students' teachingpractices and to reconcile any major differences.The sequence showing the classroom activities wasthen reviewed using that portion of the institution'steaching practice criteria that dealt with the natureand quality of children's learning activity, and thatinvolved a group discussion during which studentswere invited to compare their set of criteria withthose provided by the evaluation of teachingpractice document as a means of encouragingthem to articulate their knowledge and reasoningmethods.

Table 5 is a schematic representation of theprogramme's design and content; it has beenedited and divided into eight segments. In order tovary the level of engagement with the video'scontent we devised three types of 'interaction' ineach segment's design; the 'cue', the 'prompt' and'reflective staging-post'. The 'cue' represented thesets of images on video; the 'prompts' consistedeither of instructions or questions from twosources — the one featured on screen as part of theprogramme and an external 'prompt' provided bythe other students or tutors at various points in theprogramme; and, finally, the 'reflective staging-posts' during which students were asked to articu-late their knowledge and their reasoning methodsto enable the tutor to monitor what they wereselecting for consideration and how they weremaking their selection. In this way, they werelearning how to rehearse and reflect on the natureand direction of their thinking. This form of'scaffolding' makes up the complete interactivelearning tutorial, thereby ensuring that studentsreflected on their judgements and responses.This also provided a form of self- and collaborativereflection.

Table 5. The content and structure of an interactivelearning tutorial: forms and levels of interactivity withinteractive video interspersed with reflective 'staging-

posts' during and after the programme

Sequences 1-8

Cue: Sequences 1 and 2: Part of the old villageand graveyard.

Cue: Sequence 3: Renovated buildings.

Cue: Sequences 4 and 5: Occupations-buildingsite and fishery.

Cue: Sequences 6 and 7: Transport/leisure —bus-depot and community centre.

Cue: Sequence 8: Map of the community.

General prompts 'on-screen'

Prompt: What knowledge content do youconsider to be important in sequences1-3,4-5 and 6-8?

Prompt: What type of curriculum activity doyou consider appropriate for thatcontent?

Prompt: How do you think the various sequencescan be thematically linked?

Prompt: What activities would you ask thechildren to do during each sequence?

Prompt: What information do you thinkthe children should gather in eachsequence?

Prompt: What questions would you ask thepupils about this sequence?

Prompt: Are there any ideas that you considerto be too difficult for the children?

Response elaboration: tutor-initiated 'prompts'

Reflective 'staging-posts' after sequences 1-3,4-5 and 6-8.

Prompt: Which particular features of what youhave just seen would you choose toelaborate for the pupils?

Prompt: Would you represent the contentdifferently? How?

Prompt: What particular content would youemphasize in your follow-up class-room work?

Prompt: How could you assess what the childrenhad learned?

Prompt: How does this programme fit in withyour own concept of environmentalstudies and the more specific conceptof a community? Offer an explanation.

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In an attempt to promote these different levels ofinteractivity — immediate response to the sets ofimages, elaborating on why particular contentswere chosen, and reflecting on those choices withother students — we feel confident that thisapproach offers a less obtrusive way of coding theflow of underlying thought processes by apparenttopic, perceived plans and associated pedagogicalknowledge. It also coerces the tutor to providevalid on-the-spot evidence of the thinkingassociated with the communication of expertknowledge. The discourse is often explicitlyreflexive in that students and tutors are expectedto explain their responses and to disclose thereasoning processes that have led them to specificconclusions. We have yet to experiment withdifferent forms of discourse (as suggested byZeichner, 1985) when conducting supervisoryconferences, but this framework resembles, inpart, Schon's notion of a 'reflective ladder'between 'coach' and student (Schon, 1987). Oneimmediate advantage of devising tutorials withboth self- and collaborative reflection is thatwe reduce the variability of meanings and improvethe precision of descriptions of actual classroomevents. Such techniques should provide a powerfulmeans of moving students from the use of general-ized to richer levels of description in whichrelationships are perceived and students arecapable of differentiating among concepts. Theflexibility of our levels of interaction would seemnot only to coincide neatly with different levelsof abstraction, but also to provide a means ofdetecting flaws in students' reasonings.

Programme 4: Subject-matter and pedagogicalcontent knowledge exemplified in how studentsdecide to teach the topic of 'food chains'

The final programme consisted of two parts:the first investigated students' subject-matterknowledge on the topic of 'food chains'; and thesecond part examined the claim that subject-matterknowledge and understanding critically determinesteachers' effectiveness in teaching a topic (Wilsonand Wineburg, 1988). The whole programme con-sisted of two different presentations—these were

— a Primary group of 'knowledgeable' sciencestudents; and

— a group of 'less knowledgeable' students whosemain subjects were English and humanities.

The scientists received the more elaborate

programme in which we finely tuned their existingknowledge by elaborating on it and using variousforms of representation to help the students toreinforce and consolidate key ideas and relation-ships. The non-scientist group were not referred toany specific subject-matter knowledge at any stagein the programme: they worked only on theirexisting knowledge of the topic. The design of thewhole interactive learning programme is shown inTable 6.

Table 6. The interactive sequence for student teachers'representation of subject knowledge and pedagogicalcontent knowledge — ie, proposed teaching-learning

activities

(A) SCIENCE STUDENTS:

Facilitating the structuring and restructuring ofsubject-matter knowledge:Phase 1: An 'advance organizer' of the topic's key

concepts.Phase 2: An IV sequence depicting key concepts

and processes in food chains portrayed asan animated cartoon sequence with textand commentary.

Representation of subject-matter knowledge:Phase 3: Concept mapping — students represent

their topic knowledge on food chains in theform of a concept map showing key conceptsand relationships.

Phase 4: An IV sequence showing an examplar ofteachers' pedagogical content knowledge(teaching an aspect of food chains).

Transformation and representation of subject matterfor teaching purposes:Phase 5: Select and represent what you would teach

on food chains.Phase 6: How would you help pupils understand the

subject matter?

(B) NON-SCIENCE STUDENTS:

Transformation and representation of subject-matterknowledge:Phase 1: Concept mapping — students' represent-

ation of their knowledge of food chains.

Representation of subject-matter knowledge aspedagogical content knowledgePhase 2: An interactive video sequence showing the

teaching of a key idea in food chains.

Transformation and representation of subject matterfor teaching purposes:Phase 3: Represent your selection of subject matter

for teaching.Phase 4: How would you represent the subject

matter for teaching, eg teacher and pupilactivity?

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Exploratory Uses of IV in Teacher Education 167

Phases 5 and 6 for the scientists and phases 3and 4 for the non-scientists examined students'pedagogical content knowledge — ie, the selectedcontent and activities designed to help pupilsdevelop a flexible understanding of the topicand the most useful forms of representation ofparticular ideas; these are referred to here as'instructional representations' (McDermaid et al.,1989) and cover activities, examples, questions,analogies, pictures, diagrams, metaphors, etc.The previous phases—phases 1-4 for the scientistsand phase 1 only for the non-scientists — wereconcerned with students' representation of theirsubject-matter knowledge. Both groups wereintroduced to that part of the programme dealingwith pedagogical content knowledge in the form ofan exemplary activity of a teacher representingone of the key concepts of food chains to a wholeclass of primary children.

Although the main feature of the programme wasthe IV sequences, we also tested alternative waysof involving students interactively by using conceptmaps and advance organizers. The whole pro-gramme was designed to discover the differencesin the content and structure of students' subject-matter knowledge, before asking them to adapt itfor teaching purposes. We predicted that the finelytuned and knowledgeable scientists' group wouldhave a flexible, thoughtful and conceptual under-standing of their subject matter and that thiswould positively influence their capacity to posequestions, select tasks and make curricular choices— ie, they would have a better chance of beingable to help their pupils develop flexible under-standings of subject matter (in this case, that offood chains), if and when they understood theirsubject matter well. Thus, content knowledge,here, involves understanding ecosystems and theinterrelations of trophic levels in food chains,energy flow and habitats.

Our preliminary results show that having a flexibleand conceptual understanding of subject matterpredisposes student teachers to think more com-prehensively, and to set out to try to teach with theemphasis on explanation rather than on givingdescriptive accounts of the content. However,such knowledge is not necessarily sufficientlyflexible for it to be adapted for different levelsof abstraction, especially when it has to be taughtto novices. Certainly, in terms of practical class-room learning activities, it seems as if both the

scientist and the non-scientist groups are lessconfident and knowledgeable when deciding howbest to represent that knowledge to pupils — ie,in constructing and using instructional repre-sentations of subject-matter knowledge. The twogroups also seem to have less knowledge ofappropriate pedagogical devices such as analogies,simulations, diagrams, etc. A high level of subject-matter knowledge did not help the scientists togenerate particularly appropriate representationsfor communicating their own understandings,knowledge and experience to pupils. Neither werethey consistently more inventive in generatingtheir own forms of representation than the non-scientist group. However, it does seem as if the useof IV was partially effective in helping studentsfrom both groups to think about the pedagogicalpotential of available representations. The nextstage is to help students to use IV to judge theappropriateness of available representations forteaching specific subject-matter material atdifferent levels of abstraction and elaboration.

CONCLUSIONS AND FUTUREDIRECTIONS FOR RESEARCH

These experimental uses of IV convince us of itspower to explore and develop different aspects ofstudent teachers' knowledge base for teaching.Similarly, they provide us with reasonable accessto students' preconceptions of teaching andlearning by asking them to comment upon andinterpret a variety of teaching-learning episodes—for example, how and what students cue into whenviewing exemplars of classroom episodes andprocesses. We have used two of our programmesequences with students who were about to embarkon more systematic classroom observation andteaching on their school and teaching experiencesin year one of their course. We believe that thistechnique familiarizes them with classroompractices and processes and, at appropriate times,challenges their conceptions or 'schemas' ofteaching and learning. More specifically, IVsequences can be used to challenge the prevailingview among many students that teaching meanstelling and learning means remembering. Suchpreconceptions are not uncommon among studentteachers.

There is some tentative evidence from our studyto suggest that designing and conducting more

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interactive learning tutorials in which the use of IVfeatures prominently, may be one of the moreproductive alternative modes of teaching: it allowstutors to show students how various conceptsunderpinning aspects of classroom management,teaching strategies and pupils' learning processes,are interrelated. This is possible by locating,displaying and permutating exemplars or episodesof typical classroom practices, either for quickimpressions or more reflective comment.

Interactive video has provided us with someevidence of its potential in conceptual-obser-vational training — ie, as a means of directlyhelping student teachers acquire and practise theconcepts required to make sense of what is goingon in classrooms. Moreover, easy access to a bankof exemplars depicting typical and effectiveteaching offers 'the guidance that students need todiscriminate the noise and activity of classroomlife' (Calderhead, 1989).

This study has tended to concentrate on theidentification and selection of exemplars of thosepractices and skills that are of central importancein teaching, and on how to place them in pro-visional priority groups on the criterion of practicalsignificance. We have to ensure that studentteachers are engaged in practical tasks in whichthey have the requisite skills, knowledge and moti-vation to take part, and we should show and discusswith them how such activities will improve thoseskills and increase relevant areas of knowledge. Inthe process of using IV, we have been forced topay close attention to the link between identifyingand selecting skills to be taught and translatingthem into statements about teaching behaviour.An integral feature of the editing and designingprocesses involved in programming IV is having toshow clearly the practical implications of keyconcepts that can inform practice and point toskills that can be acted upon. In selecting variousexemplars for our programmes, we have found it adifficult but not an insurmountable task to identifythe behaviour or skill variables that enable us todiscriminate clearly between effective and lesseffective teachers and teaching. Eventually, wedecided to choose a range of exemplars depictingtypical teachers working within the normal con-straints of typical classrooms and not be toopreoccupied with exemplary, that is outstanding,teaching.

We have found that IV programmes can be

designed to explore and develop various aspects ofstudents' subject-matter knowledge — chiefly, thekey features of depth and organization in students'own conceptual understanding of particular topics.We have referred to an example of this in the 'foodchain' programme in which we compared thesubject-matter knowledge and understanding of'knowledgeable' with 'less knowledgeable'students. Ultimately, we hope to invite students touse IV to choose from appropriate databases, andfrom various permutations of examples, analogies,graphics and texts, as a means of helping themto generate all the instances they have in theirrepertoire for representing a particular topic intheir teaching. We have already seen how studentteachers can be helped to comment on andinterpret other teachers' representations —commenting on their usefulness and appropriate-ness — as a way of deepening their understandingabout how to help develop pupils' understandingof various topics and subjects.

Interactive video also provides easy access totypical classroom episodes and cases that reflectimages of teachers' practical knowledge at variouslevels of abstraction, ranging from the images andmetaphors teachers use to describe their modelsof teaching and classroom working procedures,to more discrete 'mental pictures' (Morine-Dershimer, 1979) of what is involved in teachingparticular skills, say, in mathematics, English andscience. IV also contributes directly to students'experiential basis of their own and others' teachingknowledge base by significantly enlarging theirepisodic, visual memories of real and typicalclassroom events and processes. Similarly,IV's easy editing facilities also allow tutors tointerweave exemplars of how subject specificknowledge is translated into subject matter forteaching — ie, to develop in students a pedagogicalunderstanding of subject matter.

Moreover, we believe that the design and contentof IV programmes, and the nature and quality ofthe accompanying learning tasks, may convinceand prove to students that not only will they beable to perform such tasks, given time to sample asufficient range of relevant examples, but also tolearn from them in planning future lessons. IV hasalso the capacity to pursue simultaneously anunderstanding of the conceptual bases of specificteaching skills and to provide appropriate modelsof them being practised and used in classrooms.

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Exploratory Uses of IV in Teacher Education 169

For example, we have found IV to be veryeffective in demonstrating an appropriate rangeof exemplars of teaching at various levels ofcompetence to reflect the form in which ourteaching practice criteria are designed and,subsequently, to engage students in various formsof reflection that teach them how to conduct self-evaluation and realistic goal-setting in their ownteaching.

Some of the typical problems that we normallyencounter in teacher education programmes —such as identifying and selecting relevant materials,teaching skills and classroom exemplars, judgingtheir appropriateness for student teachers atdifferent phases in their training, translating theseinto practical guidelines and criteria for use withstudents, and in considering the precise role oftutors in representing these forms of teacherknowledge to students — were largely resolved byusing IV in carefully structured tutorials. We havediscovered, too, the critical importance of IV inteaching students how subject matter can be repre-sented to pupils and that their own subject-matterknowledge at a theoretical level is organizeddifferently and stated more comprehensively thanthe same knowledge expressed and translated aspedagogy.

These issues have prompted us to consider morecarefully the pedagogical implications of designingIV programmes and, especially, in deciding howbest to integrate them into the wider context of aninteractive learning tutorial. For example, wehave used this technique to practise differentforms of reflection such as 'rehearsal' and 'inquiry',in which students discuss the events they have seenand attempt to draw provisional generalizationswhich may inform future practice. There areproblems, too, in deciding the optimal settings arefor using such materials and techniques in, forexample, deciding how and when to use IVseparately or as part of an integrated learningsystem, and in using IV with individuals or groupsof students. This study has helped us to documentsome of the problems that we have encountered inusing the medium of IV in teacher education, butit has also suggested some possible solutions tothem.

We discovered that the basic and recurring peda-gogical problem in conventional teaching — howto represent subject matter to the students —was, however, more easily resolved with IV

programmes. First, we found it easier to state theprogramme's skills in descriptive or prescriptiveterms rather than in hypothetical terms; secondly,in using IV we had more formats at our disposal touse in the design of a representation of a teachingepisode. A direct implication of using IV is that thecharacteristic semantic and structural features ofparticular skills can be exemplified through the useof exemplars and descriptions that correspond tothe dimensions of teaching and the language of ourteaching criteria for assessing students' teachingcompetencies. This means that we have achievedsome success in rationalizing IV's various elements— printed, audio and visual images, and graphics— in terms of generally accepted principles ofconcept learning in which we move carefully fromexemplars to underpinning concepts.

In designing interactive programmes and theiraccompanying tutorials we have found that we canoffer a secure 'scaffolding' that avoids students'knowledge structures becoming fragmented oroverloaded with newly learned ideas that areeasily forgotten. Such techniques and skills canbe also be used to reinforce, consolidate andchallenge students' 'schema' for teaching andlearning by the easy juxtaposition of exemplarsdesigned to highlight similarities and differences inteaching practices. This applies especially to thegradual construction and integration of students'pedagogical general and content knoweldge.Professional workshops, laboratory settings andIV can provide for further professional learningwhen the students are not out in schools. Forinstance, we have found that some students wereless confident, and seemed less knowledgeablethan others, when expected to demonstrate theirpedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1987)— the kind of examples, analogies, illustrations,explanations, demonstrations and metaphors thatare evidence of content knowledge in use — untilthey experienced some familiarization with suchtasks through the use of IV; this was achievedmainly by watching other teachers do them andthen discussing what was involved in building uplevels of mastery and competence in particularteaching skills, such as managing materials andproviding guided practice for pupils.

Interactive video seems ideally suited to portrayinghow this can be done, especially when cueing,coding or labelling of teachers' modelled activitiesis provided. For example, our programme

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involving four teachers' intervention strategiesprovided practice or discrimination training incoding teachers' behaviours. Such programmes alsoprovide tutors with opportunities to experimentwith and compare various modes of supervisoryfeedback, both to IV prompts and statements, andto more reflective prompts from the tutor or otherstudents. \Ve are primarily concerned at this stagein our research with students' thinking aboutteaching, and paricularly with the cognitivestrategies which teachers use to cope with class-room complexity.

Interactive video also offers a coherent cognitiveflow between thought and action, by providingmodels, concrete materials and real events. Inusing IV the learners are able to control the flow oftheir thinking by moving from concrete examplesto their representations of them and vice versa.For inexperienced teachers and students suchprogrammes can focus on particular content andways of representing that content in teaching it.The provision of prototypical units of teaching andexemplars — instances of teaching being modelled— leads logically to ways of practising andrehearsing those skills under Ihe guidance andsupervision of experienced practitioners. Wesuggest that this form of practice and rehearsalis also extended to the constant and systematicrescripting of activity plans and structures —conventionally called lesson notes—for classroomuse, so that we offer students an understanding ofwhat the whole performance of teaching looks like(Collins, Brown and Newman, 1989).

The availability of visual, audio, graphic andtextual modes of knowledge presentation enablesstudents to understand the interactive natureof these various types of representation — torecognize that several modes will exist concurrentlyin a problem-solving task. Also, pupils willroutinely use a variety of representations andsequences of representations as they work theirway through a problem, by reorganizing keyfeatures of the problem to understand more fullythe interrelationships between them. McDermaid(1989) suggests that 'because of the central rolethat representations play in enabling pupils tounderstand subject matter, teacher educatorsmust help beginning teachers develop good repre-sentations and judge the appropriateness ofexisting ones'. However, this presupposes thattutors have a sufficiently comprehensive repertoire

of representations themselves which they regularlyadapt and use in their own teaching. The IV pro-gramme on food chains, for example, helped us todemonstrate with students that rather than try toprovide them with ready-made representations,we could more confidently offer them a range ofrepresentations, consisting of graphics, pictures,analogies and explanations, that helps them tounderstand how to connect pupils with subjectmatter effectively. We were then able to go on tojudge the pedagogical potential of available repre-sentations to determine how well they fitted aparticular context.

One of the main implications of using IV as analternative mode of teaching is that eventually,after reasonable practice, students can assume amore active role in their professional learning and,in doing so, be better able to explore the crucialrole of their own and others' representations inlearning how to teach; they can also begin tomonitor the effect of the interactive nature ofvarious types of representations when planning forand preparing classroom activities. Using thenotion of representation connects subject matterand method, and demonstrates how teaching'strategies' themselves may intentionally andunintentionally 'teach' particular patterns ofthinking and doing. These may, or may not, beappropriate for that particular subject. Studentshave responded positively to the way in which IVcan be used to display a variety of representationsand sequences of representations in variouscurriculum areas as a means of judging the appro-priateness of various teaching methods andlearning activities.

These studies have involved us mainly in the peda-gogical design features of IV and their integrationinto other more typical forms of teaching. We nowknow much more about:

— some of the critical differences betweenselected components of instruction of inter-active media learning and more conventionalteaching techniques and learning processes;

— some of the important relationships that existamong types of learning and the degree andquality of different levels of interaction;

— the combination, timing and location of sets oftext and visual images within IV sequences andhow they promote or hinder learning.

We believe that there is sufficient evidence fromthis exploratory study, and sufficiently sound

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Exploratory Uses of IV in Teacher Education 171

evidence from the research literature, to offersome credibility to support the use of IV in teachereducation, but we need more information on howIV can be used to offer different types of reflectivelearning tasks and promote students' professionalunderstanding of classrooms. We feel sure that itcan offer much sharper focusing on teaching skillsthan conventional tutorial discussion, for example,and help students practise and reflect upon thosethinking and learning skills that will enable themto make more sense of their own and others'practice. Our preliminary work on the design andimplementation of IV programmes convinces us,and seems to reassure students, that it has thepower to promote reflective teaching and if usedover an extensive period of time could well improveour understanding of the processes of professionallearning. Apart from more extensive field-testingof our programmes, we have also tackled theproblem of innovation — the adoption and imple-mentation of IV and its rationale within a particularorganization and community. Inevitably, this re-quires provision for training staff; it also requirestheir willingness both to participate in and tocommit themselves enthusiastically to sustainingsuch programmes over time.

Recent research (Leinhardt, 1987; Leinhardtand Greeno, 1986; Hall, 1986), has suggested thatstudent teachers may learn in different andpreferred ways and that teacher educators need tothink about alternative approaches to students'professional learning. By devising differing typesof learning tasks at different phases in students'courses, we are more likely to get a detailedanalysis of how various critical and analytical skillsgrow and develop. IV, used separately or as part ofan integrated learning programme, can offer us apowerful means of analysing and evaluating class-room practices by 'alternative approaches anddesigns in teacher education' and the opportunityto 'test out both the realities and possibilities ofreflection in teacher education' (Calderhead,1989). Weiss and Loude (1989) propose howdifferent forms and interests of reflection can beanalysed for use in teacher education. Morespecifically, IV can help us to understand thenature and translation of subject-matter know-ledge into appropriate and flexible use in lessons.IV used within a wider context of interactivelearning tutorials and workshops, has the capacityto offer exemplary models of teaching that maywell foster students' professional learning and

their understanding of learning how to teach.Designing and using IV can also encourage tutorsto examine their own pedagogy and respond toBarnes who states that:

The challenge to teacher educators is to createprogrammes of initial preparation that developthe beginner's inclination and capacity to engagein the sort of intellectual dialogue and principledaction required for effective teaching. (Barnes,1989,p17)

The quality of the dialogue prompted by IVtutorials surpasses anything that can be achievedin more conventional tutorials. Potentially, theycan directly help students to learn to see, to judgeand to anticipate how they might act appropriatelyin similar situations. We should view teaching as'deliberate action' characterized by the ability toconnect knowledge to action — avoiding theproblems of over-emphasizing either section orknowledge that is not tied to action — and thecapacity to make sense of a situation by comparingit to situations that one has previously encountered.IV tutorials can begin to teach students this capacityto make sense of different situations, and encouragethem to postulate alternative interpretations of asituation and ways to respond. The complementaryuse of IV tutorials and school-based programmesshould encourage students to reflect on and, wherenecessary, revise their initial understandings. Webelieve that IV offers an opportunity to identifyexpert teachers' 'schemas' of teaching and to teachan appropriate analysis of those of student teachersin settings that are less complex but that are stilllinked to the underlying assumptions and beliefsenshrined in the education community's teachingcriteria and the principles of procedure that governtutors' pedagogy and various consultation andassessment procedures. Finally, we believe that wehave gone some way towards demonstrating howinteractive learning offers an appropriate measureof thoughtful confrontation that encouragesprospective teachers to question the assumptionsand beliefs they bring with them into teachereducation, and towards monitoring their futureprofessional growth and understanding of learninghow to teach.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The author wishes to acknowledge the help givenby Dr Mick Day in designing the IV programmes.

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Calderhead, J. (1987) Exploring Teachers'Thinking. Taylor and Frances, Philadelphia.

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Colins, A., Brown, A. L. and Newman, R. J.(1989) Cognitive apprenticeship: teaching thecraft of reading, writing and mathematics, inResnick, L. B. (ed) Cognition and Instruction,Erlbaum, Hillsdale, N.J.

Connelly, F. M. and Clandinin, D. J. (1986)Teachers as Curriculum Planners: Narratives ofExperience. Teachers College Press, New York.

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Exploratory Uses of IV in Teacher Education 173

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Gareth Rees Harvard is a lecturer in education.Before entering teacher education he was anadvisory teacher with the Birmingham Schools'Psychological Service. In teacher education he hasbeen responsible for coordinating students'school-based work; establishing a partnershipscheme with schools; organizing courses on

teaching and learning with a particular interest inthe psychological aspects of pupils' and students'learning; and, more recently, in trying out withteachers and students a new approach to teachingpractice supervision.

Address for correspondence: School of Education,Exeter University, Heavitree Road, Exeter EX12LU, UK.

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