INDEXING FOR HETS VIDEO PROJECT
Review practice, grow professionalism.
The Work
Our bottom line was a professional conversation about teaching practice. At the indexing stage, we wanted to have a meaningful, professional evidence based discussion. We wanted it to deepen our understanding of practices that we value as educators. In order to drive the conversation, our project team went into classrooms around the state and collected evidence of teacher practice. After, we gathered teams of educational professionals to review the videos. We did this in order to find examples of practice that we deemed as evidence or "shareworthy". With each viewing of these videos, we hope to foster a conversation that makes a difference for current and future teachers of Hawaii.
During the HETS Video Project indexing sessions, we gathered educators for multiple days of workshops. Participants had what ranged from a deep working knowledge of professional frameworks for observing instructional practice, to being 10+ year veterans of the classroom responsible for demonstrating the frameworks in practice. . Participants were represented by the following groups:
We would like to acknowledge their efforts and dedication to supporting teacher's professional learning as we met our program goal: to create a library of videos for educators across our state to engage in professional learning conversations tied to effective teaching practices.
We used the following tools and processes to help us index the video library:
Using the guidance of professional frameworks and professional expectations of teacher in Hawaii public schools, we have identified the following common elements of effective teaching practice in classroom practice:
1. Developing Classroom Culture - Teachers should ensure that students value learning and are aware of the expectations, including learning targets, outcomes, and evaluative measures. Additionally, teachers should work to support students in developing into quality learners, including: effort, commitment, initiative, evaluation, accuracy, and, accountability.
2. Behavior Management - Teachers are responsible for setting norms and behavioral expectations. Additionally, teachers prevent, monitor, and respond to student behaviors appropriately and effectively.
3. Questioning and Discussion - Teachers should use a variety of questioning techniques to encourage critical and well reasoned thinking. Rigorous and challenging questions deepen students comprehension of a topic and support their achievement of learning goals. Quality questions are the foundation of meaningful student participation and dialogue.
4. Student Engagement - Teachers are responsible for creating a learning environment where students are actively seeking knowledge, skills, and experiences. This can be encouraged by designing effective and challenging instruction, managing scaffolding, chunking, and timing of instructional activities, providing meaningful and diverse instructional materials, and creating diverse opportunities for interpersonal and intrapersonal engagement.
5. Assessing Student Learning - Teachers need to know whether or not students are learning in order to develop insight into whether or not instruction is effective or needs to be adjusted. Having clear learning targets, assessment criteria, and instruction designed to reach those targets is essential in this process. Additionally, teachers should monitor student progress in learning tasks and providing meaningful and timely feedback.
*The research and videos produced have been through a rigorous consent approval process, and have been reviewed by University of Hawaii - Office of Research Compliance and the Hawaii Department of Education-Office of Data Governance. We have done our best to respect the participants.
The Utility - This work will be shared across organizations serving pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators. The videos, stamped for evidence of effective practice, will be accessible via the internet to all interested parties.
The Frame - There will be many uses, interpretations, and lenses for this footage across the future. Generally speaking, we are looking for evidence of effective practice to share with others. We respect that we will have different interpretations of what's in the videos, but its is our expectation that when we come together and agree on something, we will want share this. In the spirit of this project, none of this evidence is meant to be evaluated as good or bad, or showcased as an exemplary “best teacher in the world”. Rather, these videos are meant to serve as means by which we can have a conversation. We wanted this conversation to be meaningful, so we wanted to have local videos of classrooms in Hawaii.
Additionally, because we want it to be useful for pre-service, in-service, and other educational professionals. So, at this stage, we have chosen to use the Danielson’s FfT to drive this conversation. This does not mean we are advocating for Danielson’s as any high water mark of scholarship and teacher practice. But, it is a common framework that educational institutions are using to support professional conversations around teaching. That said, Danielson’s is not without its critiques or, like all of our work, always has room for improvement. Our job here isn’t to rate videos or be critical of the framework. Our work here is to review some practice in order to uncover what might be useful to share with educators who are developing their practice. Our work here is to provide specific evidence of what we are seeing, and justify our evidence using the FfT. Together, we will learn more about the process of reviewing teacher practice. Together, we will learn more about the structure of professional conversations on teaching around evidence and common language from a particular framework. Together, we will provide rationales for our thinking and provide points in time when the evidence is visible.
Our Supporters - All said, please remember that this work has been funded by the federal and state governments because they support developing improvements in teaching and preparing our next generation of educators. We hope this work aligns between our institutions to create common knowledge, common understanding, so that we might build our common capacity to support learners. Additionally, we want to ease the professional burdens being placed on teachers, who we hope are the real beneficiaries of this work.
Our Folks - We have representatives from various institutions around the state. We are honored to host such an amazing cross-section of educators. We are fortunate to have teachers, faculty, administration, and specialists together in one room, having one conversation. Please be reminded that each one of you have been chosen because of your commitment, experience, and expertise as an educator. Just take a second to honor and acknowledge the work of the people in this room as we continue our work to support student learning in our respective institutions. At this time, I would like you to reflect briefly reason you are here, after which we will share the following: name, institution, title, what do you hope to get out of the work.
Our Library and Our Teachers - Our team, along with the teachers, have developed all the videos for this work. These are our peers who have put themselves into the library and we want to be careful how we carry them. They come in all shapes and sizes and include multiple angles and multiple lengths of time. As of now, we have more than 5 days worth of total footage in our collection, and this continues to grow. As it does, we have attempted to get better at our collection methods, and appreciate there is always room for improvement. Also, you will recognize that we have developed tools and presentation materials for these workshops. In the development of each of these tools, we have consulted professionals in the field. We hope that this means following our process will be much easier for you. Additionally, we have developed some language to support our work. As with learning any new language and terminology, this can be confusing and problematic at times. That said, we have tested each of these processes with a number of audiences. We only hope that this will reduce challenges that you may experience. We want to have a very positive journey as we have these professional conversations about teaching.
Participant Feedback - With this being a professional workshop, we fully expect and encourage the provision of feedback, and you will have the opportunity to do so.
The Work
Our bottom line was a professional conversation about teaching practice. At the indexing stage, we wanted to have a meaningful, professional evidence based discussion. We wanted it to deepen our understanding of practices that we value as educators. In order to drive the conversation, our project team went into classrooms around the state and collected evidence of teacher practice. After, we gathered teams of educational professionals to review the videos. We did this in order to find examples of practice that we deemed as evidence or "shareworthy". With each viewing of these videos, we hope to foster a conversation that makes a difference for current and future teachers of Hawaii.
During the HETS Video Project indexing sessions, we gathered educators for multiple days of workshops. Participants had what ranged from a deep working knowledge of professional frameworks for observing instructional practice, to being 10+ year veterans of the classroom responsible for demonstrating the frameworks in practice. . Participants were represented by the following groups:
- Engaged and motivated educators, many of whom were National Board Certified Teachers (NBCT)
- HIDOE teachers rated "Highly Effective" under the current Educator Effectiveness System (EES)
- HIDOE principals, and other administrators responsible for implementing EES
- HIDOE staff, resource teachers, and educational officers familiar with observational frameworks.
- University of Hawaii (UH) faculty familiar with observational frameworks and effective teaching strategies
We would like to acknowledge their efforts and dedication to supporting teacher's professional learning as we met our program goal: to create a library of videos for educators across our state to engage in professional learning conversations tied to effective teaching practices.
We used the following tools and processes to help us index the video library:
- Indexing Instructions: https://goo.gl/DjT5sH
- Indexing Guide: https://goo.gl/vpxHds
Using the guidance of professional frameworks and professional expectations of teacher in Hawaii public schools, we have identified the following common elements of effective teaching practice in classroom practice:
1. Developing Classroom Culture - Teachers should ensure that students value learning and are aware of the expectations, including learning targets, outcomes, and evaluative measures. Additionally, teachers should work to support students in developing into quality learners, including: effort, commitment, initiative, evaluation, accuracy, and, accountability.
2. Behavior Management - Teachers are responsible for setting norms and behavioral expectations. Additionally, teachers prevent, monitor, and respond to student behaviors appropriately and effectively.
3. Questioning and Discussion - Teachers should use a variety of questioning techniques to encourage critical and well reasoned thinking. Rigorous and challenging questions deepen students comprehension of a topic and support their achievement of learning goals. Quality questions are the foundation of meaningful student participation and dialogue.
4. Student Engagement - Teachers are responsible for creating a learning environment where students are actively seeking knowledge, skills, and experiences. This can be encouraged by designing effective and challenging instruction, managing scaffolding, chunking, and timing of instructional activities, providing meaningful and diverse instructional materials, and creating diverse opportunities for interpersonal and intrapersonal engagement.
5. Assessing Student Learning - Teachers need to know whether or not students are learning in order to develop insight into whether or not instruction is effective or needs to be adjusted. Having clear learning targets, assessment criteria, and instruction designed to reach those targets is essential in this process. Additionally, teachers should monitor student progress in learning tasks and providing meaningful and timely feedback.
*The research and videos produced have been through a rigorous consent approval process, and have been reviewed by University of Hawaii - Office of Research Compliance and the Hawaii Department of Education-Office of Data Governance. We have done our best to respect the participants.
The Utility - This work will be shared across organizations serving pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators. The videos, stamped for evidence of effective practice, will be accessible via the internet to all interested parties.
The Frame - There will be many uses, interpretations, and lenses for this footage across the future. Generally speaking, we are looking for evidence of effective practice to share with others. We respect that we will have different interpretations of what's in the videos, but its is our expectation that when we come together and agree on something, we will want share this. In the spirit of this project, none of this evidence is meant to be evaluated as good or bad, or showcased as an exemplary “best teacher in the world”. Rather, these videos are meant to serve as means by which we can have a conversation. We wanted this conversation to be meaningful, so we wanted to have local videos of classrooms in Hawaii.
Additionally, because we want it to be useful for pre-service, in-service, and other educational professionals. So, at this stage, we have chosen to use the Danielson’s FfT to drive this conversation. This does not mean we are advocating for Danielson’s as any high water mark of scholarship and teacher practice. But, it is a common framework that educational institutions are using to support professional conversations around teaching. That said, Danielson’s is not without its critiques or, like all of our work, always has room for improvement. Our job here isn’t to rate videos or be critical of the framework. Our work here is to review some practice in order to uncover what might be useful to share with educators who are developing their practice. Our work here is to provide specific evidence of what we are seeing, and justify our evidence using the FfT. Together, we will learn more about the process of reviewing teacher practice. Together, we will learn more about the structure of professional conversations on teaching around evidence and common language from a particular framework. Together, we will provide rationales for our thinking and provide points in time when the evidence is visible.
Our Supporters - All said, please remember that this work has been funded by the federal and state governments because they support developing improvements in teaching and preparing our next generation of educators. We hope this work aligns between our institutions to create common knowledge, common understanding, so that we might build our common capacity to support learners. Additionally, we want to ease the professional burdens being placed on teachers, who we hope are the real beneficiaries of this work.
Our Folks - We have representatives from various institutions around the state. We are honored to host such an amazing cross-section of educators. We are fortunate to have teachers, faculty, administration, and specialists together in one room, having one conversation. Please be reminded that each one of you have been chosen because of your commitment, experience, and expertise as an educator. Just take a second to honor and acknowledge the work of the people in this room as we continue our work to support student learning in our respective institutions. At this time, I would like you to reflect briefly reason you are here, after which we will share the following: name, institution, title, what do you hope to get out of the work.
Our Library and Our Teachers - Our team, along with the teachers, have developed all the videos for this work. These are our peers who have put themselves into the library and we want to be careful how we carry them. They come in all shapes and sizes and include multiple angles and multiple lengths of time. As of now, we have more than 5 days worth of total footage in our collection, and this continues to grow. As it does, we have attempted to get better at our collection methods, and appreciate there is always room for improvement. Also, you will recognize that we have developed tools and presentation materials for these workshops. In the development of each of these tools, we have consulted professionals in the field. We hope that this means following our process will be much easier for you. Additionally, we have developed some language to support our work. As with learning any new language and terminology, this can be confusing and problematic at times. That said, we have tested each of these processes with a number of audiences. We only hope that this will reduce challenges that you may experience. We want to have a very positive journey as we have these professional conversations about teaching.
Participant Feedback - With this being a professional workshop, we fully expect and encourage the provision of feedback, and you will have the opportunity to do so.
*This product was funded by a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration. The product was created by the grantee and does not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Department of Labor. The Department of Labor makes no guarantees, warranties, or assurances of any kind, express or implied, with respect to such information, including any information on linked sites and including, but not limited to, accuracy of the information or its completeness, timeliness, usefulness, adequacy, continued availability, or ownership.
Contact
Teacher Education Program
Leeward Community College
96-045 Ala Ike
Pearl City, HI 96782
WORK IN PARTNERSHIP BY: US DEPARTMENT OF LABOR AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT, UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII, AND HAWAII DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION.
