Amplifying autonomy and collective conversation: using video iPods[TM] to support mathematics teacher learning.

Mathematics teaching and learning are inherently complex practices, and we continue to see reports that suggest that American teachers are not as successful at teaching mathematics as we might hope (e.g., Gonzales, et al., 2004). In this article, we explore how a seemingly ubiquitous new technology--the personal audio/video player--just might help teachers improve mathematics teaching and learning. This article explores how the video iPod[TM], new on the technological frontier in teacher education, can be utilized to support teachers' learning in and from teaching practice. We begin by outlining affordances and limitations of various video-based technologies that have been used in mathematics teacher education over the last two decades. We then provide an illustrative case in which video iPods[TM] have been employed in a longitudinal professional development initiative designed to help 5th to 9th grade teachers improve their practices in teaching algebraic thinking to English Language Learners (ELLs). Herein we report how teachers use the iPod[TM] and what it enables them to do, and share our preliminary findings that suggest personal audio/video players can foster both greater autonomy in professional learning and greater participation in more rigorous professional development discussions, thereby creating increased opportunities for teacher learning. The article concludes by looking toward the future, considering new ways of utilizing the technologies and posing questions for continuing research.

Changes in Teaching Mathematics and Mathematics Teacher Education

Fully two decades ago the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics articulated new standards including what, for many teachers, was a novel approach to teaching mathematics (1989). NCTM argued that all students needed access to mathematical concepts, problem solving strategies, and applications, not just a steady increase in mathematical skills and procedures through the grades. The standards also suggested pedagogies that were new to many teachers who routinely enacted more stereotypical U.S. math lessons--reviewing homework, teaching by lecturing at the board on a new technique, assigning problems to students for seatwork, correcting seatwork, and assigning homework that would be corrected the next morning. (1) Classroom discussions, open-ended and collaborative problem solving, the use of manipulatives and other mathematical models, and multiple modes of assessing student learning were new for many teachers. Teachers, it would seem, had much to learn.

Parallel to what was going on in mathematics classrooms in the late 1980s, a paradigm shift was underway within professional development and more broadly in teacher education. We too were shifting the focus away from transmitting knowledge. We were developing pedagogies and resources with which we could provide experiential learning opportunities that might guide teachers to examine their own content knowledge and teaching practices in a collaborative, problem-based setting (Louckes-Horsely, 1995). Spurred on by technological breakthroughs, mathematics teacher education began to see an explosion of videos that presented teaching strategies for and illustrative cases of conducting mathematical discussions, using manipulatives and assessing students' thinking (e.g., Burns, 1988; Kamii, 1987; Richardson, 1990). Since that time, mathematics teacher educators have routinely been at the forefront in developing ways to utilize emerging technologies to support pre-and in-service teacher learning (e.g., Fosnot, et al., 2003-6; Lampert & Ball, 1998; Seago, Mumme, & Branca, 2004). Within the field of mathematics teacher education, it is evident that we have taken up the theory that teachers can and do productively learn in and from a careful consideration of teaching practices (e.g., Ball & Cohen, 1999) and multimedia technology plays an increasingly significant role in helping teachers develop their capacities.

Technological Advances in Math Teacher Education

Since the mid-eighties, video technologies have been increasingly used to help teachers improve their practice through professional development. While perhaps counterintuitive, in many ways video-based representations of classrooms and teaching practices provide teachers with greater opportunities for studying practice than live, in-person observations (LeFevre, 2002). Among the many benefits of video materials, four are central to our work. First, video resources allow us to break down the barriers of isolation that are so prevalent in American teaching, enabling teachers to view the teaching of others without the logistical impediments that are often associated with peer observations (e.g., securing substitute teachers, time for pre- and post-observation conversations, follow-up planning and implementation ...). Second, unlike in-person classroom observations, video resources enable teacher educators to be selective in what elements of practice will be studied by pre-selecting specific teaching/learning events and classroom artifacts (student work, texts, teacher's notes, etc.) and purposefully juxtaposing particular episodes and artifacts. Third, video resources enable viewers to slow down, stop, rewind, and replay the unrelenting pace of instruction--what Cohen has called "temporal enrichment" (in Lampert & Ball, 1998 p. 179). This makes it possible for teachers to examine the teaching and learning in greater depth, studying multiple elements of teaching practice that would be impossible in the immediate and rapid actions presented during classroom observation. And finally, when the same video resources are investigated by a group of teachers, they become shared texts that can support in-depth conversations about teaching and learning.

Video technologies for professional development have evolved significantly in the intervening decades. With the introduction and widespread availability of VCRs, in the mid-eighties math teacher educators began to take advantage of VHS videotape technologies. In the age of a new national mathematics reform, videos provided strong visual images of what is possible in a classroom. They demonstrated new tools and instructional innovations, providing existence proofs for the kind of thinking that students were capable of (e.g., Burns, 1988; Kamii, 1987; Richardson, 1990). In fact, ...