Abstract

Initial teacher education in the UK is arguably characterised by the signature pedagogies (Shulman, 2005) of lesson observation and assessment of teaching evidence portfolios that demonstrate how far a trainee’s practice meets the criterion-referenced teachers’ standards (DfE, 2011). This form of assessment will be as immediately recognisable to those undertaking initial teacher education in the UK in the last thirty years as now.
In an international independent distance learning (IDL) teacher education programme, these practices can be rendered more challenging by Vide Traditional forms of portfolio assessment by tutors may be hindered by the need for selective evidence, which may lack depth or nuance in an effort to remain within file size or word count limits. To fully understand and assess professional practice carried out at a distance requires a change in assessment practices, and one that brings assessor and assessee closer together, and closer to practice.
In recent years, the technological affordances of video-enhanced lesson observation and video calling with desktop sharing functionality have augmented the work of teacher educators (Calandra & Rich, 2014; Hidson, 2020; Marsh & Mitchell, 2014). This has the advantage of connecting candidate and assessor in a shared online dialogic space, as outlined by Wegerif (2007) in a process of video-stimulated recall, reflection and dialogue (Nind et al., 2015) combined with exploration of artefacts and evidence of practice. From this perspective, dialogue can encourage reflection on video captured during lessons, elicit tacit knowledge through questioning and discussion, help construct additional evidence and lead to a negotiated appreciation of strengths and areas for development.
The Video-Enhanced Dialogic Assessment (VEDA) process implemented makes use of these principles to complement formative and summative assessment of teaching practices and portfolios. It can most easily be imagined as an online viva voce oral examination, building on similar work in this vein by Carless (2002) and Flores (2018) and addressing logistical issues highlighted by Scott and Unsworth (2018), who used video vivas. Research being carried out in parallel allows the generation of recorded video of each assessment undertaken online, with all dialogic assessment interviews transcribed for closer thematic and linguistic analysis. In addition, semi-structured interviews with candidates and assessors as well as electronic documentary records contribute to the rich data collected. These data are analysed collaboratively by the research team to address one of the project’s key research questions: what evidence of practice is co-constructed through the video-enhanced dialogic assessment interview process?
This digital poster presentation will share two key case studies from the ongoing project. One focuses on the trainee teacher for whom formative video-stimulated recall, reflection and dialogue is part of their learning i.e assessment for learning as opposed to assessment of learning (Black and Wiliam, 1998). This explores the nature of feedback and dialogue on a recorded lesson video between trainee and tutor. The other case study will present the summative high-stakes VEDA interview where the assessor must be confident that all the evidence presented demonstrates that the candidate meets the necessary teachers’ standards. It will explore the process of dialogic assessment and frame the outcomes as dialogically-constructed evidence. Finally, the poster presentation will highlight the relevance of Video-Enhanced Dialogic Assessment during the current Covid-19 pandemic, where traditional campus-based teacher education has been interrupted, locked down and forced to seek alternative approaches. It is anticipated that, where possible, this digital poster will make use of embedded hyperlinks to video and audio snippets that have been deemed permissible by the university ethical approval gained for the VEDA project.
References
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