Abstract

Recent legislation at both state and federal levels has resulted in increased scrutiny and accountability in K--12 public education and, consequently, increased concern by the educational community for how to better prepare and retain effective teachers and administrators in America's public schools, particularly in the most underserved settings.

This study focuses on the issue of how teacher education programs may effectively prepare preservice, or novice, teachers for this new climate of increased accountability by looking at the ways in which reflective practice approaches and educational technology, in particular video-elicited reflective debriefings, may enhance teacher preparation programs. Specifically, this study examines how the use of video-elicited reflection impacts the pedagogical and reflective communication of four focus novice teachers with their university supervisor, as well as the effectiveness of the supervisor when working with these novice teachers, compared to traditional observation-based debriefing approaches.

The results indicate that video-elicited reflective debriefings not only encourage more reflective commentary on the part of the novice teacher in both depth and breadth, but that commentary related to state standards for evaluating teaching performance is also broadened and deepened with the use of video elicitation compared to that which occurs in traditional observation-based debriefings. Moreover, the results indicate that supervisor-novice teacher interactions are positively impacted when video elicitation is utilized in addition to traditional observation-based approaches.