Periscope: Looking into Learning in Best-Practices Physics Classrooms

Periscope: Looking into Learning in Best-Practices Physics Classrooms Rachel E. Scherr, Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA Renee Michelle Goertzen, Department of Education and Diversity, American Physical Society, College Park, MD

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eriscope is a set of lessons to support learning assistants, teaching assistants, and faculty in learning to notice and interpret classroom events the way an accomplished teacher does. Periscope lessons are centered on video episodes from a variety of best-practices university physics classrooms. By observing, discussing, and reflecting on teaching situations similar to their own, instructors practice applying lessons learned about teaching to actual teaching situations and develop their pedagogical content knowledge. Instructors also get a view of other institutions’ transformed courses, which can support and expand the vision of their own instructional improvement and support the transfer of course developments among faculty. Periscope is available for free to educators at http://physport.org/periscope. Classrooms are complex environments. Even in smallgroup interactions, many different things are happening simultaneously—students express their physics ideas, respond to questions, gesture, joke or argue with each other, look at the clock, speak animatedly or quietly, and so on. Educators cannot, and do not, pay attention to everything with equal weight. Instead, they learn to notice and interpret phenomena in a distinctive way that is answerable to the interests of their profession, much as archaeologists learn to see earth in a way that is unique to their field,1 or professional golfers perceive subtle features of another player’s swing. This development of professional vision is particularly critical to educators in reform environments, who are expected to respond to students’ ideas and interactions as they unfold moment-to-moment.2 Along similar lines, national standards emphasize formative assessment as among the most valuable tools for enriching student understanding in science,3 consistent with research demonstrating that learning gains from systematic attention to formative assessment are larger than most of those found for any other educational interventions.4 For educators who supervise highly interactive classrooms, one important kind of formative assessment is moment-to-moment—continual, responsive attention to students’ developing understanding as it is expressed verbally in real time.2 Video-based professional development programs for teachers have been demonstrated to support the development of teachers’ professional vision and skills for formative assessment.5 By watching and discussing short video episodes of classrooms similar to those in which they themselves are presently teaching, educators enter vividly into the classroom events and explore the principles and values that inform instructor and student behavior. Video is effective for stimulating discussions about student ideas, teacher intentions, and

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• Observing diverse examples of what bestpractices physics teaching really looks like at several different institutions around the country. • Feeling in on the action, sometimes more so than a live observation: The sense of being present for a moment in teaching and learning gives insight into what happened and why. • Watching together with other educators reveals which of our observations and interpretations are universal and which are unique. • Watching more than once lets us test our initial intuitions against evidence in the episode. • Discussing together reveals the principles and values that motivate us as instructors and as students. • Practicing noticing and interpreting what happens in real teaching and learning events trains us to notice and interpret what happens in our own classrooms. • Practicing applying broad principles of teaching and learning to specific moments in specific classrooms lets us hone skills without any students being harmed in the process. Fig. 1. Benefits of Periscope lessons.

many other topics,5,6 providing a rare opportunity to stop the classroom action, share observations, and build a repertoire of responses. In what follows we describe Periscope, a set of lessons to support learning assistants, teaching assistants, and faculty in learning to notice and interpret classroom events the way an accomplished teacher does. Periscope connects authentic video episodes from best-practices physics classrooms to big questions of teaching and learning. By observing, discussing, and reflecting on teaching situations similar to their own, instructors practice applying lessons learned about teaching to actual teaching situations and develop their pedagogical content knowledge. Instructors also get a view of other institutions’ transformed courses (by watching video episodes filmed at other institutions), which can support and expand the vision of their own instructional improvement and support the transfer of course developments among faculty. Periscope lessons are useful for educating learning assistants (LAs) or teaching assistants (TAs), for faculty development, for faculty striving to improve physics teaching in their department, and for educators of all levels seeking to improve their own physics teaching. Figure 1 lists some benefits of using Periscope lessons.

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DOI: 10.1119/1.5021437

Preparing to facilitate a Periscope lesson Each Periscope lesson includes a one- to five-minute video episode, a handout linking the episode to big ideas in teaching and learning, and a lesson guide to assist with facilitation. The handout (for participants) includes a question about teaching and learning (e.g., “How can I bring out student ideas?”), a description of the video episode for that lesson, the physics task the students in the episode are working on, transcript of the students’ conversation, and sample discussion prompts linking the episode to the lesson topic. The lesson guide includes the objective of each lesson, the answer to the physics task the students are working on, and common responses participants have. Some sample Periscope lesson questions are shown in Fig. 2. “What ideas do students have about forces and friction?” “What ideas do students have about electrostatics?” “Does it matter if students are happy in my class?” “How can I assess students in a class emphasizing group work?” “How can I bring out students’ ideas?” “How can I encourage productive student debate?” “How can I tailor a task to a specific group of students?” “How do I help students use intuitions as well as formalism?”

judgment, and critique. • Recognize that while we will likely all agree on observations (e.g., “The LA never spoke”), and we may persuade each other of interpretations (“Those two students have the same idea”), value statements (such as “The LA should not have done that”) are personal: they provide an opportunity to learn about the person speaking, and may reveal commitments and priorities that are not universally shared.

Facilitating a Periscope discussion The main part of a Periscope lesson is a 10- to 20-minute cycle of communal viewing, small-group discussion, and whole-class discussion that repeats at least twice. Each cycle of viewing and discussion should be focused on a particular question or prompt. The first stage of each cycle is for the large group to watch the episode together. Tell participants to watch the captioned episode rather than following along with the transcript, so that they can see the action as well as hear what is said. We recommend communal viewing rather than having individuals watch the episode on separate screens, because it is technically simpler and it gets the whole group thinking about the same event at the same time.

“How should I facilitate a tutorial preparation session?”

• Encourage participants to ground their statements in Fig. 2. Sample Periscope lesson questions.

Periscope lessons are designed for use in a classroom setting that alternates whole-class discussion with small-group discussions. The main part of a Periscope lesson is cycles of (1) watching the video episode as a whole class; (2) discussing a question or prompt about it in small groups; and (3) having groups report the results of their discussions to the whole class. Each cycle should last 10-20 minutes, and there should be a minimum of two cycles.

Establishing norms for discussion Discussions about teaching often involve values that run very deep for the participants. Maintaining a respectful atmosphere is crucial not only for developing a learning community among your participants, but also for enabling your participants to identify and share their values, examine them thoughtfully, and consider other possible perspectives. The first time you use a Periscope lesson with a particular group of participants, you might want to establish an agreement such as one of the following: • Strive to characterize what’s going on in the episode according to the people in it. Describe events in a way that the participants themselves would likely agree with if they were present. • Limit discussion to what we see happening in the episode (observable evidence) and what we think it means (evidence-based interpretation). Set aside opinion,

evidence from the episode. For example, when a participant says, “Great group dynamic,” you might say, “What do you see that makes you say that?”

• Encourage participants to respond to each other and let the discussion develop, e.g., “You see Deb as doing a thought experiment. Is that how other people interpreted line 15?”

• Revoice participant contributions, i.e., say in your own words what you heard a participant saying. For example, if a participant says, “They have the idea that electrons jump from one tape to the other,” you might say, “You see them talking in terms of a transfer of electrons.”

• Stay aware of when participants are making claims and inferences so that you can help them stay connected to the evidence. Claims and inferences can be welcomed but identified – as in, “You’re thinking that Caleb is the only one to use scientific vocabulary. That’s a claim. Did anyone else make any observations about that?” or “You see Deb as being the leader. What observation led to your making that inference?”

• As you listen to and revoice participants’ contributions, see if you can recognize issues relevant to the lesson question, or if the participant is raising a new issue. For example, “You saw Deb disagreeing with Bridget. What ideas does each of them have about electrostatic charge?”

• When there’s a lull in the talk, you can always say, “What more did you see?” Fig. 3. General guidelines for facilitating whole-class Periscope discussions.

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Fig. 4. Stages of a Periscope lesson.

The second stage of each cycle is for small groups of two to four participants to discuss what they saw in the episode. Small-group discussions give all individuals a chance to process their immediate reactions to the episode, including re-reading the transcript of the students’ conversation at their own speed, and help participants focus their observations on the specific prompt, if there was one. The third stage of each cycle is a whole-class discussion. The purpose of the whole-class discussion is to expose participants to observations and interpretations that had not arisen in their small group and (in some cases) to build consensus about a question or prompt. Figure 3 suggests general guidelines for facilitating whole-class discussions. The stages of a Periscope lesson are illustrated in Fig. 4. The complete cycle (communal viewing, small-group discussion or writing, large-group discussion) should repeat at least once for each individual lesson (i.e., a single video episode should be discussed at least twice), with a different prompt each time. With more than one cycle of viewing, participants experience seeing different things in an episode than they saw the first time or reconsider inferences that they had made. Both of these experiences are important for the development of professional vision.

Prompts for Periscope discussions Each cycle of viewing and discussion addresses a particular question or prompt. There are many possible sources of questions and prompts to stimulate discussion of Periscope episodes. The first prompt, however, should always be completely open-ended. We have found repeatedly that participants cannot focus on a specific question about a video until they have had a chance to process what they have seen in their own way. Thus, after the first time you watch the episode with participants, use a very open-ended prompt such as, “What did you notice? Talk to your neighbor about what you noticed,” or “What did you observe? Tell your group what you saw.” An open-ended prompt has the special benefits of helping facilitators learn about the participants and helping participants learn about one another. Different audiences will tend to focus on different aspects of the episode, such as the physics ideas, the instructional format, the group interactions, or issues of equity and inclusion. Facilitators can also gain a sense of participants’ interests and expertise from their responses to an open-ended prompt, including their expertise

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with best-practices instruction, video analysis, and physics content. These natural interests and areas of expertise or development can shape the rest of the discussion. A prompt for the second cycle of viewing, and subsequent cycles, should focus participants’ attention on a particular issue or question. The lesson question (which is the title of each lesson handout) makes a good second prompt, along the lines of, “Let’s watch this again, and this time I want you to think about the students’ electrostatics ideas.” Periscope handouts also include sample discussion prompts. Usually there are more sample prompts than you would use in a single session. A facilitator using a handout prompt would transition from the whole-class discussion of the previous prompt by saying something along the lines of, “Take a look at question 3 on the handout: ‘Caleb proposes a mechanism for how charge gets from one object to another. What is the mechanism that he proposes?’ Let’s watch the video again, and this time see what you observe that addresses that question.” Periscope’s sample discussion prompts are designed to have more than one very reasonable answer —sometimes even opposite reasonable answers. These kinds of prompts reflect the real complexity of teaching and learning events. Different participants will likely see the events in the episode differently, perhaps even taking different sides on a question. For this reason, there is great value in getting different groups to share their responses to the same prompt. Subsequent viewings may either develop consensus or affirm distinctive viewpoints. Another source of discussion prompts is questions and issues raised by the participants themselves. To organize prompts generated in class, write participants’ contributions on the board as they make them. While you are writing, refrain from response, judgment, or follow-up questioning. Once you have a list of contributions on the board, choose (or co-choose with the participants) which contribution(s) to discuss in greater depth. You may find it valuable to classify (and lead the group in classifying) the contributions that you write on the board into categories. Some frequently useful categories are questions, observations, claims or inferences, and value statements.

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• Questions provide natural prompts for future cycles of viewing and discussion. • Observations are likely to be agreed on by all participants, but there may be an opportunity to make more detailed observations about a particular thing (e.g., Was the LA still there when Alanna said that? What gesture did Ben make right after? What was Alicia’s expression when Cass said that?). • Claims (e.g., “Bella uses everyday language,” “Arianna is surprised”) are likely to be useful prompts for the next round of viewing: participants can watch for evidence that supports or refutes a claim. Claims and counter-

claims often appear in the same list and can be investigated in the same round of viewing. • Value statements (such as “The LA should not have done that”) are personal: they provide an opportunity to learn about the person speaking, and may reveal commitments and priorities that are not universally shared. Often, participants find themselves having markedly different responses to the same events. Distinguishing among observations, claims, and value statements is useful for providing participants with alternatives to their gut reactions. For example, identifying a particular contribution as a claim can help to transform it into an object of inquiry: participants become willing to gather evidence pertaining to it, muster competing arguments, and change their minds, even about positions that had initially been strongly held. Often, participants conclude that the evidence does not support a clear conclusion, which can be illuminating in itself.

Evidence of effectiveness Preliminary evidence suggests that Periscope is effective for promoting the development of professional vision among physics instructors. Independent evaluation indicates that Periscope has likely impacted most Learning Assistant Program institutions, suggesting that Periscope is effectively reaching and serving its primary audience of LA supervisors. For example, the nationally acclaimed LA program at the University of Colorado-Boulder depends on Periscope for development of LAs and faculty. Faculty at the University of Maine-Orono have used Periscope with LAs, TAs, and teachers for at least seven years. Faculty at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona have used Periscope not only domestically but also to engage faculty in France about physics education reform.7 Feedback from facilitators indicates high engagement with a variety of issues in teaching and learning: one new user at the University of Colorado said, “I was impressed with the variety of things that [participants] noticed—a great mix of things ranging from body language, LA and student behaviors, power dynamics, physics content, gender stuff, the structure of the rooms, student attitudes…. I got a comment that they had never realized there was all this other stuff to ‘attend to’ besides just student ideas. That alone seemed worth the price of admission.”

Goals of Periscope Periscope promotes individual and group reflection on high-quality teaching and learning practices, provides learn-

ing opportunities about key pedagogical concepts in physics education, and promotes effective implementation of a variety of research-based and research-validated instructional materials. Periscope video episodes showcase research-based course transformations from around the country, offering vivid, realistic, and intellectually compelling examples of proven curricular transformations in action and helping instructors value such approaches. The lessons provide a forum for instructors at all levels to talk substantively about teaching, providing a means for transferring course developments among faculty as well as shaping educators’ values. Periscope also provides a means for faculty to explore potential course transformations privately—to get a sense of what Tutorials8 or Modeling Instruction9 look and feel like without having to visit another institution or engage the department in supporting such exploration. Acknowledgment This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1323699. References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

C. Goodwin, “Professional vision,” Am. Anthropol. 96 (3), 606633 (1994). F. Erickson, “Some thoughts on ‘proximal’ formative assessment of student learning,” Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education 106, 186-216 (2007). National Research Council, National Science Education Standards (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1996). J. M. Atkin, P. Black, and J. Coffey, eds. Classroom Assessment and the National Science Education Standards (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2001). M. G. Sherin, “Effects of video club participation on teachers’ professional vision,” J. Teach. Educ. 60 (1), 20-37 (2009). M. G. Sherin, “The Development of Teachers’ Professional Vision in Video Clubs,” in Video Research in the Learning Sciences, edited by R. Goldman et al. (Earlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 2007). A. L. Rudolph et al., “Introduction of interactive learning into French university physics classrooms,” Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 10 (1), (2014). L. C. McDermott and P. S. Shaffer, Tutorials in Introductory Physics (Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002). E. Brewe, “Modeling theory applied: Modeling Instruction in introductory physics,” Am. J. Phys. 76, 1155 (Dec. 2008).

Rachel E. Scherr and Renee Michelle Goertzen are the co-developers of Periscope. Both have extensive history in physics education research, specializing in the analysis of classroom video. Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA 98119; [email protected]

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