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To leverage pedagogies of approximation to improve teacher education, educational researchers must first tackle the methodological question, “How can we determine the potential of pedagogies of approximation for supporting the growth of prospective teachers’ knowledge and practices for teaching?” In this paper, we offer a model called the Dual Action Cycles of Approximations of Practice for identifying the pedagogical practices made available to pre-service teachers within various approximations of practice and describe its use to empirically investigate the potential of StoryCircles—a facilitated process of collaboratively representing a lesson using a multimedia storyboarding tool. We illustrate ways the model was used to make observations of pre-service teachers during StoryCircles. A key feature of the model is that it provides a bi-focal perspective on both the preactive and interactive phases of teaching, which help bring into focus the interdependent nature of these two phases. We close by suggesting that the development of new forms of approximation needs to be accompanied by research frameworks capable of investigating the potential of these various innovations.
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Is the medium the message? Video-recording and writing for approximations of practice.
Paper presented at the 2021 Annual Conference of the American Educational Research Association, as part of the symposium Opportunities and Challenges Associated with Approximations of Practice in Teacher Education Programs In 1964, Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan proposed a then-radical idea in media theory: We should study not only content of messages, but also the impact of the medium itself, on society. He captured this idea in the phrase: The medium is the message. We take this idea into the study of teachers’ approximations of practice. We ask: Can the creation medium impact teachers’ approximation of practice, especially their recomposition of practice? The purpose of the study reported in this paper is to investigate differences in how prospective teachers may decompose and recompose practice during video and written approximations of practice. By written approximation of practice, we refer to a response to an assignment such as producing (parts of) a lesson plan; by video approximation of practice, we refer to a response to an assignment such as video recording oneself responding to a (hypothetical) student.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1726744
- PAR ID:
- 10294552
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Annual meeting program American Educational Research Association
- ISSN:
- 0163-9676
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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