Collaborative peer video analysis: Insights about literacy assessment and instruction

This mixed-methods study explored (a) the purposes for which teachers selected video clips of their own literacy teaching and assessment practices to share and discuss with peers, (b) how these purposes were related to the content of the discussions, and (c) what variables were related to teachers’ generation of new ideas and future actions that they considered. Data included 39 transcribed video events, in which 14 in-service teachers engaged in discussions of their video clips. Emergent coding and constant comparative method were used for analyses. The authors found three purposes for sharing clips—explicit problems, implicit problems, and successes. Three issues were addressed—methods/materials, reader engagement, and reader processes. Six themes described how teachers’ purposes were related to their discussion content. First, sharing one problem led to one conversational focus. Second, sharing multiple problems led to multiple conversational foci. Third, sharing a problem and then a success resulted in peers focusing on the success. Fourth, sharing a success and then a problem resulted in peers focusing on the problem. Fifth, sharing a success related to methods/materials or reader engagement bred peers’ interest in how to apply these ideas to their own practice. Sixth, sharing a success related to reader processing led to peers focusing on other issues in the video. Based on the statistical model, teachers’ generation of new ideas was related to purposes and issues for clip sharing, and future actions considered were related to the clip type (instructional clips yielded more future actions). Copyright © 2012 The Author(s).