Pre-Service Teachers' Use of Videotape for Self-Evaluation

Abstract

Professional education courses in teacher preparation programs vary in content depending on state certification and individual college or university requirements. One component, however, is essential to all professional education programs: the pre-service teaching experience (Meade 1991). Program requirements may vary from a single teaching experience (e.g., fifteen weeks during the senior year) to multiple teaching experiences (e.g., six weeks during the junior year and ten weeks during the senior year). The intent of the pre-service teaching experience is to provide students with a setting in which to apply the skills they have learned. Although teacher education certification and accreditation groups (e.g., Illinois Board of Higher Education, National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education) emphasize the need for students to have supervised practice before they receive teaching certification, little has been done on coordinating the means for evaluating the pre-service teaching experience. There are as many ways for evaluating student teachers' performances as there are teacher preparation programs. When evaluating pre-service teachers' performances, two types of evaluations are necessary: (a) formative evaluations for providing information related to the improvement of instruction, and (b) summative evaluations for providing university faculty members with information on which to base decisions concerning pre-service teachers' level of success (i.e., pass or fail) (Cangelosi 1991; Cooper 1984). Providing feedback for the purpose of instructional improvement is the main objective of the pre-service teaching experience. Information obtained from the supervisors' observations is intended to provide formative feedback to pre-service teachers in order to allow them to make teaching-related decisions. The secondary function of the evaluation process is to evaluate pre-service teachers' performances and make summative