Use of Dialogue Journals and Video-Recording in Early Childhood Teacher Education

Abstract

This study utilizes students' journaling and video-recording of field experience teaching sessions as vehicles for inquiry into the development of the process of productive reflection within the piloting phase of an experimental course, designed by the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education (NCRECE). The NCRECE course is designed to improve teachers' interactions with children as well as their implementation of curricula to promote gains in children's social and academic development. The piloting of the NCRCEC course took place in the Winter Quarter of 2007 in a 4-year university in the Midwest United States. By guiding students to reflect on their actions through use of dialogue journals and video-recording, this action research aimed at scaffolding students' productive reflection. Students participating in the pilot course kept weekly journals with the instructor in an online dialogue format throughout the quarter. As a culminating activity, they video-recorded one language-based lesson in a preschool classroom and wrote a self-analysis of the lesson. The paper presented here is a report of a part of this study pertaining to the use of dialogue journals and videos in supervision of preservice early childhood teachers. It is hoped that this action research study will validate the concurrent use of journals and video case analyses as a means of promoting self-conscious productive reflections, and as an opportunity to clarify content knowledge and link theory to practice.