Video Clubs For Mathematics Teachers

Typical professional development courses for teachers involve lectures by academic experts, enriching the participants with theories and innovations. As this sort of training has proved to have limited effect on the quality of teaching, successful education systems around the world have decided to make their in-service training programs more practical, by using different tools that enable teachers to bring actual teaching practices to a workshop setting. One such tool is the use of classroom-based videos, that allow teachers to observe their own practice –  to reflect, analyze, discuss, receive and provide feedback, and then to try out improvements.

Professor Miriam Gamoran-Sherin of Northwestern University is a pioneer in creating such “video clubs” which bring together mathematics teachers and researchers to deeply analyze instruction by using self-generated videos. Gamoran-Sherin recently presented her research findings in a conference held at the Weizmann Institute, with support from the Trump Foundation. She showed how a guided discussion around a video-case helps participants focus on the mathematical thinking of their students, expose the teacher’s instructional decision-making, and reach a common understanding with their students.

With the knowledge of the head of Mathematics and Science Pedagogy at the Ministry of Education, who participated in this conference, we turned to the Branco Weiss Institute, a veteran partner of both the foundation and the Ministry, to look into the possibility of learning the ‘video-club’ methodology, and adapting it to the Israeli high school mathematics curriculum. The first phase of the proposed program will include recruiting two mathematics master teachers and training them to instruct teachers using video. They will take part in a designated course and will engage in extensive consultation with Gamoran-Sherin and the instructors of the Adasha project of the Weizmann Institute. In addition, Branco Weiss will hold focus groups of mathematics teachers to study their needs and learning preferences.

At the beginning of the next academic year, five video-clubs will be created in local professional development centers across the country.  Each club will invite twenty teachers of the advanced 5-unit mathematics track for a workshop of about thirty hours. The teachers will be tutored by a pedagogical coach and one of the mathematics master teachers.  Participants will be asked to film their classroom teaching, and bring the filmed material to the workshops. All footage will be uploaded to a special Youtube channel which will allow teachers to interact online and discuss the featured filmed lessons. If successful, it is expected that the Ministry of Education would fully fund the expansion of the mathematics video clubs model.

* The text presented above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation Board / Grant 116