Video cases and the development of meaning making in preservice teachers

The present study inquired into the possible effects of work with video-mediated cases on the meaning preservice teacher education students make of vignettes of classroom teaching and learning. Its general approach was to stimulate verbal descriptions by Respondents of the meaning they make of a particular video-recording and then to examine these descriptions for evidence of differences in meaning-making that appeared to develop as a result of participation in a group-based examination of a video-mediated case. The data were analyzed first to identify the central ideas raised by each group of three Respondents during their discussion. The manner in which each Respondent treated each of these central ideas was then examined in their individual pre-intervention and post-intervention interviews, thus revealing the manner, if any, in which the experience of participating in a group discussion of a video-mediated case of teaching/learning might influcence the ways in which the discussant, when thinking individually and apart from her colleagues, understood or made meaning of the video vignette. Results are discussed in terms of their importance to educational researchers who are interested in new approaches to understanding the effects of interventions such as video-mediated cases and to teacher educators to whom they offer new and different conceptual tools for understanding what happens during the implementation of such an intervention. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd