Lesson recordings and analysis as part of teacher professional development programmes: what are the student teachers' opinions?

One way to support student teachers learning is by offering them different opportunities to reflect on their own and others' practice. The use of videos is seen as an effective opportunity to support the professional development of teacher education students. This study aimed to find out what are the students' hesitations related to video recording their own teaching and watching the videos of peers, and what do students learn from watching videos of their own and peers teaching. The data was collected from 33 Estonian student teachers, with a written open-ended questionnaire. and was analysed by using qualitative inductive content analysis method. Results indicate that student teachers' hesitations were related to their personal matters, and to pedagogical and content knowledge. Student teachers learned how to cope during the lessons, and new instructional strategies. Their fears about being recorded decreased with the experience. The results are further discussed in the paper.