Workshops 3 and 4: Reflect & Improve
Our purpose here is to support you in facilitating video-based discussions that promote reflection regarding educator's responses to youth's failure experiences in STEAM-related activities. We focus on developing a culture of noticing, reflective questioning, and constructive feedback. We advise you to engage in these activities with other facilitators before implementing the video-based workshops with educators. In addition, we encourage you to consider the resources on the Workshops 3 and 4 Resource Page as you are planning for these workshops.
Additionally, there may not be distinction between Workshop 3 and Workshop 4. Some of our partnering sites found that they needed more than one workshop to reflect upon each educator's video clip. For other partnering sites, they shifted the focus between Workshop 3 and Workshop 4. For example, Montshire Museum of Science focused Workshop 3 on "I noticed..." and Workshop 4 on "I wonder...".
Culture of Respect
Developing and maintaining a safe and professional community is important when educators are sharing video clips with one another. Educators are placing themselves in vulnerable position and need to feel that the environment will support their growth - without value judgements.
Below are norms for watching video as established by facilitators in preparation for their first video-watching workshop (Borko et al., 2015):
Video clips are examples to spur discussion and not criticism.
Video clips are for investigations and inquiry and not judgement.
Video clips are to focus on a particular moment and not an entire lesson.
Video clips are to provide a learning opportunity and not an evaluation of the teaching and learning process.
At the Scott Family Amazeum, the following norms were highlighted prior to watching one another's video clips (see Figure to right):
Share the air/Sharing is caring
No one knows everything. But together we know a lot.
Criticism comes with love, care, and good intention.
Be a listener and a learner.
Misery is optional.
Plan for Workshop: (a) What norms do you want to establish to create a safe environment to share videos? (b) How might you include your educators in this process? (c) How will you document and make these norms visible?
Culture of Noticing and Feedback
Engage: Watch both of the videos below. These videos were collected from 4th grade students during their indoor recess time. The STEAM-related making task was light-up greeting cards. In these clips, the educators wore a GoPro camera.
Reflect and Discuss: (a) Focus on the child: What do you notice? What is your evidence? (b) Focus on the educator: What do you notice? What is your evidence? (c) How did the educator respond to the child's failure? (d) If this was your colleague, what constructive feedback would you provide? Why? (e) How would you describe your feedback (e.g., positive, negative, supportive, judgement-free, etc.)? (f) How did the different video clips shape your responses?
Plan for Workshop: First, think about how you want to structure this workshop. Will you begin with norms? Will educators provide context prior to watching their video clip? Second, brainstorm questions you will pose to educators to facilitate the discussion around experiences with failure highlighted in the video clips. Is there a note-taking organizer you might create to support this discussion? We provided you with questions above (Reflect and Discuss) that you may want to pose to educators following the video clip.
We also want you think through what-if scenarios. (a) How would you redirect a conversation focused on student misbehavior? (b) How would you navigate a conversation that positions the educator as a "failure"? (c) How would you build upon a conversation that is focused on how the educator's response to the child's failure shaped the child's project? (d) What might you do if a video shared is void of youth's failure moments? (e) From our experience, educators tend to focus on positive aspects of how their colleagues respond to youth's moments of failure. How might you support educators in providing constructive and not evaluative feedback to one another?
Culture of Reflection
Plan for Workshop: How will you end your workshops? We suggest providing time to reflect on the workshop (e.g., feedback given and received) and individual and/or team pedagogical practices around youth's experiences with failure. This could be quiet time and/or a discussion.
Next, set goals. Ask each individual to establish at least one pedagogical goal for interacting with youth around experiences with failures, as well as write down any supports needed to obtain the goal(s). Further, as a team, establish at least one pedagogical goal for facilitating youth's experiences with failure. How will you gather and maintain these goals? How might you support educators in meeting the goal(s)?
Lastly, we also challenge you to consider how to utilize student data gathered within STEAM-making activities being discussed in the workshops. How might you introduce student data as a form of feedback? What questions might you ask to support educator's reflection on their pedagogical practices through student data?
Tips for facilitating this process
Make a safe place for sharing.
You must be willing to participate and be vulnerable. It has been suggested from our partnering sites that you as a facilitator start this process with a video clip of yourself engaging with youth in a STEAM-focused making activity.
Use evidence/be specific when providing statements about what you notice.
Encourage goal-setting both as an individual and as a group.
Keep in mind: the “fear” and focus that many will have on their practices. Acknowledge but try to reframe to focus on learners.
Be aware of tensions between ideal learning experiences and pragmatic realities.