FOCUS - ViDEX: A video document, examination and extension project focusing on standards-based school reform
University Collaborator
Jon Wagner, Professor, Division of Education, UC Davis
K-12 Collaborators
Sue Verne, Florin High School, Elk Grove Unified
Denise Escobar, Florin High School, Elk Grove Unified
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Funding
1997-99: $13,550 CRESS Large Project Grant
School Collaboration
Three elementary teachers and 1 principal from Florin Elementary; 7 teachers, 1 vice principal, and 1 principal from Rutter Middle; 16 teachers and 1 vice principal from Florin High; and 2 assistant superintendents from the Elk Grove District, in Sacramento County
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Project Description
FOCUS-ViDEX is a collaborative, action-research project designed to use audio and video recordings to Document, Examine and eXtend key components of the Elk Grove School District FOCUS project. The FOCUS Project itself began as a staff development project involving thirty-or-so teachers from three Elk Grove schools--Florin High School, Rutter Middle School and Florin Elementary School. The project was created by a group of teachers in the Spring of 1996 to assist teachers from the three schools with two central questions: How can standards for quality student work be better coordinated within and across the three schools? And, what evaluation strategies and assessment practices can be shared across school sites? To understand these issues, FOCUS project activities have included workshops and meetings in which teachers read about standards-based reform and examine samples of their students' work with different standards statements and scoring rubrics.
When FOCUS was first proposed, teachers knew little if anything about standards and assessment practices in other schools, nor were standards and assessment practices consistent within each school. In fact, tremendous variations appeared among teachers--even from the same school--in how they defined standards for student performance, how they evaluated and graded student work, and the performance expectations they encouraged among students. The FOCUS project has provided time and opportunity for teachers from all three schools to learn more about the work of their colleagues. The project structured this kind of time and learning around site visits that involved "shadowing" a student for part of a day and a series of meetings for teachers from all three schools to discuss standards-based reform, rubrics and evaluation templates, instructional goals, and exemplary practice.
One of the results has been that participating FOCUS teachers better understand how students view standards and assessment strategies, as well as how teachers not involved in the project view standards and assessment strategies. Another result is a range of refined and revised inquiry practices to assist teachers in developing shared understandings of performance standards and assessment practices.
The FOCUS-ViDEX study was designed to: (a) identify key patterns of participation by teachers as they examine the prospects of reform in collaboration with their peers; and (b) identify, based on these patterns, structural challenges to the success of these reforms at the local level. Secondarily, the project was intended to identify what teachers learn through this kind of face-to-face interaction around standards-based reform issues, and how that kind of learning becomes--or does not become--embedded in individual or collective responsibility.
Some of the activities that were videotaped were initiated before the creation of the FOCUS-ViDEX project. For example, at Florin High School, end-of-the-year portfolio reviews for students in English and social studies classes, a social studies "departmental exam," and school-wide examinations of "senior projects" were already being done. At Rutter Middle School, the activities included a detailed and rigorous portfolio review process developed and implemented by English Department teachers and extended subsequently to social studies. And at Florin Elementary School, efforts involved an end-of-the-year "read around" of student work and the efforts by some teachers to examine video documents of student presentation skills. Other activities included FOCUS meetings in which teachers from all three schools reviewed standards statements and rubrics, assessment practices, and cross-classroom negotiations about exemplary practice at each of the three participating schools.
The video and audio tapes of the FOCUS-ViDEX project have been completed, though some editing and review activities are still underway. Detailed analysis of video tape transcripts will also continue through 1999. However, preliminary analysis of the video documents reveals several insights into how teachers' "reflection" is represented. Though reflection is usually characterized as a process of individual psychology, it can also be examined as a social and cultural process in two respects. First, reflection is something that groups as well as individuals can practice. Second, the social organization of particular settings and institutions helps shape both the form and outcomes of individual or group reflection. Teachers may be more or less reflective as persons, but they also work within schools, professional networks, and communities that shape how frequently they reflect about their work, with whom, about what, and with what kinds of consequences and support. One of the interesting outcomes of the ViDEX documentation is that almost all teachers saw teachers' reflection as a necessary but consistently neglected part of standards-based educational reform. What the teachers mean by reflection is a kind of thinking about their work that can usually be made manifest in talk or writing and that can both examine and inform practical action.
Teachers were quite consistent in noting that the most accurate representation of their "work in FOCUS" was found in relatively un-edited video tape segments of their meetings and workshops. A characteristic response was that, "the video tape segments really get at what we're about." This suggests the teachers were less interested in the "products" of their reflection--the summaries, policies, scoring rubrics, or new "standards statements" they said they were working towards. They were much more interested in documenting the "process" of their reflections, and then using those documents to stimulate reflection of the same sort with other teachers and in other venues. The FOCUS teachers chose to present raw video segments instead of the carefully edited and thematically coherent "program document" video--prepared by the FOCUS teacher--at a school district symposium for administrators and other teachers. Even when representing their project as a whole, they chose to "exemplify" what they were doing rather than summarize what they had done.
A report organized around these insights was presented at the International Visual Sociology Association annual meetings (June 1998, Louisville, KY). A full report on the FOCUS-ViDEX project will be prepared by the end of the current academic year (1998-99).