The use of video as a learning tool in teacher education and professional development has increasingly spread over the past decades and has been proposed over time according to different approaches and aims, from being a means to illustrate good teaching practices with a focus on “learning to teach” to being a medium for reflection on action and for the development of teachers’ professional judgment.
In line with the developments in teacher training approaches, the most recent literature emphasizes the potential of video analysis in promoting the professional vision of teachers. In particular, by offering the opportunity for a “second-hand” experience of teaching through the immersion in authentic classroom situations captured in their richness and complexity, video analysis can foster the development of noticing and reasoning skills supported by a process of recursive interaction between theory and practice.
As shown by existing empirical evidence on the effectiveness of video-based teacher training, video analysis can promote teachers’ ability to identify and focus attention on relevant classroom events, to critically examine and interpret them in connection with their professional knowledge and experience, to question themselves about their beliefs and practices and develop new perspectives for the improvement of their teaching.
Video viewing activity can therefore support teachers’ reflective practice by engaging them in a collaborative analysis of complex classroom situations and promoting deeper reflection that leads to a better linkage between actions in the classroom and more general pedagogical principles.