Learning to teach: enhancing pre service teachers awareness of the complexity of teaching learning processes

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1 Teachers and Teaching ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: Learning to teach: enhancing pre service teachers awareness of the complexity of teaching learning processes Billie Eilam & Yael Poyas To cite this article: Billie Eilam & Yael Poyas (2009) Learning to teach: enhancing pre service teachers awareness of the complexity of teaching learning processes, Teachers and Teaching, 15:1, , DOI: / To link to this article: Published online: 13 Feb Submit your article to this journal Article views: 884 View related articles Citing articles: 15 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at Download by: [ ] Date: 22 November 2017, At: 04:15

2 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice Vol. 15, No. 1, February 2009, Learning to teach: enhancing pre-service teachers awareness of the complexity of teaching learning processes Billie Eilam* and Yael Poyas University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel Taylor CTAT_A_ sgm and Francis (Received 26 November 2007; final version received 11 June 2008) / Teachers Original Taylor BillieEilam & Article and Francis (print)/ Teaching: theory (online) and practice Why is it so challenging to provide pre-service teachers with adequate competence to cope with the complexity of the classroom context? Three key difficulties are frequently reported as reducing the effectiveness of teacher education programs: the construction of an integrated body of knowledge about teaching, the application of theories to practice, and the development of a cognitive lens for analyzing teaching learning processes. To deal with these problems, we designed one semester-long intervention course for pre-service teachers, based on an Internet site, including video-recorded authentic classroom literature teaching situations, transcripts of these lessons, interviews with school teachers and various experts in the field, and diverse tasks. The pre-service teachers analyzed the episodes in depth, performed the required tasks, and participated in group and whole-class discussions. The data comprised pre- and post-analyses of an episode and mid-semester tasks, carried out by the pre-service teachers. We describe the context and the course procedure and discuss them in light of relevant pedagogies. A fine-grain analysis of the data revealed the pre-service teachers learning processes as they unfolded along the course: growing awareness of the complexity of classroom teaching, ability to base the analysis of the episodes on theories, and the initial construction of a cognitive lens to view classroom processes holistically. This was manifested in a shift from using lay theories to relating to academic theories, from the application of few concepts and theories while interpreting situations to the application of many relevant ones, from reporting discrete items and activities to reports based on a holistic, situated view, and from descriptions composed of non-cognitive, behaviorrelated statements to descriptions based on a cognitive view of classroom occurrences. The study has important implications for teacher education. Keywords: teacher knowledge; teacher education; classroom; complexity; theory practice gap; cognitive perspective the university should take on the task of helping learners integrate and transform their knowledge by theorizing practice and particularizing theory. (Leinhardt, Young, & Merriman, 1995, p. 404) How is it possible to overcome the difficulties pre-service teachers encounter in developing awareness of the complexity inherent in teaching learning processes? The purpose of teacher education is to provide teachers with the core ideas and broad understanding of teaching and learning that give them traction on their later development (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005, p. 3). Current literature *Corresponding author. beilam@construct.haifa.ac.il ISSN print/issn online 2009 Taylor & Francis DOI: /

3 88 B. Eilam and Y. Poyas concerning teacher education reports a variety of difficulties inherent in the development of teaching expertise. Development of professional knowledge may be hampered by the well-documented theory practice gap (e.g., Black & Halliwell, 2000; Ethell & McMeniman, 2000; Goodlad, 1990; Korthagen & Brouwer, 2005; Korthagen & Kessels, 1999; Leinhardt, Young, & Merriman, 1995), as well as by pre-service teachers tendency to disregard the cognitive nature of teaching and learning and focus on explicit non-cognitive behaviors (Ethell & McMeniman, 2000; Joram & Gabriele, 1998). Our study describes an intervention course, designed to tackle these reported difficulties. It examines the effect of the intervention on pre-service teachers awareness of the complexity of teaching and its contribution to their ability to (1) use a cognitive lens while examining classroom situations, namely, to interpret cognitive phenomena in teaching learning processes (e.g., cognitive operations), and (2) to base their interpretations on theoretical perspectives. Successful teaching involves understanding how students learn, knowledge of the subject-matter taught, and the ability to organize and represent it to students in a way likely to best promote their learning within the specific context in which it takes place; moreover, teachers should also be able to reflect constantly on the practices they implement and improve them (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Darling- Hammond & Bransford, 2005; Eilam & Poyas, 2006; Lampert, 2001). For teaching to be effective, knowledge of theories is also required. Leinhardt et al. (1995) maintain that teacher education programs are based on the unsubstantiated tacit assumption that students are capable of applying (practicing) the acquired knowledge (theories) in specific contexts. These programs must also help students integrate the knowledge they acquire at the university with the knowledge derived from their experience during practice teaching, because such integration is neither trivial nor is it obvious (p. 402). Pre-service teachers usually perceive learning episodes through the lens of their prior knowledge, including their preconceptions and beliefs (Ethell & McMeniman, 2000; Joram & Gabriele, 1998; Kagan, 1990, 1992; Nespor, 1987). While relating to these episodes, pre-service teachers rely heavily on affective components of teaching, disregard the cognitive aspects of the episodes, tend to explain them on the basis of their memories of specific incidents, and believe that some of these incidents are beyond the teacher s control and therefore inevitable. This tendency may be an obstacle to learning how to teach. We based our intervention on the case-oriented approach, because it is considered successful in dealing with these difficulties within the context of teacher training. This approach provides pre-service teachers with a repertoire of situations, enabling them to construct flexible, effective pedagogical knowledge (Putnam & Borko, 2000; Shulman, 1996, 2001). Video-recorded cases provide a holistic and nonlinear context, enabling discussion of tacit knowledge (Tochon, 1999) and fostering a cognitive orientation; pre-service teachers are thus able to benefit from the thinking, underlying the practices of expert teachers (Copeland & Decker, 1996; Ethell & McMeniman, 2000). The context of the study The principles underlying the university course Our study presents a curriculum promoting the construction of knowledge concerning literature teaching. We focus on the pedagogical content knowledge of teaching

4 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 89 literature in Israel, since most human thinking mechanisms are domain-specific (Barkow, Cosmidas, & Tooby, 1992; Salomon & Perkins, 1989). The intervention program (see details in Eilam & Poyas, 2006) was based on an Internet site, created by the authors, consisting of video clips of teaching learning episodes as they occur in authentic classrooms, and designed in light of the following principles: (1) application of a constructivist approach (Brooks & Brooks, 1993); (2) explication of implicit elements of teaching learning episodes (e.g., cognitive processes, tacit orientations) (Anderson, 1993; Perkins, 1987); (3) situated contentbound episodes for analysis (Salomon & Perkins, 1989); (4) a metacognitive approach for increasing the learners capacity to identify cognitive aspects of teaching and link them to learning processes observed in the specific situation (Chi, Leeuw, Chiu, & Lavancher, 1994; Eilam, 2001; McCrindle & Christensen, 1995); (5) a setting involving both individual and cooperative learning modes to initiate a scaffolding dialogue (Anderson & Roth, 1988); and (6) avoidance of the compartmentalization of knowledge (Spiro, Coulson, Feltovich, & Anderson, 1988), since knowledge of teaching literature involves interactions along the borders of several disciplines (e.g., literature, psychology, sociology, pedagogy) (Klein, 1990; Spiro et al., 1988) and pre-service teachers must be aware of the need to access and interrelate them concurrently. The Internet site for the intervention course The site contained several elements designed to promote our goals: (1) Video clips of authentic classroom episodes of about 4 10 minutes each and their transcripts, expected to call the pre-service teachers attention to the cognitive aspects of teaching learning processes. (2) Learning materials used in the video clips, recording the classroom episodes, presented online, including worksheets, relevant texts, representations on classroom blackboards, and a vocal reading of the studied poems, aimed to enable pre-service teachers to fully capture the teacher-selected cognitive stimuli. (3) Additional information on the recorded lessons context: School characteristics, teacher and students characteristics. (4) Open interviews with the teachers of the recorded lessons: Tapping teachers ideas and perceptions of literature and literature teaching as shaping there contextual procedures and considerations in the observed scenarios. The interviewed teachers talked explicitly about the domestication, (Petraglia, 1998) of their professional knowledge in the specific video-recorded situation. (By domestication, Petraglia means the adaptation of general knowledge to constitute an inherent part of an individual s practice in a specific situation.) This professional knowledge constitutes the integration of teachers theoretical knowledge with their pedagogic knowledge, derived from their past experiences with learners and learner-sensitive pedagogies (e.g., considerations of learners culture and ability, of classroom heterogeneity), as applied in the particular context observed. These interviews exposed preservice teachers to these teachers implicit goals and functions in this context. (5) An open interview with a well-known author, revealing the author s views on teaching literature, which enabled pre-service teachers to identify manifestations of such views in the recorded lessons, to explicate fundamental ideas pertaining to literature as perceived by an expert in the discipline, and, subsequently to identify how such views were adapted by the teacher to specific learners and contexts in the scenarios. (6) Links: Enabling use of academic information (e.g., literature, psychology). (7) Learning tasks, designed to promote the development of the pre-service teachers knowledge of teaching, based on website materials and supported by their practicum.

5 90 B. Eilam and Y. Poyas We shall now elaborate on the two main elements of the website: the video clips and the learning tasks. Classroom video clips, clips of authentic classroom literature lessons, chosen from fully recorded lessons to give pre-service teachers a holistic glimpse of reality, capturing both verbal and nonverbal components of teaching learning scenarios. We did not attempt to record best practices. Most of the clips presented lesson episodes recorded in diverse schools, taught by various teachers at different grade levels. The clips enabled pre-service teachers to observe how a particular topic (content) is taught (practice) and how pedagogical knowledge (derived from theories and experience) is applied in a specific complex learning situation (context). The selected clips and relevant tasks (described ahead) constituted the core of the pre-service teachers course. Selected industrial film clips, highlighting cognitive-related activities free from the messiness of an authentic classroom. Several such activities could be related to the course syllabus. For example, the clip showing the construction of a graph representing the relations between artistic quality and the artwork s importance in the movie Dead poets society (Haft, Witt, Thomas, & Weir, 1989) was used to discuss the concept of visual representations in teaching literature. Other film excerpts presented the novel ideas of the members of the tribe for using the cola bottle that fell from the sky in The gods must be crazy (Troskie & Uys, 1984), implemented to discuss prior knowledge; and the presentation of Bob Dylan s Mr Tambourine Man in Dangerous minds (Simpson, Bruckheimer, & Smith, 1995) was discussed in relation to entering the fictional world of the poem. Learning tasks, focusing on revealing explicit and implicit contextual components of the complex scenarios, identifying these components interrelations and interactions, interpreting them in light of theories studied in the university courses, and examining their possible effects on the situation. Thus the tasks comprised three levels of analysis: description, interpretation, and evaluation. Descriptive tasks (e.g., Describe the teacher s sequence of questions in the episode, and the students responses to them ) asked pre-service teachers to identify and describe the episode s components and their interrelations, increasing awareness, and possibly acting as a cue for the retrieval of previously studied relevant theories. Interpretive tasks (e.g., Suggest a relevant theory to explain why the teacher dealt at length with the issue presented in the second line of the poem in this classroom or Based on Langer s 1995 theory, how would you explain this student s response in line 8 of the transcript? ) asked pre-service teachers to explain the identified relations among various components of episodes via an application of relevant theories. Evaluative tasks (e.g., How could the teacher s explanation of the concept promote the students ability to apply it later on in a new context? ) required pre-service teachers to evaluate the observed, described, and interpreted activities in light of the episode s objectives as perceived by them, based on the episode and the interviews. Later in the course we introduced additional, more complex assignments, requiring the combined application of two or all levels of analysis, for example: What is your opinion of the discourse among the three students (transcript lines 6 15) in light of the expert s views (the author s) on understanding a poem? or Compare the two similar thematic episodes as they occurred in the two classrooms: Indicate similarities and differences, and explain the reasons for them. It should be noted that the various stages of knowledge processing are, naturally, not disconnected from personal dispositions and orientations towards teaching and learning, emerging from one s experiences, assumptions, and beliefs.

6 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 91 The above stages constitute a framework for describing, interpreting, and evaluating any episode. This hierarchy of analytical operations is essential to avoid unmethodical reasoning processes, leading to unsubstantiated inferences. Erroneous identification of the situational components may result in the retrieval of an inappropriate theory for interpreting the observed relations/interactions and thus in a mistaken evaluation of the impact of the observed components on the teaching learning process. The application of this hierarchy promotes the pre-service teachers ability to relate theory to practice both specifically and holistically, thereby enhancing the construction of knowledge concerning the complexity of teaching. We expected that systematic, hierarchical, and accurate analysis (i.e., knowledge processing) of episodes would lead to more efficient organization of the pre-service teachers constructed knowledge and to the creation of more links among its components, and possibly to its efficient future application. The many different video episodes, each representing one specific complex environment, portrayed the reality of teaching literature, where teachers may encounter similar problems (e.g., how does one initiate the study of a poem?), but must often handle them differently, because these problems differ in each case (Spiro et al., 1988). For example, one learning task juxtaposed two scenarios where the same content was taught by the same teacher in two different classrooms on the same grade level, making the pre-service teachers seek differences between the classes, think holistically about the episodes, and draw conclusions about how instructional procedures must be adapted to learners characteristics. Such nonlinear use of learning materials relating them to many diverse contexts takes into account the highly situational nature of each episode, with its complex and specific features. This procedure was intended to promote pre-service teachers flexibility and their ability to construct representations of multiple links among the various pieces of information, while considering multiple perspectives of the complex episode. At an advanced stage of knowledge acquisition, the learner must attain a deeper understanding of content material, reason with it and apply it flexibly in diverse contexts (Spiro et al., 1988, p. 375). Thus the tasks based on the video clips were intended to enhance the pre-service teachers awareness concerning various types of knowledge regarding teaching and promote their ability to construct an initial body of professional knowledge through constant consideration of the whole rather than merely of its parts. Procedure during the intervention course The course consisted of 11 weekly two-hour sessions during the last pre-service semester, to ensure that the pre-service teachers already possessed the knowledge and ability necessary for exploiting the course fully. The lecturer teaching the course was well versed in the following fields: (1) the discipline (literature); (2) the pedagogy of this discipline (e.g., teaching literature in junior and high schools); (3) the pedagogy of training pre-service teachers for teaching this discipline (e.g., experience in teaching methods course); and (4) a basic body of knowledge of theories of teaching learning processes (e.g., cognition, classroom discourse, cooperative learning). Knowledge of teaching literature (pedagogical content knowledge) is built on knowledge of the discipline as well as knowledge of pedagogy. This expertise develops, through experience, into competence in training teachers. Thus these aspects are interrelated and somewhat hierarchical in nature. The fourth level constitutes an independent body of knowledge integrated with the other three.

7 92 B. Eilam and Y. Poyas The sessions were mostly based on observation of a specific clip, group analyses, and individual/group tasks, followed by a classroom discussion of the relationship of the task s products to relevant theories. The contents taught during the 11 sessions are presented in Table 1. The topics addressed mainly cognitive aspects of teaching learning literature. Types of teacher knowledge acquired The pre-service teachers examination of a wide variety of contexts promoted awareness of the contextual nature of teaching. We examined three interrelated types of knowledge: theoretical/declarative, procedural, and conditional/situated knowledge. Firstly, teaching requires theoretical/declarative knowledge regarding the various disciplines involved (e.g., literature, psychology), pedagogy (i.e., general methods of teaching), and pedagogical content knowledge (i.e., specific methods of teaching literature). Disciplinary knowledge was portrayed as an important source of theoretical knowledge for efficient teaching (Grossman, 1990; Sanders, Borko, & Lockard, 1993). Secondly, teaching must call on procedural knowledge, meaning the ability to teach literature. This knowledge develops through learning about teaching, teaching Table 1. Contents of the 11 intervention course sessions. Session number Topic/concept Subtopics 1 2 Classroom discourse Discourse according to Gee (1999), and its manifestation in literature lessons 3 Prior knowledge Brainstorming and associations; developing expectations concerning a poem s title Building expectations (Langer, 1995; Rosenblatt, 1978) 4 Classroom discourse Types of initiations responses evaluations (IREs; Lemke, 1990) in literature classroom discourse; types of questions; types of learners responses and teacher s feedback 5 Prior knowledge Types of prior knowledge; its manifestations and effects on teaching/learning processes in the literature classroom; procedures of engagement with a new poem; cultural knowledge and interpretation; everyday knowledge and interpretation 6 IRE IRE patterns in a group discussion 7 Prior knowledge Prior cultural knowledge and inter-subjectivity in the literature classroom 8 Theories of interpretation Reader response theory (Langer, 1995; Rosenblatt, 1978); readers literary taste theory (Booth, 1961); entering a literary text s fictional world (Langer, 1995) 9 Representation Blackboard representations; types of blackboard representations in literature lessons Teaching a concept Using examples to demonstrate relations; metaphors as examples; developing an argument using newly acquired concepts in a literature lesson; the function of prior knowledge in selecting examples

8 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 93 experiences and classroom observations, and is increasingly refined. Enhancing the pre-service teachers ability to identify their students learning needs and difficulties promotes their ability to teach specific topics effectively (Grossman, 1990; Van Driel, De Jong, & Verloop, 2002). Finally, conditional/situated knowledge of teaching literature involves the domestication of the first two types of knowledge (theoretical/ declarative and procedural) within the specific classroom context. In the present study we examined only awareness of theoretical/declarative and conditional/situated knowledge as expressed in the students written products. Procedural knowledge was not examined here, since it can only be evaluated via observation of practice. The article addresses the effects of the intervention on pre-service teachers awareness of the complexity of teaching, as manifested in their pre- versus post-course written and oral responses, during their analysis of video clips, recording authentic classroom literature teaching episodes. We considered the following questions: During their interpretation of a teaching learning episode after experiencing the intervention course (1) Do pre-service teachers apply a greater number of professional concepts and theories? (2) What types of teacher knowledge do pre-service teachers apply? (3) Do they apply a cognitive lens? (4) Have they learnt to analyze classroom episodes systematically? Method Participants The participants comprised 21 women university undergraduates majoring in the Department of Literature (aged years), currently enrolled in their last year of the teacher education program in the Department of Teaching and Teacher Education at the University of Haifa, Israel. The intervention course was a compulsory course in the program. Measures We collected data concerning the effect of the course on the pre-service teachers competence from two sources (see Table 2): (1) written assignments by the preservice teachers, and (2) video recordings of the course sessions and their transcripts. A university technician filmed each session using a Sony video camera focused mostly on the speaker (the lecturer or the pre-service teacher). Pre-service teachers written tasks We included a pre-course task and two post-course tasks to assess changes in each pre-service teacher s knowledge. We believe that their written analyses of the video clips reflect the various types of knowledge they construct. Pre-course task pre-test. The task required pre-service students to observe a fourminute video clip of an authentic classroom literature lesson, to analyze the episode, and to write about it while relating to as many details as possible. This task served to reflect the pre-service teachers initial ability to relate to the practice of teaching literature in the observed context, based on their previous studies in the various university courses. Their responses provided a baseline from which a follow-up could be carried out to assess knowledge construction and growth.

9 94 B. Eilam and Y. Poyas Table 2. Pre-course Intervention course Post-course Data sources and modes of data analysis as related to study stages. Data sources Pre-service teachers written analysis of four-minute video clip of authentic classroom situation (7th grade) Data analysis (1) A content analysis of pre-service teachers written responses according to predetermined criteria (2) Examining use of theories in relation to types of statements 11 video-recorded sessions (1) Transcription of video-recordings (2) Content analysis of selected transcript units, related to preservice teachers learning via authentic video clips, performed according to predetermined general criteria (3) A deeper discourse analysis of sessions 3 and 8 of the intervention course (1) Pre-service teachers written analysis of same four-minute video clip of authentic classroom situation (7th grade) (2) Pre-service teachers written analysis of the observed, two minute authentic classroom episodes (1) A content analysis of pre-service teachers written responses according to predetermined criteria (2) Examining use of theories in relation to type of statements Post-course tasks post-test. Two post-course written tasks assessed the pre-service teachers integration of knowledge acquired during the course. First they observed and analyzed the same four-minute video-recorded episode that they had analyzed in the first session (the pre-test); this served as a post-test. The second post-course task required an analysis of two two-minute episodes that the pre-service students had observed in live classrooms during the practicum. We selected the video clips for the pre- and post-tests as representing typical literature lessons in Israeli educational culture; they contained teaching learning processes characteristic of literature lessons, and they demonstrated the teachers application of the various types of knowledge. Video recordings of the course sessions We chose for a deep discourse analysis two sessions representing two points of time between the pre- and post-tests the third and eighth sessions to deepen our understanding of the pre-service teachers development. Procedure The lecturer assigned the pre-course written task to the pre-service students during the first session of the course. They performed the task individually, while viewing the video on their own personal screens at their own pace, being able to rewind and go fast forward as need be. They were asked to analyze the observed episode and sum up their analysis and interpretation of the episode on a sheet of paper. The additional required analysis task of two minutes of an audio-recorded practicum episode was

10 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 95 assigned and performed individually at the end of the course and submitted two weeks after the end of the course. Data analysis of written materials Intervention course analysis A research assistant transcribed all 11 video recordings of the intervention course sessions. During 15 two-hour meetings during a period of two months, we worked as a dyad to systematically conduct a general content analysis of session units related to the pre-service teachers learning. The analysis was based on the application of a few pre-determined criteria (e.g., topics, activity segments). Analysis of pre-service teachers tasks A unit of analysis was defined as a written pre-service teacher s statement, comprising one or several sentences dealing with a single observed phenomenon in the video clips. We classified each of the statements four times, according to four independent categories corresponding to our perception of various types of knowledge, as shown in Table 3: (1) theoretical/declarative knowledge, as expressed in the application of pertinent concepts and theories; (2) the type of knowledge manifested general theoretical /declarative, conditional/situated, or a combination; (3) orientation in terms of using a cognitive lens; and (4) statement particularity in terms of the use of description, interpretation, and evaluation. Categories 1, 2, and 3 were predetermined, whereas Category 4 evolved from a microanalysis of the pre-service teachers intervention course discourse. We achieved 93% agreement concerning the classification of the various statements according to Categories 2, 3, and 4, and 97% concerning the identification of relevant theories and concepts, according to Category 1. To reveal the pre-service teachers growing awareness, we compared the pre- and post-video analysis tasks for the number of statements in each category and subcategory. Results and discussion A whole session was allocated for the pre-test (90 minutes), but all the pre-service teachers completed it in less than 24 minutes. The same procedure was used for the post-test. This time most of the pre-service teachers exploited all the time available. Category I: use of concepts and application of theories The analysis of the pre- and post-tests revealed an increase in the pre-service teachers use of concepts and application of theories, which suggested that within the context of this specific four-minute video clip, the students exhibited growth in the theoretical/ declarative aspect of their knowledge. Table 4 presents the increase in the total number of statements between the pre- and post-tests and in the frequency of application of relevant concepts and theories. Since each statement could contain more than one concept and more than a single theory, it was impossible to calculate the rate of increase in the applications of concepts and theories. As can be inferred from the data, the number of

11 96 B. Eilam and Y. Poyas Table 3. Categories for the pre- and post-intervention course analyses, with definitions and examples of statements. Category Subcategories Definition Examples 1. Application of theoretical/ declarative knowledge Concepts Theories Professional register of the theoretical/declarative knowledge acquired at the university Prior knowledge Cognitive load Lemke s (1990) initiations responses evaluations Langer s (1995) entering the fictional world 2. Type of knowledge manifested General theoretical/ declarative Conditional/situated lacking theoretical/declarative knowledge Combined statements including both theoretical/ declarative knowledge and a situated view of the episode Statements focusing on theoretical knowledge of pedagogy and literature acquired at the university A lay description of the situation devoid of any use of theories or concepts A conscious domestication of applied theoretical/declarative knowledge in the specific situation observed Rosenblatt argues for two kinds of readings: the aesthetic and the efferent (literature); Do the junior high school students have formal thinking abilities? (Developmental psychology) The teacher asked Edna if the knight loves the Rabbi s daughter. The same student shouted from the back of the class We know that these classroom students are gifted youngsters; therefore, more attention should have been paid to the abstract idea of the poem. The teacher we observed adapted the examples he used to the students prior television knowledge about Xena, the warrior princess 3. Orientation Non-cognitive, explicit behavior Cognitive statements concerning teacher s behavior No indication of any cognitive behavior by observed teacher and students. Indication of explicit non-cognitive behaviors only Pre-service teachers indication of cognitive behaviors performed by the teacher, but no indication of its effect on the learning process The teacher stood in one place with her leg on the chair. There was a lot of noise in the classroom because of the moving of chairs The teacher refined the important informative details in each stanza. The teacher dismissed the answer by waving her hand

12 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 97 Table 3. (Continued). Category Subcategories Definition Examples Cognitive statements with implication to students learning Pre-service teachers indication of a cognitive behavior performed by the teacher or by students, including a proposed perceived significance for the students learning By this question, the teacher elicited students prior knowledge. Her feedback made the student reconsider the relations among the characters in the poem 4. Particularity Description (discrete) Verbalizations of visual impressions of a situation that approximates reality as closely as possible. Requires the identification of situational elements and their interrelations Interpretation (discrete) Applications of pedagogical and theoretical knowledge to make sense of the situation, as described at the first stage of analysis Evaluation and/or judgment (discrete) Reasoning about the episode, students success in achieving the perceived situational objectives, as described and interpreted in previous stages Combination (holistic) Hierarchical statements including at least a description followed by interpretation, and sometimes also by an evaluation/judgment Items: teacher, seventh grade students, text Actions: discussing, questioning Context: junior high, classroom Interrelations: teacher responds to each student s remarks; students sit in a circle; students are silent after teacher reads poem The teacher s questions aim to check specific student s understanding of the content as a first step in building the text s fictional world at that grade level. The circular setting diminishes the power relations in a classroom of gifted students while they analyze the text The teacher s questions misled the students. The teacher s representations did not clarify the problem The teacher talked very quickly for most of the lesson, which created a dynamic and rhythmic lesson, but could have been one of the reasons for students lack of understanding due to the heavy cognitive load

13 98 B. Eilam and Y. Poyas Table 4. Pre-test and post-test frequencies and percentages for the various dimensions, calculated from the total number of statements (n = 21). Pre-test Post-test Category Subcategories Frequency Percentage Frequency Percentage No. of statements Application of theoretical/declarative knowledge 2. Type of knowledge manifested, derived from the three types of teacher knowledge (pp ) Concepts Theories: Lay Academic General theoretical/declarative Conditional/situated but not theoretical/ declarative Integrated (theoretical/declarative and situated) 3. Orientation Non-cognitive Teaching-cognitive Teaching-learning Cognitive Irrelevant Particularity Discrete Holistic combination

14 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 99 statements increased three-fold in the post-test compared to the pre-test, the number of concepts increased 28-fold, and the number of theories increased four-fold. These findings indicate that the increase in concepts and in theory applications (declarative knowledge) was greater than the mere increase in the number of statements, suggesting that pre-service teachers theory practice gap became narrower during the course. As indicated above, pre-service teachers tend to rely on prior lay knowledge in their judgments of teaching learning situations. Therefore, to examine pre-service teachers development towards the use of academic rather than lay theories, we conducted a comparison of these two types of educational theories (see Table 3). Indeed, the findings showed that before the intervention, most of the trainees used lay theories in their responses, as in the following excerpts: It is important for all students to participate in the lesson; The teacher cannot control the lesson; in a good lesson students have to be quiet; or Certain students have greater motivation to learn. In contrast, in the post-test, the pre-service teachers mostly applied academic theories: The teacher did not attempt to organize the discussed ideas on the board; thus she increased the students cognitive load; The teacher conducted the classroom discourse according to Lemke s initiations responses evaluations; or By reminding students of the discussion in the previous lesson, the teacher enhanced inter-subjectivity, thus creating a common starting point for that day s discussion. It should be mentioned that the academic theories the pre-service teachers applied in these tasks had not been studied in the present course but constituted part of the curriculum in other teacher education courses; therefore the application of the theories indicated a transfer of knowledge to the specific situation observed. Knowledge processing Category II: type of knowledge manifested As seen in Table 4, the pre-service teachers statements in the pre-test were mainly of the conditional/situated type, but their statements of all types mostly suggested that their pedagogical theoretical knowledge as related to the episode was quite superficial, representing beliefs and lay theories concerning classroom activities. Pre-test excerpts included: Teachers should explain difficult words before discussing a poem or A teacher has to maintain a normative discourse culture (theoretical/declarative); This teacher speaks very quickly (conditional/situated); and The teacher does not provide any feedback to correct answers (integrated). The largest post-test increase in specific types of knowledge was evident in the quantity of integrated, domesticated knowledge statements, suggesting growth in the pre-service teachers awareness of the complexity of teaching. This awareness was expressed in theoretical/declarative statements linked to the specific situation, rather than in nonspecific global theoretical/declarative statements. For example, in analyzing the lesson transcript in the pre-test, one pre-service teacher did not relate at all to the specific transcript lines 33 34, whereas in the post-test her statement revealed conditional/situated knowledge: The student said [in line 33] that the knight ambushed the rabbi s daughter. The teacher altered it to The knight courted her. The teacher changed the meaning of the student s answer by rephrasing it in order to adapt it to her lesson plan and to the poem. I wonder if this is a widespread phenomenon, because I have noticed it during my practicum. This statement reflected this preservice teacher s awareness of the importance of use of certain words in the classroom discourse, as a source for learning about the pedagogy implemented in the specific

15 100 B. Eilam and Y. Poyas situation. Moreover, the statement revealed an ability to relate the authentic clip to the practicum authentic classroom experience. Our analysis suggested some relations between the application of integrative and lay theories. Therefore we examined the use of lay theories by five randomly selected pre-service teachers (25% of the participants), as related to the type of knowledge reflected in their statements. As seen in Table 5, which presents the pre post use of theories in the pre-service teachers statements, those who made few integrative statements in the post-test tended to use more lay theories than did pre-service teachers who provided a larger number of integrative statements. This result may suggest a slower pace of knowledge development among those pre-service teachers who generated fewer integrative statements, possibly due to their poor ability to transfer general knowledge and domesticate it in a specific episode. Knowledge processing Category III: statement orientation in using a cognitive lens A change emerged in the pre-service teachers orientation along the course, reflecting the desired shift from behavior-oriented statements towards more cognitively oriented statements, as defined above. The prevalence of the cognitive lens over the noncognitive behavioral one was evident in the pre-service teachers increased identification of cognitive processes transpiring in the observed classroom scenario, reflecting an increased awareness of these processes (see Table 4). The high percentage of cognitive statements concerning the classroom teachers behavior that continued to emerge after the course is remarkable. One possible explanation for this phenomenon may be the focus of the camera on the speakers (as indicated in the Method section). Such a focus draws the observer s attention to the actions performed by the speaker (mostly the teacher) and leaves very few mental resources for identifying any observed or hypothesized effect of this action on particular elements comprising the situation. This, in turn, may lead to statement-types, which are either non-cognitive explicit behavioral or cognitive statements concerning the teacher s behavior (e.g., non-cognitive explicit behavioral: the teacher sat on the desk, the student shouted; cognitive statements concerning the teacher s behavior: the teacher explained the line, the student s answer was wrong ). These results coincide with the expectations that, before the course, pre-service teachers would usually focus on teacher activities rather than students reactions, and especially on non-cognitive aspects, due to the pre-service teachers early professional developmental stage. Therefore the shift after the intervention course from more noncognitive explicitly behavioral statements to more cognitive statements concerning the teacher s behavior may indicate progress in professional development, despite the continued focus on the teacher rather than on students. Hence an increase in cognitive statements concerning the teacher s behavior can be considered a step towards an initial awareness of the importance of the cognitive lens, but cannot yet be regarded as awareness of the classroom teacher s role to adapt instruction to the learners needs. The increase in pre-service teachers cognitive statements with implications for students learning as defined in this article offers indirect evidence for an increase in such awareness. To validate these results, we analyzed the statement-types generated by students in the two-minute post-course task of classroom episode analysis. The task elicited a total of 275 statements. We classified 20% (56) as non-cognitive explicit behavioral, 51% (140) as cognitive statements concerning the teacher s behavior, and 27% (75)

16 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 101 Table 5. Comparison of pre-test versus post-test responses by five randomly chosen pre-service teachers in their application of lay and academic theories as related to Category 2 type of knowledge manifested. Pre-test Post-test Statement type Theoretical/declarative Integrative Theoretical/declarative Integrative Theory quality Lay Academic Conditional/situated Lay Academic Lay Academic Conditional/situated Lay Academic Student Student Student Student Student

17 102 B. Eilam and Y. Poyas as cognitive statements with implications for students learning. (Four statements 2% were irrelevant.) Thus this second post-course task revealed a similar orientation among the pre-service teachers. Mostly non-cognitive explicit behavioral statements cannot be transformed into cognitive statements with implications for students learning, because their nature differs basically, and they relate to different types of phenomena. In order to examine individual progress, we counted the number of both types of statements in the same individual s pre-test and post-test tasks, accompanied by some descriptive examples. For example, one pre-service teacher replaced a non-cognitive explicit behavioral statement in her pre-test, The teacher read the poem with pathos, with a cognitive statement with implications for the students learning in her post-test: The teacher opened [the lesson] with a dramatic reading [of the poem] in order to arouse interest in her students. By means of such a reading, the teacher introduces the students to the topic of the lesson and diverts their attention from pre-lesson events. This rare example, demonstrating a pre-service teacher s discussion of the same phenomenon in both tests, clearly reveals the shift in orientation. In one other such example, a trainee replaced her pre-test non-cognitive explicit behavioral response, A teacher [stands] with a painting behind her back, with her post-test cognitive statement with implications for the students learning: In the physical context [of the classroom], it is of utmost importance to mention the painting that the teacher displayed on the blackboard in order to create an atmosphere and elicit the students prior knowledge. This statement exposes this pre-service teacher s comprehensive perspective (i.e., classroom physical environment, its climate, and cognitive processes), as well as her reference to the specific situation. Rather than discussing the importance of the cognitive orientation in general terms, these processes were examined in the present study as situated phenomena. Therefore the revealed shift from a general, non-cognitive behavioral perspective to a situated-teaching-learning cognitive one may well be the result of the video-based intervention course that encouraged a situated cognitive perspective and thus brought about a growth in awareness of these aspects. Category IV: statement particularity During the pre-test, the pre-service teachers tended to use the four stages of knowledge processing (i.e., description, interpretation, evaluation, or their combinations) unsystematically. This resulted in an ungrounded and unsubstantiated analysis of the episode. For example, one pre-test statement was: Maybe the teacher s nice reading [of the poem] should have been much slower (evaluation). Our analysis of the video recordings of the third course session showed similar unsubstantiated analyses: After observing an episode, one pre-service teacher stated, The teacher did not use the blackboard during the lesson (description), and as a response to a different episode another pre-service teacher stated, The teacher wrote [on the blackboard] only those comments that suited what she had initially planned, in line with her plans for the following part of the lesson (interpretation). Video recordings of the eighth course session reflected the pre-service teacher s more holistic analysis, when they integrated discrete observations into a comprehensive understanding of the episode. For example, pre-service teachers analyzed a classroom video clip depicting how a teacher stopped her students independent work on a worksheet after realizing that the students were facing difficulties in performing the task. The pre-service teachers first spontaneous verbal responses were discrete: The

18 Teachers and Teaching: theory and practice 103 teacher said that the problem of understanding the story s sequence of events was common to several students and that they would therefore go over the sequence together (description); Students exhibited their inability to identify the narrator of the text (interpretation); and How come this happened to a teacher with 15 years of experience? (evaluation). However, via the session s ensuing discussion, the students were able to integrate the discrete elements into a more holistic understanding, as manifested in verbal responses such as: Probably, at the observed stage of the lesson, the assigned task was too difficult. The students are still in the first stage of entering the fictional world according to Langer, whereas the questions in the worksheet required students to be at the fourth stage. This discrepancy resulted in students difficulties and the teacher s change of strategy. Such holistic statements were also typical of most pre-service teachers responses in the two-minute post-course task of classroom episode analysis. For example: At the beginning of the lesson, the teacher wrote the title of the poem on the board, drawing arrows from it downwards, where she wrote her students hypotheses concerning the topic of the poem. The blackboard looked like this [the drawing was attached]. This representation is a list of the hypotheses and associations the students inferred from the title. The list was meant to organize their diverse ideas and implied the various options, all carrying the same significance, because these are pre-reading hypotheses, as the teacher indicated: The board is a meaningful teaching aid and enhanced the teaching learning methods [in the episode]. Thus, in addition to the advantages of the hierarchical systematic analysis of episodes as described above (description interpretation evaluation combined), this category s outcomes present indirect evidence of an increase in the pre-service teachers awareness of the holistic nature of the teaching learning processes, and an improved organization of the relevant knowledge. Better organized knowledge is also more efficient in guiding the pre-service teachers considerations and activities in diverse classroom situations. General conclusions This study investigated the effect of a unique intervention course on pre-service teachers awareness of various aspects of the complexity of teaching and on their ability to construct an initial body of knowledge that will serve as a foundation for further professional development. In order to construct such holistic knowledge, individuals must be aware of the components of classroom teaching learning episodes and their interrelations. This calls for the use of a cognitive lens while identifying the episodes elements and their interrelations when considering the particular teaching learning situation, and retrieving relevant theoretical knowledge to interpret it. Our findings clearly show development in the desired direction. The pre-service teachers acquired the ability to apply academic theories when interpreting teaching learning situations. They increasingly focused on classroom discourse, structure, and concepts. They became aware of differences in the discourse characteristics of various participants and of the diversity of contexts. They exhibited increased awareness of the role of language in exposing thinking processes, revealing the level of the learners comprehension and the teachers instructional considerations in the specific situation, including its components (Lemke, 1989). The emphasis on many diverse experiences of identifying a phenomenon and its various components within the complexity of the holistic classroom reality, revealing relations and interactions among these components,