How a video-based online platform enhances pre-service English teachers’ quality and depth of reflections

Abstract

Situated within the context of English language teacher education, this paper discusses the affordances of an online video-based learning management system VideoVox developed by a university in Hong Kong to promote learning dialogues. With its unique functions of annotating time-stamped videos using personalisable tags, the platform creates an avenue for focused, rich and meaningful asynchronous discussion of critical episodes of teaching and learning. The study involves pre-service student-teachers taking undergraduate and postgraduate English language teaching methodology courses at the university. These student-teachers participated in staged collaborative lesson-planning, peer review and joint-reflection activities via VideoVox in relation to a micro-teaching and associated lesson-study assessment task. Adopting a qualitative approach, data is collected from the student-teachers’ online interactions, artifacts of their original, revised and finalised lesson plans and teaching materials, semi-structured interviews, and the teacher-educator’s observational diary. All this is analysed using thematic coding with inter-rater reliability checks. The paper examines how the functionalities of VideoVox may be capitalised upon in promoting different forms of collaboration, peer-feedback and reflections. Findings of the study indicate that VideoVox plays a significant role in enhancing the quality and depth of the student-teachers’ reflections, their criticality as well as use of video as evidence in their lesson study. Student-teachers also report gains in their feedback-giving approach and acknowledge its importance in their future teaching career. On this basis, pedagogical implications for broadening the use of such video-based platforms for teacher professional development will be explored.