Event

Videotaping and Self-Reflection. What Do You See?

Saturday, July 17th, 2010, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Speaker: Greg Dunne and Sean Toland

In addition to physical conditioning and hitting thousands of balls at a driving range, a professional golfer will spend hours upon hours carefully examining videotape of his/her swing in order to observe any flaws or elements of the swing that could be improved. In fact, the majority of PGA/LPGA golfers would view videotaping as an essential and valuable part of their professional development. This sentiment stands in sharp contrast to the feelings about videotaping that exist in the EFL teaching arena. Most English teachers will curl their toes in obvious discomfort when the words “videotape” and “your lesson” are mentioned in the same sentence. In all probability, this negative feeling stems from the fact that video recording is often used as an evaluative tool, especially during the pre-service teaching practicum, and not as an effective professional improvement device.

This presentation aims to alleviate some of the discomfort and apprehension that educators have with video recording their EFL classes. In addition, it highlights the preliminary findings of an ongoing, truly synergised teacher development project that promotes professional development. The project required participating teachers to videotape each other’s university English lessons before engaging in critical self-reflection and peer feedback. In essence, the varied perspectives enabled the teacher to raise his/her own self-reflective awareness. Preliminary observations from the study report; i) differences between how each teacher initially perceived his/her lesson regarding achievement of objectives, student participation/performance, teacher/student rapport, and issues regarding learning environment; and ii) how collaborative feedback examined these issues through inter-teacher reflection.

Organization: Nara Chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (Nara JALT)

Cost: JALT Members: free
Non-members: 500 yen

Venue: Manabunara at Gakuenmae station, kintetsu line manabunara.jp

Location: Nara City, Nara Prefecture, Japan

Contact Nara JALT

General Nara Chapter email