Digital Video : Watch Me Do What I Say! / Robert M. Capraro, Mary Margaret Capraro and Charles E. Lamb.

This paper establishes a use for digital video in developing preservice teacher metacognition about the teaching process using a lesson plan-rating sheet as a guide. A lesson plan was developed to meet the specific needs of the methods instructors in a professional development program at a large public institution. The categories listed on the lesson planning document are: Instructional Objectives; State Objectives; Materials; Background Information; Learning Environment; Focus; Teaching Procedure; Explanation and Practice; Elaboration; Closure; and Assessment. After a semester of using the document, several of the methods instructors believed that preservice teachers were not successfully engaging in lesson planning and not displaying thought processes conducive to cogent, sequential, and organized lesson development. This need precipitated the development of a lesson plan-rating sheet. The lesson plan-rating sheet is based on the original lesson plan form with the addition of indicators. Those indicators are intended to focus the rater's attention on the details of lesson planning and to act as a tool to encourage discourse surrounding effective lesson planning and delivery of instruction in a mathematics methods course. Inter-rater reliability of the instrument was determined to be adequate, ranging from 0.83 to 0.98. Preservice teachers exhibited marked improvements in metacognitive processes relating to writing of lesson plans and engaged in greater critical analyses of the mentor teachers and themselves. Preservice teachers became better consumers of field placement experiences. The study indicates that videotapes can be used effectively to assist preservice teachers in becoming reflective practitioners. Participant demographics and the inter-rater reliability by category for lesson plan rating instrument are tabulated. Appendixes include the lesson plan form and the lesson plan-rating scale. (Contains 16 references.) (Author/AEF)

Microfiche. [Washington D.C.]: ERIC Clearinghouse microfiches : positive.