Developing student-teachers’ interactional competence through video-enhanced reflection: a discursive timeline analysis of negative evaluation in classroom interaction

Abstract

This article presents a case study of a student-teacher’s change in classroom interactional practices as she engages in video-enhanced reflections and collaborative feedback encounters during her practicum in Sweden. We specifically focus on an interactional practice that can be observed in many classrooms: teachers’ use of (overt) negative evaluation (i.e. ‘No!’) that immediately follows learners’ incorrect answers. Using discursive timeline analysis (DTA), which is a combination of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Ethnography, we track the use of the focal interactional phenomenon across (1) video-recorded classroom interactions, (2) audio-recorded triadic post observation conferences, (3) student-teacher portfolios, and (4) interviews. We demonstrate that after getting video-based feedback with a video-tagging tool (i.e. VEO) and reflecting on her overuse of (overt) negative evaluation, the focal student-teacher avoids this interactional practice in her future teaching. As the analysis illustrates, this change of practice is possible thanks to data-led reflections and the evidence-based feedback that the student-teacher received. Our analysis therefore shows that reflection and feedback with a mobile video-tagging tool can facilitate increased awareness of classroom interactional practices. We argue that digitally enhanced, video-based reflections can promote teacher-learning in teacher education programmes and that using discursive timeline analysis can provide rich insights into these processes.