Dr. Tara Barnhart

Dr. Tara Barnhart

Tara Barnhart, Ph.D., NBCT, assistant professor in the Attallah College of Educational Studies, presented the paper “Utilizing Video to Support Planning, Enacting, and Analyzing Teaching in Pre-service Science Teacher Education” at the ASTE (Assoc. for Science Teacher Education) 2019 Conference in Savannah, Georgia. Her paper was identified as a finalist for the John C. Park National Technology Leadership Initiative Fellowship.

During her conference session, Dr. Barnhart explained how she utilizes video to address the challenges of planning, enacting, and analyzing inquiry-based instruction. This course design takes into account research on science teacher education and teacher reflection around artifacts of teaching to provide support for new teachers to begin to meet the demands of a student-centered inquiry approach. Video has been used to provide models of this type of instruction, provide support for honing student-centered noticing skills, and provide evidence for analyzing early attempts to enact instruction. This pre-service teacher education course involved all three of these uses of video.

Dr. Barnhart’s presentation also included the results of a study examining the impact of participation in the video-augmented activity on science-student teacher learning.

“The teacher candidates I observed engaged in multiple cycles of designing, implementing, analyzing, and reflecting on instruction using video annotation software. Results indicated some shifts to more student-centered instruction and attempts by teacher candidates to navigate resistance in their field sites to more open inquiry approaches. This is noteworthy because close attention to students’ science ideas and practice with eliciting and responding to students’ ideas is critical for responsive science teaching,” explained Dr.  Barnhart.

 

The NTLI Fellowship was established to recognize exemplary presentations on technology at annual conferences for social studies, English, mathematics, and science education. The purpose of the fellowship is to encourage further dialog among professional associations regarding appropriate technology use in teacher education.

“The nomination for the John C. Park Fellowship was a pleasant surprise. I feel quite honored to have my work recognized by my colleagues in the science teacher education community,” said Dr.  Barnhart. “There are so many folks doing clever and innovative work in my field, it is truly exciting to have my efforts considered as of the same caliber and to have the opportunity to be in conversation with them.”