Reflection, Refraction and Representation:
The New "Three R's" for K-12 Multimedia Scholarship Teaching
Reflection
The websites developed by CASTL K-12 scholars offer several
means of gaining direct access to events, tools, strategies,
and materials used in teachers’ classrooms, directly reflecting
classroom experience. more....
Refraction
The CASTL K-12 scholars who have developed multimedia websites
have not only included their classroom materials and records
of class events, but they also refract these materials through
the interpretive lens of their scholarship and inquiry.
more...
Representation
The websites displayed in this exhibition have taken diverse
approaches to representing the scholar’s inquiry focus.
In many ways, the choices they have made to represent their
work interactively and visually reinforce and advance the central
themes of their inquiry. more...
The development of new technologies can open the doors to the classroom and enable many people to see what goes on inside. For the most
part, unfortunately, the quality and character of teaching in many
schools and classrooms remains largely unexamined. In a number of
settings around the country, however, K-12 teachers and their colleagues
are carefully documenting what goes on in their classrooms and developing
valuable new insights about teaching and learning. In a few cases,
these teachers are also experimenting with new ways of using multimedia
and the Internet to make those insights and knowledge – and
the sounds, pictures, and teaching materials that go with them –
accessible to others.
This exhibition highlights some of these initial efforts of K-12
faculty to make their teaching public. By putting their inquiries
into teaching practice online and providing video clips of classroom
activities and events, examples of classroom materials, and access
to student work samples that reflect their classroom experience,
these websites serve as mirrors that can directly reflect many aspects
of classroom experience. Like an analytical lens, these websites
also refract classroom experience through the interpretations and
commentaries that the scholars (and sometimes their students and
other colleagues) provide. At the same time, these websites also
demonstrate the possibilities for developing entirely new ways to
represent classroom experience. More than lists or collections of
various materials, the careful arrangement, layering and juxtaposition
of teaching materials, student work, classroom videos, interpretations
and commentaries – like the effective organization of a book
into chapters or the artful rendering of works in a gallery –
can bring critical issues to viewers’ attention and encourage
them to go beyond their initial impressions.
These examples show the potential for combining the functions of
reflection, refraction and representation in complex, yet comprehensible
and engaging works of scholarship that can greatly inform the educational
conversations on K-12 teaching. The websites included have been
selected from the larger collection of K-12 examples of multimedia
scholarship of teaching to illustrate some of the ways that K-12
teachers are documenting, organizing and representing scholarly
inquiry into their teaching practice.
 |
Reflection
These websites illustrate several means of gaining
access to events, tools, strategies, and materials used
in teachers’ classrooms that directly reflect
classroom experience.
|
| Yvonne
Divans Hutchinson (High School English, Los Angeles, CA) focuses particularly on sharing how she embeds her English instruction with rigorous discussion and performance
opportunities for her students, establishing high standards
and scaffolding to support student achievement. Her site
provides direct access to her classroom materials, such
as a “class
scribe prompt” (along with examples of the students’
“class
scribe” reports in which one student each day
reads
their notes on the previous day’s discussions).
Hutchinson’s materials show how she bridges her
students’ oral language talents and academic language
achievement. |
Heidi Lyne
(Social Science, Boston, MA) videotaped faculty
planning meetings to show the development of her school’s
portfolio graduation process, as well as school documents
showing their mission
and high standards set for the students. Audiences can
follow several students through the portfolio process
and look at video
clips of the students’ preparation along with
the
documents they created and revised for their portfolio
presentations. |
Irma Lyons (4th grade,
Santa Monica, CA) collected extensive documentation of
a one-day community event that her students staged to
showcase their extensive knowledge of the Harlem Renaissance.
The website showcases student
video performances, panoramas
of the “Harlem Renaissance Museum”, and teacher
interactions with former students and community members
attending the day’s events. The net effect is of
walking into the school “Cafetorium” and being
surrounded by the voices, work, and performances of Lyons’
students, as well as the audience responses of the parents,
teachers, and community members who participated in the
day-long event. |
 |
Refraction
The CASTL K-12 scholars who have developed multimedia
websites have not only included their classroom materials
and records of class events, but they also refract these
materials through the interpretive lens of their scholarship
and inquiry. |
| Joan Cone's
(High School English, El Cerrito, CA) website
about the challenge of student achievement in her detracked
AP English class includes a “director’s
cut” commentary on video clips from her classroom,
so that her site visitors gain access to Cone’s
own perspective on how the video clips illuminate her
“essential
practices” for constructing her students as
achievers. |
Sarah
Capitelli (1st/2nd grade Spanish bilingual,
Oakland, CA) collaborated with her own 6 and 7 year old
students to videotape their English language instructional
time in the classroom and showed the video to her students
so that they could collectively identify effective strategies
for learning English. In her website,
Capitelli illustrates her growing understanding of her
students’ learning of English by showing not only
the video
of her students speaking English, but videos of how
such video clips were examined and analyzed by Capitelli’s
teacher
inquiry group and by
her students themselves. |
Emily Wolk (3rd-5th grade
extracurricular class, Santa Ana, CA) chronicles how she
worked with a student group of Participatory Action Researchers
(PAR) to advocate for a reduction in pedestrian injuries
in their neighborhood. Wolk and her PAR group collected
data on traffic and pedestrian behavior, analyzed their
data and presented it to their city council. On her website,
Wolk juxtaposes videos
of the students’ observations of what they did
and what they learned with her own theoretical
frame of the significance of students doing research
on their communities. Her website represents her scholarly
struggle to articulate the rigor and relevance of her
students’ work to teachers and students in different
educational contexts. |
 |
Representation
The websites displayed in this exhibition have taken
diverse approaches to representing the scholar’s
teaching and their inquiries. In many ways, the choices
they have made in organizing and describing their materials
and highlighting particular issues and concerns visually
reinforce and advance the central themes of their inquiry.
|
| Marsha
Pincus (High School Drama, Philadelphia, PA)
chose to have her site incorporate the dramatic elements
that she emphasizes in her “Drama and Inquiry”
class. The
home page of the site plays off of visual elements
of a “Playbill” theatrical program, and when
audiences click to enter the site, they immediately can
see two
of Pincus’ students performing monologues that
reflected moments of discord in her instruction, and the
“Circle
of Inquiry” that Pincus focuses on in her scholarship.
The website develops and presents her notion of the “second
stage:” through writing, revising, and performing
their own work, Pincus’ students created an alternative
space for the experimental presentation of ideas and perspectives.
Interestingly, in subsequent work, Pincus has found that
the “second stage,” through increased attention
from the school, has become more like the “main
stage,” an observation with interesting ramifications
for school reform. |
Yvonne Divans
Hutchinson’s (High School English, Los
Angeles, CA) site provides a Class
Anatomy of one instructional period; her site also
includes a timeline navigation so that audiences of her
work can see how
she began the year that precedes the focus class session
as well as how she built upon the work displayed in the
following
instructional year, in which she taught the same students.
By presenting six selected videos on the first page, Hutchinson
immediately draws viewer’s attention to the careful
preparation and structuring she does of her class discussions
– from establishing ground rules and daily routines,
through the small and large groups discussions, and follow-up
reflections showing her positive relationships with her
students. |
Irma Lyons’(4th
grade, Santa Monica, CA) community portrait of her classroom
unit on the Harlem Renaissance is organized as a visual
display of the faces and performances that constituted
the majority of the “living museum” created
by Lyons’ students. The site is designed to present
a montage that immediately shows the diversity of people
and perspectives that are central to Lyon’s approach
to teaching. Within the photo montage, each picture is
linked to a separate video clip, and each video clip is
linked to other related clips, so that audiences can jump
from one parent interview to a choice between that parent’s
child performing, another parent perspective, or Lyons
herself reflecting on her work with that parent and his
child. |
|
Exhibitions 
