How US Preservice Teachers ‘Read’ Classroom Performances

Abstract

Abstract Thirty‐seven preservice teachers viewed and evaluated three videotapes of actual classroom lessons. To reveal macrostructures that may have guided perception, we asked the novices to recall as much of a lesson as possible one week after evaluating a tape. Some of the novices then evaluated a live classroom performance. As a comparative gauge, 19 inservice teachers also evaluated the three videotaped lessons. Running notes (taken while viewing a video) suggested that the inservice teachers were able to render spontaneous functional interpretations of teacher behavior (a 'deep' reading), while the preservice teachers invariably described teacher behavior first, then only sometimes noted its function (a 'surface' reading). The preservice teachers defined good teaching from a student perspective in terms of fun and involvement, while the inservice teachers defined good teaching from a teacher perspective in terms of clear lesson structure. The preservice teachers appeared to use major activity structures as macrostructures to help interpret lessons. The task of evaluating a live classroom performance appeared to be more difficult and ambiguous than that of evaluating a videotaped lesson. In sum, results contribute to a growing body of literature that documents differences in how novice and experienced teachers process and interpret classroom stimuli.