Video-based Research in Education: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives

The rapid development of video technology in the last decade has changed the ways in which people communicate, how they learn, and how research is done. Video technology offers rich potential in capturing complex social interactions over a prolonged period of time and in supporting teacher professional learning and development.

This book explores the ontological, epistemological, methodological, and ethical challenges associated with the different uses of video in research, ranging from video as a tool for investigating social interactions and for stimulating participants’ reflection, to the use of video for engaging varied communities and social groups in the process of teaching, learning and research. Each chapter presents the authors’ critical reflection on the ways in which video was employed, the research decisions made, the methodological challenges faced, and the consequences for how educational practices were understood. As such, it illustrates a wide range of philosophical and theoretical standpoints with respect to video-based research approaches.

This book will stimulate broad and rich discussion among education researchers who are interested in video research and contributes to: advancing knowledge of the field; developing approaches to dealing with emergent ethical, theoretical, and methodological issues; and generating new protocols and guidelines for conducting video-based research across a variety of disciplinary areas in education.

Lihua Xu is Lecturer in Science Education at Deakin University. With more than 10 years experience of video research in classroom settings, her research focuses on understanding the complexity of teaching and learning in classrooms situated in East Asian and Western cultural contexts.

George Aranda is Lecturer in Science Education at Deakin University with broad interests including video-based research in science education, technology education, coding, gaming, neuroscience and science communication.

Wanty Widjaja is Senior Lecturer in Mathematics Education at Deakin University. Her research interests include mathematical modelling, design-based research, professional noticing, Realistic Mathematics, Lesson Study, STEM Interdisciplinary and video-based research methodology.

David Clarke is Professor at the University of Melbourne and Director of the International Centre for Classroom Research (ICCR). Over the last 20 years, his research activity has centred on capturing the complexity of classroom practice through a program of international video-based classroom research.