Periscope: Looking into learning in best-practices physics classrooms
Periscope is a set of lessons centered on video episodes from best-practices physics classrooms. By watching and discussing authentic teaching events, instructors enrich their experience with noticing and interpreting student behavior and practice applying lessons learned about teaching to actual teaching situations. Periscope’s primary aim is to help instructors see authentic teaching events the way an expert educator does — to develop their “professional vision.” This development of professional vision is particularly critical for educators in transformed physics courses, who are expected to respond to students’ ideas and interactions as they unfold moment to moment. Periscope lessons train instructors to listen to and watch students in their own classrooms by having them practice on video episodes of students in other classrooms, watching them multiple times with other participants who have diverse perspectives on the classroom events.
The goals of Periscope are to support learning assistants (LAs), teaching assistants (TAs), and faculty in:
- learning to notice and interpret classroom events the way an accomplished teacher does,
- observing, discussing, and reflecting on teaching situations similar to their own, developing their pedagogical content knowledge and supporting their identities as teaching professionals, and
- getting a view of other institutions’ transformed courses, which can support and expand the participants’ vision of their own instructional improvement and support the transfer of course developments among faculty.
Periscope is free to qualified educators at physport.org/periscope.