A video-based mentoring tool for cooperating teachers coaching preservice teachers: supporting reflection around literacy practice

Purpose - Our purpose in this chapter is to present a model of coaching used in a preservice elementary teacher preparation program that relies on video as a mentoring tool. We call this tool RCA, or Retrospective Coaching Analysis, and it is based on Goodman's (1996) work on Retrospective Miscue Analysis. We also provide examples of how cooperating teachers used videos to identify important moments of practice to elicit reflection with their preservice teachers.Methodology/approach - We collected video recordings of cooperating teacher/preservice teacher pairs engaging in mentoring conversations using videos of preservice teachers' practice.Findings - In this chapter, we focus on the cooperating teachers' choices about when to stop the video to engage in reflection with their preservice teachers. In selecting a focus point for the RCA Event, the CTs chose moments that met some of these four criteria: appreciative, learnerfocused, disruptive, and/or generative. We also found the challenges in selecting focus points and in staying with moments of video long enough to generate reflection, which made the model of mentoring challenging to implement.Research limitations/implications - The analysis of this reflective mentoring tool has led to revisions in our theoretical model of coaching, as described in this chapter. The research suggests the importance of closely examining reflective talk between cooperating teachers and preservice teachers. Our work also illustrates a shift in the use of video in preservice teaching from a video-case based perspectives to reflection embedded in practice.Practical implications - Our study suggests the importance of selecting moments of practice as the basis for mentoring and coaching, but the research helped us to understand that RCA has affordances and constraints, and therefore, should be a tool for teachers to use flexibly within our theoretical model of Coaching with CARE.Originality/value - Teacher educators will find the RCA model to be a new way of approaching collaborative work with teachers in the field within a practice-based teacher education program.