Teacher Education
Updated December 2023
Many teacher education programs are searching for the secret ingredient that will help them meet CAEP standards. But some educators believe they’ve already found the answer: video.
Could recording teachers in the classroom be the secret to achieving CAEP standards? Click To TweetVideo has become a highly effective solution to make feedback and observations easier. How? By recording preservice teachers in the classroom and critiquing their performance. In fact several successful teaching programs around the U.S. have already added video to their programs and love the results. There’s still a lot of research to be done on the benefits of video, but the findings so far have been impressive.
One study found that viewing yourself teaching on video leads to significant increases in preservice teachers’ observation skills. Another experiment with 140 teachers found that analysis of three lessons on video significantly improves teachers’ ability to analyze and improve their instruction.
Research says that viewing yourself teaching on video leads to significant increases in observation skills. Click To TweetAccording to CAEP’s official website, the mission of CAEP accreditation is to create excellent educator preparation through evidence, high-quality teaching, and continuous improvement. That’s no small goal, especially when understanding even the basics of CAEP is far from easy. But it just so happens that video can help any program achieve all three of CAEP’s main outcomes. Let’s explore some of the reasons why digital video recordings and CAEP go so well together.
Summary: How Video Supports CAEP Standards
Deep Dive: How Video Can Enhance Each Aspect of CAEP
CAEP Standard 1
CAEP Standard 2
CAEP Standard 3
CAEP Standard 4
CAEP Standard 5
In a nutshell, video is the perfect medium to document students’ proficiency and demonstrate their knowledge and skills. Video makes it easy for programs to record and review student performances and evaluate progress to ensure they’re meeting CAEP standards.
Standard 2 focuses on technology-based collaboration, which is exactly what video is all about. Video is a great tool to establish, maintain, and refine professional development in any teaching program. It also promotes quality coaching by allowing educators to see exactly how candidates are doing—and how they can improve.
If video works for audition tapes, then why not for teacher applications? Students can record themselves answering questions, discussing the profession, reviewing codes of ethics, and anything else they need to document for the CAEP process. Programs can record applicants both during and after their training to screen quality applicants and provide quantifiable data of why they picked or didn’t pick an applicant. Video also produces evidence of progress, showing how the teacher candidate has progressed and achieved competency.
Video is an incredibly easy way to document graduates out in the field. Programs can record program completers one year after they graduate to collect additional videos, document progress, and assess program impact on real careers. Plus video is the perfect system for students or program completers to demonstrate their skills and receive feedback at any time.
For even more ideas on meeting this standard, check out our article about crushing CAEP Standard 4.
Because you can see for yourself whether or not students have mastered the CAEP standards, video is great for collecting evidence and measuring improvement. Many programs already use video to assess student teaching performance. They can easily track results over time and retain program data.
Video can be used to improve to help develop quality competent candidates, and allow programs to share best practices for skills development with accreditors and institutional regulators.
If you’re still wondering how video helps new teachers learn and demonstrate the CAEP standards, let’s take a deeper dive.
We’ve copied and pasted the exact language from the official CAEP website and broken down how you can accomplish each CAEP standard with video. We’ve even taken it a step further to show how to incorporate the benefits of video feedback software like GoReact.
88% of student teachers who use GoReact find the feedback on their videos useful. Click To TweetGoReact is an easy platform for students to record their teaching, self-critique their performance, and receive targeted feedback from their supervisors directly in their video. In fact, research from Dr. Christina M. Tschida discovered that 88% of student teachers who use GoReact find the feedback on their videos useful.
The provider ensures that candidates develop a deep understanding of the critical concepts and principles of their discipline and, by completion, are able to use discipline-specific practices flexibly to advance the learning of all students toward attainment of college- and career-readiness standards.
1.1—Candidates demonstrate an understanding of the InTASC standards at the appropriate progression level(s) in the following categories: the learner and learning; content; instructional practice; and professional responsibility.
Teacher education programs can use video recordings as evidence that students achieve the correct teaching standards. If programs use GoReact as their video tool, they can also build InTASC standards into customized rubrics to tag and document student videos.
1.2—Providers ensure candidates can apply knowledge of content at appropriate progression levels.
Video is the perfect medium to help student teachers demonstrate what they’ve learned in areas of pedagogy and content and share that recorded evidence with program leaders.
1.3—Providers ensure that candidates apply knowledge of InTASC standards related to instructional practice at appropriate progression levels.
The provider ensures that effective partnerships and high-quality clinical practice are central to preparation so that candidates develop the knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions necessary to demonstrate positive impact on all P-12 students’ learning and development.
2.1—Partners co-construct mutually beneficial P-12 school and community arrangements, including technology-based collaborations, for clinical preparation and share responsibility for continuous improvement of candidate preparation. Partnerships for clinical preparation can follow a range of forms, participants, and functions. They establish mutually agreeable expectations for candidate entry, preparation, and exit; ensure that theory and practice are linked; maintain coherence across clinical and academic components of preparation; and share accountability for candidate outcomes
This standard is all about collaborative technology. By sharing digital video recordings, preservice teachers and supervisors can work together even if they’re in different cities or states. If they can both see the student’s teaching, they can both be on the same page. GoReact takes this collaboration a step further by allowing supervisors to use rubrics and markers to communicate feedback directly on videos. This encourages inter-rater reliability, consistency, and effective coaching. GoReact also stores all videos in the cloud for easy, secure collaboration across programs.
2.2—Partners co-select, prepare, evaluate, support, and retain high-quality clinical educators, both provider- and school-based, who demonstrate a positive impact on candidates’ development and P-12 student learning and development. In collaboration with their partners, providers use multiple indicators and appropriate technology-based applications to establish, maintain, and refine criteria for selection, professional development, performance evaluation, continuous improvement, and retention of clinical educators in all clinical placement settings.
This standard is all about retaining high-quality clinical educators. Similar to how video recordings help preservice students, video recordings are also a reliable tool to evaluate and grant clinical educators greater self-awareness. If clinical educators can see how they’re doing, they can know where they’re at and make quick changes to their teaching.
2.3—The provider works with partners to design clinical experiences of sufficient depth, breadth, diversity, coherence, and duration to ensure that candidates demonstrate their developing effectiveness and positive impact on all students’ learning and development. Clinical experiences, including technology-enhanced learning opportunities, are structured to have multiple performance-based assessments at key points within the program to demonstrate candidates’ development of the knowledge, skills, and professional dispositions, as delineated in Standard 1, that are associated with a positive impact on the learning and development of all P-12 students.
Digital video recording is a great tool for documenting the clinical experience, measuring progress from video to video, and seeing if students are teaching at a consistent quality. Video also allows supervisors to check in on their students more often than in-person observations allow.
The provider demonstrates that the quality of candidates is a continuing and purposeful part of its responsibility from recruitment, at admission, through the progression of courses and clinical experiences, and to decisions that completers are prepared to teach effectively and are recommended for certification. The provider demonstrates that development of candidate quality is the goal of educator preparation in all phases of the program and provides support services in all phases so candidates are successful. This process is ultimately determined by a program’s meeting of Standard 4.
3.1—Providers present goals and progress evidence for recruitment of high-quality candidates from a broad range of backgrounds and diverse populations that align with their mission.
Video can be used to interview candidates in advance of in person interviews. By comparing application videos to final videos, programs have evidence of candidates progress and competency development.
3.2—Providers create and monitor candidates’ transition from admission through completion that demonstrate knowledge, skills, professional responsibilities, and use of technology in their practice. The provider also plans and documents support for candidate so they meet their milestones.
Video enables candidates to demonstrate proper teaching standards and provides evidence for accreditation.
3.3—Educator preparation providers establish and monitor attributes and dispositions beyond academic ability that candidates must demonstrate at admissions and during the program. The provider selects criteria, describes the measures used and evidence of the reliability and validity of those measures, and reports data that show how the academic and non-academic factors predict candidate performance in the program and effective teaching.
Using video recordings early in your program, even for applicant videos, is a fantastic idea. Some programs use video for candidate application interviews before they come in person. This allows faculty to assess and review each candidate as a team before in-person interviews. Faculty also have documentation to compare. By comparing application videos to final videos, program leadership can see how candidates improve over time.
3.4—The provider creates criteria for program progression and monitors candidates’ advancement from admissions through completion. All candidates demonstrate the ability to teach to college- and career-ready standards. Providers present multiple forms of evidence to indicate candidates’ developing content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, pedagogical skills, and the integration of technology in all of these domains.
GoReact video software provides tools to measure one assignment against another with scores, rubrics, and markers to track progress. It also allows candidates to demonstrate proper teaching standards. Building CAEP standards directly into GoReact with markers and rubrics can streamline the entire grading process.
3.5—Before the provider recommends any completing candidate for licensure or certification, it documents that the candidate has reached a high standard for content knowledge in the fields where certification is sought and can teach effectively with positive impacts on P-12 student learning and development.
A video recording is compelling evidence that a preservice teacher has achieved high standards and can demonstrate those standards in front of a class.
3.6—Before the provider recommends any completing candidate for licensure or certification, it documents that the candidate understands the expectations of the profession, including codes of ethics, professional standards of practice, and relevant laws and policies. CAEP monitors the development of measures that assess candidates’ success and revises standards in light of new results.
Documentation is what video is all about. A video of student teaching candidates answering questions, discussing the profession, reviewing codes of ethics, etc. is not only possible but easy.
The provider demonstrates the impact of its completers on P-12 student learning and development, classroom instruction, and schools, and the satisfaction of its completers with the relevance and effectiveness of their preparation.
4.1—The provider documents, using multiple measures that program completers contribute to an expected level of student-learning growth. Multiple measures shall include all available growth measures (including value-added measures, student-growth percentiles, and student learning and development objectives) required by the state for its teachers and available to educator preparation providers, other state-supported P-12 impact measures, and any other measures employed by the provider.
Comparing video footage of students early in their program and at the end of the program is stark evidence of their improvement. New teachers can also record themselves teaching in the field after they’ve graduated. GoReact takes this a step further by allowing teachers to compare scores and markers on videos to measure indicators like percentiles.
4.2—The provider demonstrates, through structured validated observation instruments and/or student surveys, that completers effectively apply the professional knowledge, skills, and dispositions that the preparation experiences were designed to achieve.
Video is an obvious fit for observation instruments. It’s a fantastic way to observe student teaching candidates and allow program completers to demonstrate all their skills.
4.3.—The provider demonstrates, using measures that result in valid and reliable data and including employment milestones such as promotion and retention, that employers are satisfied with the completers’ preparation for their assigned responsibilities in working with P-12 students.
4.4—The provider demonstrates, using measures that result in valid and reliable data, that program completers perceive their preparation as relevant to the responsibilities they confront on the job, and that the preparation was effective.
Parts of these standards could be done outside of video, but programs are already recording videos of their completers working in the field one year after graduation. This allows programs to collect additional data, document progress, and assess the program’s impact on completers’ careers. This also ties into Standard 5.
The provider maintains a quality assurance system comprised of valid data from multiple measures, including evidence of candidates’ and completers’ positive impact on P-12 student learning and development. The provider supports continuous improvement that is sustained and evidence-based, and that evaluates the effectiveness of its completers. The provider uses the results of inquiry and data collection to establish priorities, enhance program elements and capacity, and test innovations to improve completers’ impact on P-12 student learning and development.
5.1—The provider’s quality assurance system is comprised of multiple measures that can monitor candidate progress, completer achievements, and provider operational effectiveness. Evidence demonstrates that the provider satisfies all CAEP standards.
A series of video recordings is great for collecting evidence and observing both improvement and acquired skills over time. Both program leaders and the CAEP Board can watch these videos to see progress.
A series of video recordings is great for collecting student teaching evidence and observing improvement and acquired skills over time. Click To Tweet5.3—The provider regularly and systematically assesses performance against its goals and relevant standards, tracks results over time, tests innovations and the effects of selection criteria on subsequent progress and completion, and uses results to improve program elements and processes.
Many programs use video recordings to assess student teaching performance with goals and relevant standards. In GoReact they can easily track results over time by using the grading features. The software stores video submissions for a minimum of five years, so students can retain data from their program even after graduation.
The provider has the fiscal and administrative capacity, faculty, infrastructure and other resources for preparation of candidates to meet professional, institution and state standards.
6.1—The provider has a budget and resources to support high-quality work to prepare professional educators.
Video provides high-quality and flexible assessment capabilities and evidence of skill competency and progression.
6.2—The provider’s faculty have earned degrees and experience appropriate for their teaching assignments, and the provider offers professional development and technology training.
Video is often used to deliver professional development training both remote and in person, and allows for self-reflection and peer review.
To see how GoReact can help you meet these CAEP standards and better prepare teacher candidates, get this guide.
