Using Digital Video in Rural Indian Schools: A Study of Teacher Development and Student Achievement

This research explores the deployment of model lessons through digital video as part of an in-service effort to engage teachers in government and private rural Indian schools and non-formal educational settings. Our mixed method design combined tests of skills in English and math with participant observation and videotaping of English and math instruction for 100 children in 3 rural schools and 1 non-formal setting over eight months. In this paper we present analyses of test score data and interactional patterns, followed by a qualitative examination of how one teacher appropriated pedagogical and subject matter knowledge from the model video lessons. Specifically, the data show gains in test scores of subject matter knowledge; children in classes that were part of the intervention scored almost 400% higher in English and almost 300% higher in math than did children in a comparison school. There were changes as well in classroom interactional patterns, suggesting that teachers became more student-centered in their approaches. The qualitative data illustrate how one teacher used and learned from the model lessons over time—for example, acquiring pedagogical strategies for interacting with the children and learning to connect classroom topics to the children’s local social worlds. Most generally, the data demonstrate how a network of teachers, schools, computer professionals, and teacher educators can reconfigure flows of information, tools, people, and texts, creating a band of geospatial opportunity within which the educational and social spaces of inhabitants of remote villages can be improved, allowing them hopeful entry to some of the advantages of a digital information age.