What Teachers Think: A Grounded Theory Inquiry of Teachers' Cognition When Interacting with Video Cases

Many teacher educators believe multimedia cases can improve teacher development because of these cases? potential in facilitating the acquisition of complex, ill-structured knowledge needed for classroom teaching. However, there is a general lack of evidence on how cases impact thinking and practice of teachers, and the evidence for multimedia cases is even more sparse. Hence, the current study explores the cognitive activities of several teachers before, during, and after their interaction with video ethnography, a specific form of multimedia cases. It employs grounded theory to discover embedded meanings and relationships that emerge from descriptive data. Findings of the study include the identification of categories of cognitive activities revealed in teachers? thinking and patterns that emerged from case studies of individual participants. Using cross-case analysis, four theoretical propositions are generated to describe the cognitive development process and its two influencers: learning orientation and beliefs/experiences. The study has implications for improving technology use in teacher development, production of multimedia cases, and research on case-based pedagogy.