ABSTRACT
Rapid development and widespread availability of affordable, high-quality video technology has motivated many learning scientists to explore creative forms of videography in their research. In this chapter introducing the section on video research in classroom and teacher learning, I consider whether such research might benefit from establishment of videography standards. Because standardization is often perceived to impose constraints on intellectual freedom and creativity, I expect many researchers will cringe at the very idea. Yet standardization has benefits. No sensible scientist would proclaim, “Let’s have no standards!” Standard categories, terms, formats, and classification systems are ubiquitous in all scientific fields, providing guidance for new researchers as well as promoting data sharing and collaboration within and across disciplines (Star, 2005). I was motivated to think about this issue after attending an NSF-sponsored conference on standards for video educational research. As I edited the chapters in Cornerstone III—representing a range of exemplary cases of video research on classroom teaching and learning—I found that they provided excellent “objects to think with” about the idea of standards for learning science research with video. What questions these researchers addressed, what theoretical frameworks and methods framed their questions, what issues of validity arose from their research … these seemed to have profound implications for what we might be wise to consider standardizing in videographic learning-sciences research.
