A video study of quality teaching and learning in three countries

This chapter describes a cross-national comparative study of primary teachers’ support of student reasoning in science, aimed at better understanding commonalities and differences in conceptions of quality teaching and learning across the different systems. The main data were video records of lesson sequences in key science topics. The analysis was predominantly qualitative and ethnographic. We describe the methods used to ensure consistency of data generation and analyses; to deal with the inevitably partial nature of the video record and issues of sampling, the role of theory in framing analyses, and issues around the interpretation of data through different cultural lenses.