Video viewing in teacher education and professional development: A literature review

•Video use to prepare teachers has become a significant part of teacher training on nearly every continent.•Teachers' activity as they view a video contains two main components: selective attention and knowledge-based reasoning.•There are two main theoretical perspectives and modalities for using videos: “developmentalist” or “normative”.•Two types of videos are used: classrooms videos of unknown teachers or peers and classroom videos of one's own activity.•The most significant benefits are heightened motivation, optimized cognition, and improved classroom practices.

This article reviews the international literature on video viewing in teacher education and professional development. Two hundred and fifty-five articles were collected, summarized and categorized using a conceptualization that includes four aspects: teachers' activity as they view a classroom video, the objectives of video viewing, the types of videos viewed, and the effects of video viewing on teacher education and professional development. The findings in each of these aspects suggested three main questions that may profitably guide future research: How can teaching teachers to identify and interpret relevant classroom events on video clips improve their capacity to perform the same activities in the classroom? How can we best articulate the diverse objectives of video viewing and the diverse types of videos in teacher education and professional development programs? How can we create a “continuum” between teacher education programs and professional development programs in such a way that video viewing becomes a routine, familiar professional practice able to produce the desired effects over the course of an entire teaching career?