Video search

Video Interaction Guidance

Video Interaction Guidance

Principal Educational Psychologist: I am the Principal Educational Psychologist here in Dundee City. One of the main purposes of the department is to help enhance learning and teaching in the city. And we do that through our partnerships with schools and with other agencies.

One of the key jobs of the psychology service is to gather information about individual children’s family’s needs. The sort of data that psychologists collect, nowadays, is data that’s in context, so that we’re looking at the situations in family homes in classrooms - where the actual child behaviour occurs. That’s why we’re particularly interested in using video because that gives good data in real life situations.

Then what we do is we try to use our psychological knowledge to help people make sense of that data and make decisions about what they do with that. By involving the clients themselves and partner agencies in the collection of data, then the data becomes more meaningful to all of us and we share our understandings of it. That helps us in the forming of goals, the planning of what to do and the evaluation of the outcomes.

Video Interaction Guidance Development Officer: I am a Video Interaction Guidance Development Officer with Dundee City Council social work department. The Video Interaction Guidance (V.I.D.) – as the title suggests – is based on the video and it’s looking at interactions in all sorts of settings. Now, in social work we have used it, particularly in family work, looking at interactions and relationships within families. Quite often where there is a conflict that has arisen, relationships have broken down. But its uses are far, far wider than that.

It has applications now in community care and criminal justice with young people, with elderly. It really is across the board. Because the one universal factor is communications and this is really all about good communications – effective communications. So, we’re very much learning from ourselves and that’s one of the basic principles of V.I.D. is the principle of self-modelling – we actually model ourselves on ourselves. We’re not being taught how to do anything, we become our own teachers.

Speech and Language Therapist: I am the Speech and Language Therapist working in Kingspark School in Dundee. I think parents can think that they're getting it wrong all of the time and you don’t have a video in real life and you don’t see the positive things that are happening. So, by being able to film something and giving them the opportunity to see that things aren’t quite as bad as they think, it does give them increased confidence. And, I think, with increased confidence they're more up to the challenges, really.

Senior Educational Psychologist: I am a Senior Educational Psychologist with Dundee City Council. Video Interaction Guidance is an approach that focuses predominantly on interaction. Interaction wherever that occurs – whether it’s in the family, whether it’s in the classroom, whether it’s in a meeting. And interaction is fundamental to child development – adult development for that matter – cooperation and conflict management. So, it has a predominant focus on those areas.

Exactly how does it work? What happens is there is a short video taken of whoever the client may be – whether that’s the child or the teacher or the parent, whoever. We have established what it is they want to achieve and so we video in a setting that if it’s better co-operation in class then we’ll video in the classroom with that entire class because that is that teacher’s reality. We’ll take a short video there and then we’ll take it away and analyse it, looking for what we would call the contact principles - these are elements that make up for good interaction.

Speech and Language Therapist: There are four stages of contact principles. The first ones are; eye contact, smiling, nodding. So, you're just receiving what people are saying, by showing that you're aware of them. Then it’s repeating what they say and there’s taking turns and then there’s the scaffolding as well, so that you hear what they say, you’ve received what they said, and you build on that.

Senior Educational Psychologist: All of these contact principles, everyone has. But when you're in difficult situations or slightly stressful situations, then you can lose them, you don’t use them as much and then you fall back into patterns that are less helpful. So, what we’re looking for is then they will say, ‘Okay, I’ve seen myself using these here and that’s fine. But, actually, in this situation it doesn’t go so well. I want you to video here so I can see what it is I do in these situations that go well. So that we are building a confidence in what it is they do well and in all sorts of situations. So, they work their way through these contact principles.

Preschool Home-Visiting Teacher: I am a Preschool Home-Visiting Teacher with Dundee City Council. Video Interaction Guidance involves me going into families, finding out where their problems are, listening to what they've got to say, thinking which area of video interaction guidance would best help the situation [that] the family is in.

Sharing and turn-taking is a huge part of Video Interaction Guidance. It’s a huge thing that families get stuck with, it can really move their communication to a new level.

Referring to a video playing behind her.

The first clip here will show a little boy here, becoming very stressed – you can hear him – becoming very anxious because he's having to share and turn-take with his brother. So he's a very anxious boy. You will hear his mother, she’s using the contact principle of naming. She’s naming ‘It’s your turn and then your brother’s turn’ and because shes naming the turns, you can hear this little boy – he's still anxious, still upset, but mum’s remaining calm and passing the turns (short turns) to each of the boys.

Referring to a new video playing behind her.

You can see now this little boy is playing happily, he's relaxed. If you look at him there, he's passed the rod over to his mother. Mum’s still naming, she’s still telling each child, ‘Your turn’s coming next’ but if you look at this group play now and the cooperation here, it’s just fantastic. This child has moved from being a very anxious and stressed little boy who couldn’t anticipate what was happening, wasn’t understanding the world about him, to playing in a family situation, happily.

Principal Teacher – Kingspark School: I am Principal Teacher at Kingspark Special School in Dundee. The time that’s involved in, actually, editing the film to ensure that people only see the positive bits is quite enormous! But in actual fact, it’s really important that you do this and it’s worthwhile doing because of the fact that it takes people onboard.

Because, initially, particularly with teaching staff, they viewed video as being a means of criticising them. Whereas, when you come to do the feedback and you're only speaking about the positive things, they go away quite elated and quite happy that they are doing the right things. So, it’s really good to do that.

Speech and Language Therapist: As a guide, it’s all about receiving what the person says. I found it difficult at first because I came in as a therapist and you could see the problem and you wanted to come in and fix it with your therapy bag and [thinking] ‘Oh, I can fix that!’

But, as a guide, it’s different and it added another dimension to my role because you have to receive what's on the film, you have to reflect back to the person and you have to guide them to see the problem and to sort out for themselves, really, what the problem is so they can see the best way forwards for them. You don’t come in with a solution, they see the solution for themselves with the way you reflect back to them what you see.

Teacher: Video Interaction Guidance was already being used in school when I started by a few teachers. I use it with teachers and with pupils. With pupils, [I] film them in class and show them clips of themselves doing well. So, after a few times of seeing themselves doing well, I think they start to think of themselves as someone that can behave and they start to view themselves more positively, and then you start to see a change in their behaviour.

Usually a teacher will come to me if they’ve got a difficulty with a class and are looking for some strategies to help them. I think, as the teacher becomes more aware of what they're doing that’s working, it improves the quality of their teaching and, as a result, the pupils … it improves the quality of their learning. The teacher is more relaxed, the pupils are more relaxed – they learn more, they're happier and more relaxed in that setting as well.

Pupil 1: Discussing a video with classmates and a Support for Learning Teacher Everyone isn’t looking at each other and looking at the person that’s talking.

Support for Learning Teacher: Why would that be important for Mrs Finlay? She seems to be the one that’s speaking there.

Pupil 2: So that she knows we’re listening.

Support for Learning Teacher: So that she knows you're listening. Ah…

Support for Learning Teacher: I am a Support for Learning Teacher in Braeview Academy in Dundee. I think that the V.I.G. links with Formative Assessment principles because it’s about making the implicit explicit. What we’re trying to do is to draw out aspects of successful practise and stop it there and watch it again and ask questions about that in order to say, ‘Well, why was it good? Is there something that you’d like to repeat?’

If you didn’t have that opportunity to explore what it was that made my work successful then you're not really getting to that metacognative level, you're just staying at a very surface level of learning. Yeah, somebody may get better, naturally, but they might not understand why, in turn, if you ask them. So, it’s a great way of enriching the learning.

Senior Educational Psychologist: We’ve also used it in young people with autism so it helps them to see interaction, to see the social event, see themselves in it, to understand themselves better and what it is that works. And that’s a particular area of development for young people who have social and communication difficulties.

Preschool Home-Visiting Teacher: I feel very passionate about Video Interaction Guidance. Simply because time and time again I see the difference that it makes to people who are having very difficult times.