YouTube as a K-12 Professional Learning Tool: What New Media Videos Can Teach Educators About RtI and PBIS

This study lays out a path for systematically exploring the emerging role of new media videos as a source of knowledge that can inform current educational practices specific to Response to Intervention (RtI) and Positive Behavior Supports and Interventions (PBIS). The perceived primacy of different knowledge sources has long created tensions within the field of education between researchers who work in academic institutions and practitioners who work in schools. This "research-practice" divide is typically viewed as the bifurcation that exists between the empirical knowledge of researchers and the professional wisdom of practicing educators in regards to the most appropriate educational practices. This study focuses on a contemporary source of knowledge that is increasingly relevant to understanding educational practices -- that is, information contributed by user-generated videos posted to YouTube.;By conducting a thorough analysis of both the meta-data and content data featured within new media videos, this study examines the professional knowledge that emerges regarding two highly influential whole-school reform practices: Response to Intervention (RtI) and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). While any number of educationally-relevant topics could be explored using the proposed method, the decision to dig deeply into the knowledge-base that surrounds RtI and PBIS is a deliberate choice. Given the ever-increasing prominence of RtI and PBIS in school accountability processes, both RtI and PBIS represent opportunities to examine if and how user-generated videos are contributing to educators' professional knowledge in the areas that are most urgent to their everyday work.