This paper draws on a research study of elementary- and secondary-route preservice teachers in a two-year, after-degree teacher preparation programme. The paper includes excerpts of classroom data, taken from the author's own university classroom, demonstrating preservice teachers' responses to carefully selected video extracts of children learning mathematics in a high-school class also taught by the author. The paper includes commentary on some of the advantages and limitations of video as a teaching tool, develops an argument for the increased use, in both preservice teacher education and inservice teacher professional development, of videotaped episodes that focus on the learners rather than on the classroom teacher, and explores the value of having the teacher whose classroom is featured on the videos present for the discussion of the episodes. The paper explores the potential offered by video material to foster the belief that teaching is a learning activity by (i) refocusing attention on the learner rather than the teacher in the analysis of classroom practices, (ii) raising awareness of the importance of reflective practice, and (iii) providing a prompt for the imaginative rehearsal of action.