| Charalambos Vrasidas, Ph.D. |
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Current Perspectives on Applied Information Technologies: Preparing Teachers to Teach with Technology
Charalambos Vrasidas (editor)
For ordering information visit http://www.infoagepub.com. Table of Contents Trends and issues in preparing teachers to teach with technology Multiple Strategies for Fostering Teacher Learning with Technology This chapter looks at four approaches to professional development that develop attitudes, aptitudes, and practices supporting an ongoing process of inquiry and learning. Riel describes how a graduate educational technology program at Pepperdine University places action research, grounded in the students’ workplace, at the center of the curriculum. DeWindt relates her initial success with a program of collaborative mentoring to increase the integration of technology with teaching. Chase shares her experience within a community of teachers who are creating an innovative way to structure professional development to address the evolving needs of teachers across thirteen districts. Finally, Askegreen details the process of building a technical infrastructure to support the social infrastructure and illustrates how technology can mediate the learning of technology skills. Each approach depicts teacher learning as a proces that is directed by the learner, socially constructed, and continuous. Tracking the arc of new teachers technology use We draw here on over 2,500 K–12 teacher survey results from the Use, Support, and Effect of Instructional Technology (USEIT) study to examine how teachers’ use of technology changes over the course of their teaching tenure. Specific emphasis is placed on the first five years of new teachers’ careers. In an effort to diffuse the notion of technology use as a single, generic construct, the authors describe a means for conceiving and measuring specific categories of teacher technology use. As such, the chapter discusses several measures of technology use such as teachers’ use of technology for delivering instruction, as well as the ways in which teachers direct their students to use technology. In addition, the authors explore common indirect instructional uses of technology such as using the internet for lesson preparation and using computers to create tests, worksheets, and quizzes. Results indicate that first and second-year teachers are using technology for delivering instruction less than teachers who have been in schools at least five years. Conversely, first and second-year teachers are using technology for preparation more than any other category of teacher. Measurable indices of teachers’ use of technology for communication via email, for special education accommodation, and for record keeping are also explored. Learning to Teach with Technology: Designing and implementing technology-enhanced curriculum during teacher preparation. Since teacher educators are obligated to support pre-service teachers’ efforts to meet National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers, rethinking how technology is integrated into university coursework is essential. While acknowledging this commitment, sound advice has been offered to teaching methods faculty. First, consider how technology enables teachers and their students to extend the learning beyond what could be done without technology, thus rendering technology to a supporting, rather than a driving, role. And, second, allow individual content area standards rather than technology standards to be the modus operandi. Heeding these recommendations, this chapter explores two questions. What experiences develop pre-service teachers’ understanding of the supporting role/s of technology in a standards-based curriculum? And, how do such experiences prepare pre-service teachers for the work of designing instructional tasks that integrate technologies to maximize student learning? Within and Beyond the K-12 Classroom: The Social Contexts of Students’ Technology Use In the past decade, K-12 classroom technology use has markedly increased and it is estimated that more than 80% of all children in the U.S. now use computers in school. Many have conjectured that such widespread use will lead to improved academic outcomes and future opportunities for all students, as well as greater educational and social equity. However, pervasive failure in urban schools, persistent unemployment and poverty rates, and patterns of inequity in technology use indicate that such projections are tenuous and complicated by myriad factors related to both schooling and broader social realities. This proposed chapter examines literature on both K-12 schooling and technology use within this broader context, to establish a theoretical basis for understanding the present role of technology in K-12 education in the U.S. and to better understand the significance of classroom technology use for students. Integrated Field-Based Models for Technology Preparation This chapter explores research related to field-based models for pre-service teacher technology preparation at seven major universities in various regions of the United States. The examination focuses on common features of the models, major evaluative findings, and areas for continuing research and development. We observe that field-based models are beginning to demonstrate progress toward intended goals of building pre-service teachers’ skills, and toward impacting both attitudes and emerging practice. Areas of continued research and development of the models relate to influencing pre-service teachers’ perceptions regarding what technology preparation should deliver and providing sufficient examples of practicing teachers using technology for instruction. Learning in a Wireless Environment: The Successes and Challenges of Ubiquitous Computing in a School This chapter reports the findings of a four-year evaluation of a ubiquitous computing initiative as it evolved at a private day school in the southeastern United States between 1999 and 2003. The project included several unique features such as laptop computers for all teachers and students in 7th through 12th grades, a wireless network covering the entire school campus, and innovative approaches to teacher professional development and support. In completing the evaluation, the authors of this chapter adopted a responsive approach, with the specific goals of documenting what was occurring while at the same time providing support, collaboration, and professional development to enhance the outcomes of the project whenever possible. The results of this evaluation include an impressive list of success stories such as increases in the amount of time the laptops were used by both the teachers and students as well as improvements in the how the laptops were used. Overall, teachers, students, support staff, administrators, and parents at the school were pleased with the project implementation, but there were also many challenges. Some of these challenges were met during the evaluation period and others continue to be addressed. This chapter provides an overview of both the positive and challenging aspects of the initiative. We begin by providing the background of the overall project. Next, we share some of the success stories via "best pedagogical practices" with the laptops. The success stories are followed by descriptions of challenges the initiative faced during the four years. Finally, we discuss next steps and future opportunities for the initiative with the intent of sharing "Lessons Learned" for anyone else planning to implement a similar innovation. Evaluation of Mathematical Inquiry in Commercial Rational Number Software: Pre-service Teachers’ Criteria and Choices Educational software plays an important role in using technology for mathematical inquiry because it is often teachers’ most frequent engagement with technology and is widely available in schools. For these reasons, we were interested in how pre-service teachers’ notions of mathematics and technology play out in their evaluation of educational software. We asked 35 pre-service teachers to evaluate examples from commercial rational number software according to their own criteria. In examining their evaluations, we used ideas from mathematics education on multiple strategies, multiple representations, and developing conceptual understanding as well as criteria from research in educational technology on intrinsic motivation and flexible forms of representation. Pre-service teachers’ criteria focused on surface features (i.e. clear directions) of the software and rarely engaged content or the instructional framework within the software. Although most teachers valued constructivist principles, they did not attend to the form of instruction or mathematics in the software. Our findings suggest that technology cannot be a separate part of pre-service teacher education, but that teacher educators must find ways to integrate technology, content, and pedagogy. We also discuss how software use can provide opportunities for challenging pre-service teachers’ notions of technology integration and mathematics teaching and learning. Benchmarks for Teacher Education with Respect to ICT If the internet is an information superhighway, then teachers just might be the road-kill on the asphalt (Kirschner & Selinger, 2003). Possibly, for the first time in history, students can use the tools necessary for acquiring and transmitting knowledge better than their teachers. Children everywhere are creating their own virtual communities with these new technologies. They chat to stay synchronously in touch with both old and new friends and email and send short messages to stay in touch asynchronously. They take part in discussion groups, navigate through virtual worlds and assimilate new hardware and software effortlessly. In many ways they are light-years ahead of their parents and teachers with respect to the possibilities of ICT. As a result students are getting bored and frustrated and teachers are getting frustrated and distraught. This chapter presents examples of good practice and benchmarks for calibration or modelling ICT-teacher training or both, plus a number of pedagogical and policy repercussions of their adoption. Technology in Education, Technology in Life: Toward a Holistic Perspective on Integration in Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers at the University of Illinois Prevailing approaches to PT3 tend to focus largely on technological skills and strategies for curricular integration and standards alignment. Yet without considering the inherent value that future teachers place on technology in education, and more importantly, on technology in their personal lives, pre-service programs risk failing to engage tomorrow’s teachers as whole persons. This chapter reports on efforts in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that are addressing this consideration: the Office of Educational Technology’s federally funded PT3 grant; and the research-based Technology, Identity, Lifestyle, and Education Study (TILES). Our findings revealed that Education students use technology in purposeful ways, and that they value particular kinds of technology differently in personal and professional contexts. We also found that when pre-service teachers completed tutorials in creating multimedia, their sense of the overall value of technology in education had no significant relationship to their perceived change in skills. Their sense of identity as a teacher was a more effective predictor of how they valued technology in education. Implications of these findings for the design of technology research and PT3 are discussed. Introducing ICT in the Learning Context of Traditional School: what is transformed and why Education stakeholders anticipate that the introduction of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the school curriculum will bring a major enhancement in the quality of teaching and learning. Research however indicates that this is a complex and demanding process affecting many aspects of the traditional school structure. The work presented in this chapter focuses on the way that pioneering (in the use of ICT) teachers of Greek secondary education conceptualize the essence of the instructional benefits offered by technology and the kind of transformations that it induces in school. Our study reveals that these teachers are willing to integrate technology in the context of meaningful instructional approaches and they recognize that useful learning objectives can be supported by accessing multiple internet resources and interactive representations of knowledge. They also try to adapt the use of technology to the broader context of the school system, which is reckoned to be rather discouraging than supporting the transformation towards a systematic integration of ICT in instruction. An important hindrance in this transformative process is the incompatibility identified between ICT supported innovative instruction and the students’ strongly assessment-driven learning orientation for entering institutions of tertiary education. To reach a deeper understanding of the “ICT in classroom” phenomenon we employ the framework of activity theory and argue that any specific use of technology is always servicing the prevailing meaning in the activity system where it is embedded. Therefore if the innovative use of ICT is to be promoted the dominant meaning in the school context should be transformed. Towards this objective we propose the development of “extended learning communities” where schools and out-of-school activity systems co-formulate a context for authentic learning. In this perspective introducing ICT in schools becomes a socio-cognitive enterprise that has to deal with the deeper meanings and expectations that all education stakeholders develop relative to the role and structure of the educational system. Mentoring a Teacher Preparation Faculty Toward Technology Integration How do you convince professors to infuse technology into their university courses? After seven years of persuasion, collaboration, and modeling, a teacher preparation faculty (both university and K-12) was moving slowly toward adopting technology as an instructional strategy. They had adopted a vision of technology use, expecting it to be integrated across the teacher preparation program. Unfortunately, when it came to implementing that vision, too many faculty members opted out. The process side of technology was in place, but the use of technological tools was not coming along as rapidly. Most of the faculty members either lacked the skills or confidence to use the tools, did not see why they should introduce the tools to their students, or felt that technology was not within the scope of their course. I describe how technology integration in the teacher preparation program at the University of Colorado at Denver has changed over the past nine years and the initiatives that contributed to those changes. The Technology Mentor Model: Infusing Technology into Student Teaching Placements This article describes the Technology Mentor Model, a replicable model for proactively facilitating successful technology placements in pre-service teacher candidates’ field experiences. It was developed through the Teachers Integrating Technology in Urban Schools project (TITUS), supported by a U.S.Department of Education PT3 grant and the Steans Family Foundation. The Technology Mentor Model uses a multi-method, multi-trait approach to gather information that helps project faculty make informed decisions about such factors as the level of commitment of the school and the individual teachers for integrating technology, the level of skill teachers have, and the support necessary to facilitate their long term use of technology in their classrooms. Components of the model include assessment of field settings including technology mentors’ knowledge and attitudes concerning instructional technology, professional development, placement of teacher candidates, and collaborative evaluation of field placements. These components will be described, and recommendations for implementation will be discussed. The Multiplying Effects of Technology Coaching on Teacher Practices Research studies over the past decade have shown that teachers in K-12 schools have been slow to integrate computers, the Internet, multimedia, and other electronic tools into the classroom instruction of core academic subjects. Providing teachers with technology coaches has been proposed as one staff development response to this problem. Unlike traditional in-service workshop approaches, technology coaching generally happens over a sustained period of time thus giving coaches the opportunity to promote and support new learning about technology by teachers. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst School of Education, along with partners from the university’s Computer Science department and the educational outreach arm of the local public television station, have created a collaborative coaching model in which School of Education graduate students knowledgeable in the use of technology are paired with 10 classroom teachers from the elementary, middle and high school levels. These “e-TEAMS” are charged with creating several technology-infused lesson plans, aligned to state curriculum guidelines. This chapter examines the e-TEAMS change-agent model through an initial year of the project and assesses its benefits and shortcomings in terms of impact on how teachers use technology and other instructional methodologies in the classroom. An Effective Model of Professional Development in Technology for Multiple Constituencies: The Technology Leadership Cadre The Technology Leadership Cadre (TLC) is the core of a professional development model that reaches students preparing to be teachers, university faculty who teach them, and practicing teachers in partner schools. Members of the TLC are preservice teachers paid to plan and lead instructional technology workshops and to provide on site, on demand support for other preservice teachers, for faculty, and for teachers and students in partnership schools. They present workshops directly to students, focusing on the technology tools needed to create web-based electronic portfolios of high quality. Their own professional development includes both learning to use instructional technology and learning to be leaders, specifically instructional leaders in educational technology. When they become teachers, they carry into their work exceptional skills in technology to use in their teaching, and also the dispositions and skills needed to be technology leaders in their schools and districts. Possibly the most important support TLC members provide for faculty members is the in-class workshops that enable faculty to focus their teaching on the educational use and integration of technology, rather than on technology skills. Through the workshops and mentoring, faculty themselves learn to use the technology along with the students. TLC members also conduct workshops for faculty and/or students in partner schools. Professional development in technology for teachers in partner schools is important for two reasons. First, it allows them to make effective use of instructional technology with their own students. Second, it makes it possible to provide field experiences for preservice teachers in which such use is modeled. This chapter will outline the creation and support of a Technology Leadership Cadre and will include brief case descriptions of leadership development for the TLC, of a faculty member’s use of the TLC, and of the role of the TLC in partner schools. Facilitating use of technology in urban classrooms: principles for effective professional development The purpose of this chapter is to provide recommendations for effective professional development that can facilitate teacher learning with regard to technology. Specific guidelines are prescribed for the design of successful professional development programs on the use of technology. These guiding principles are based on research conducted to assess the effectiveness of a particular professional development program specifically designed for teachers in urban elementary schools. Each of the guidelines provided relates more closely to one of the following three categories: a) the design elements of professional development (with specific emphasis on content and pedagogy), b) the organizational context in which teachers work, and c) the individual teacher characteristics. All three categories are inexorably linked and could influence the outcome of professional development efforts. Therefore, they should be considered as a whole in any effort to help teachers make effective use of technology in the classroom. While the principles and guidelines discussed in this chapter can be generalized to a broad range of schools, the investigation is particularly applicable to urban school environments. Collaborative Curriculum Design as a Vehicle for Professional Development The adoption of computer technologies as classroom teaching tools is a slow and difficult process, at both the K-12 and university levels. University faculty in teacher education programs are challenged to prepare new teachers to teach with technology, usually without having had the classroom experience of using these emerging technologies in K-12 schools themselves. As a result, pre-service technology education is often relegated to a single technology competency course – a model that has been found to have little or no impact on later technology use by teachers. The University of Illinois Project TITUS has created a professional development program in which teachers, teacher-education faculty, and technology consultants collaborate to design technology-infused curriculum modules, using the curriculum design process as a site of professional development. Collaborative curriculum design anchors the process of learning to use technology within an exploration of what it is to teach and learn the subject – a perspective that is often obscured by the unavoidable need for “point and click” technology instruction with novice users. Design Teams create a connection between teacher educators and K-12 teachers in urban public schools, helping teacher educators to use technology in a way that models classroom relevant and domain grounded instruction. While the curriculum modules are valuable products, it is the collaborative design process that offers the greatest potential for transforming instruction. We describe the approach, web-based tools that support the process, four structures used for facilitating Design Teams, modules they have created, and lessons learned. Facing the Challenge of Preparing Science Teachers to Use Simulations Interactive computer simulations have been part of the science education scene since the 1980s. There is now an abundance of simulation software available to teachers and students and an increased presence of computers in homes and schools. Alongside the technological progress, this has also been an era of significant advances in research-based understanding of learning, instruction and teacher practice. Research has shown that simulations can become powerful instructional tools when their use is based on relevant instructional knowledge and pedagogical strategies. This indicates teacher training that goes beyond proficiency in operating software. An effective training model needs to address the complexity of required knowledge and skills and to allow for gradual knowledge integration by moderating the load of cognitive and practical skills. A suitable training model should have a progressive structure that enables the gradual guiding of trainees and addresses concerns of self-efficacy inherent in any adoption of complex innovations. In this paper we describe a teacher-training model that includes three, progressively complex, iterations of a basic cycle: Modeling, Practice, Evaluation and Reflection. The trainees start by experiencing innovative simulation-based learning from the learner’s perspective, continue with acquiring a vocabulary and criteria for “Characterizing and evaluating instructional simulations” and finally relate to research on learning and teaching science for “Designing and evaluating simulation-based activities.” Trainees (pre and in-service) respond to the training model in ways related to their professional development. Initial implementation of the newly gained knowledge and skills reveals the persistence of some pre-instruction conceptions and tendencies. We conclude that long-term training is required to establish lasting good practice.
Conceptual Change in Pre-service Teacher Technology Preparation Today, it is paramount that teacher preparation programs develop and implement instructional programs that enable future teachers to fully understand the learning implications of computers. The challenge to effectively prepare new teachers in technology integration is complicated by the belief systems they possess. Many pre-service teachers enter teacher education courses with strongly-held objectivist beliefs about teaching, learning and the role of the computer in the educational process. If instruction is not designed to directly confront these preconceptions, pre-service teachers will use their existing objectivist beliefs about teaching and learning to study and understand pedagogy and technology integration. In this chapter we present a conceptual change-based theoretical framework for pre-service teacher technology preparation. Using the original four-stage conceptual change model as the basis of our theoretical framework, we propose a three-stage conceptual change model for pre-service teacher technology preparation in which acknowledging, creating and sustaining dissatisfaction are essential for accommodation to occur. The Use of Video for Teacher Education and Professional Development: Past Experiences and Future Directions The use of video for teacher education and professional development has seen significant changes since the 1960s. Teacher learning from video was earlier based on modeling and imitation of what researchers considered to be best practices; today such learning includes reflection on and critical analysis of videotaped lessons. Teachers’ learning experiences have shifted significantly from “training” to “professional development programs.” The former are focused on student-behavior management and specific teaching skills selected by the “trainer”; the later are centered on improvement of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge and on exercise of their professional judgment. While video today offers promising directions for dealing with the challenges of improving teaching, still barriers will need to be overcome. A large variety of alternative video examples will be required, as will empirical evidence on the effects of video use on instructional improvement. Teachers will also need the contexts and time in which to engage in video analysis. The chapter concludes by proposing hypotheses on the exploitation of emerging digital and internet-based technologies in bringing this kind of teacher learning to scale. Bridging and closing technology gaps: Why both are important Technology is an important part of today’s classrooms. There is an increased emphasis on integrating curriculum to use technology as a tool for teaching and learning, and teacher educators must face this challenge. Preparing tomorrow’s teachers to use technology effectively and efficiently is articulated through national and state technology standards. This chapter presents lessons learned from one institution’s experiences integrating technology across its teacher preparation curriculum while recognizing existing gaps and making efforts to close and bridge the gaps. Specific initiatives, the electronic portfolio for the pre-service teacher, the Master Technology Teacher partnership, and an equipment program called Technology on Wheels are presented. Preparing Pre- and In-service Teachers to Teach High School Science in a Technology-Rich Environment This chapter sheds light on the issue of preparing teachers to teach with technology and discusses the implications on pre- and in-service teacher professional development programs. Educating science teachers in an era in which information technology is becoming a critical factor, is a complex and demanding task. This chapter describes three related studies. Their goal was to investigate the effect of exposing high school teachers to innovative teaching and learning approaches using information technology, molecular modeling, and computerized laboratories. The studies were conducted at the Department of Education in Technology and Science at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. We describe the objectives, settings, technology, thinking skills, population, assessment method, and findings of these studies, and touch upon various combinations of factors affecting teachers' readiness to implement technology. The first study investigated pre-service high school teachers, who learned how to use innovative chemistry teaching methods in technology-rich environments for their future classrooms. In the second study we followed the process of integrating a case-based computerized laboratory (CLL) curriculum into about 30 Israeli high schools. In the third study we exposed pre- and in-service science and chemistry teachers to the CCL curriculum and documented their perceptions from both high school students' and teachers' viewpoints.
URL:http://www.cait.org/vrasidas |