Content Area Specific Technology Integration: A Model for Educating Teachers.

Abstract

In this article we present a model of content-area specific preparation. This approach was premised on the fact that even if preservice teachers know how to operate technology, they need help to understand how to flexibly incorporate new resources into their knowledge of a content area in ways that enhance student learning. Important factors for implementation success were our collegewide support for the model, technology-using K-12 teachers who facilitated integration into methods courses, and taking a content-area specific view of integration. We conclude that it will likely take a systemic view to implement a collegewide innovation of content-area specific teacher preparation, and that faculty would need motivation, opportunities, and support to learn. To sustain such a model would likely require it become a basic, underlying assumption of the program of teacher preparation. ********** The call to better prepare teachers to teach with has been repeated several times during the last decade (CEO Forum, 1999, 2000; Office of Technology Assessment, 1995). In response, there are now standards in place to which new teachers are being held that explicitly describe the skills all teachers should have to be prepared to teach in a 21st century school. These include the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium standards (INTASC, 1992), used by many states as licensing requirements, and the National Education Technology Standards for Teachers (ISTE, 2000), which were adopted by National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) as a part of their accreditation requirements. These standards call for teachers to be able to use in the classroom to plan and design learning environments and experiences, and support teaching, learning, and the curriculum. Although the standards are in place, the leading teacher education organizations have acknowledged shortcomings in teachers' preparation to use as an effective instructional tool and emphasized that teachers must receive rich opportunities to learn to use (American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, 1999; American Council on Education, 1999; National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 1997; National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 1996). But how best to support preservice teachers' learning needs around these standards? There is some consensus that in order to support preservice teachers' learning needs, teacher education faculty need to model how can be used during teaching and assist in the assessment of student performance (CEO Forum, 1999, 2000; OTA, 1995). A study of exemplary approaches to train teachers to use discussed four schools of education (Beryl Buck Institute for Education, 1995). The study highlighted that these programs' students regularly observed college instructors and classroom teachers modeling the use of and were required to access information and communicate over computer networks about meaningful problems and questions. The authors concluded that through such activities, these programs made students aware of the instructional possibilities of educational technology (p. 10.5). Strudler and Wetzel (1999) followed up with these same four colleges and added that these sites developed a college-wide plan for students' preparation (spanning both technology-specific and methods courses) that drew upon national standards for direction and emphasis. They reported that these four sites also emphasized field experiences where students were able to teach with technology. There is increasing interest in preparing teachers to use in the context of their subject area (Bell, 2001; Sprague, 2004). Such an approach is supported by the research on learning to teach, which suggests that to develop the abilities to teach a particular subject matter, educators must not only learn the language, artifacts, and essential principles on which learning in their content area is based, but also must develop their ability to structure and enhance similar learning opportunities for students (National Center for Research On Teacher Learning, 1991; Stuhlmann, 1998; Stuhlmann & Taylor, 1999). …