Education and training for teachers in technology

¶ … integration of computer technology (and especially reading software) into classrooms vis-a-vis improvement of reading development in early childhood education. For the purpose of this study, reading development includes a range of skills, including letter recognition, sound identification and basic comprehension and retrieval. The age ranged focused on in this study is birth through age eight, and is focused on a range of educational setting.

The primary source of information on this topic came from a survey of the literature, but this secondary information was supplemented by observation and surveying of two teachers with different approaches to teaching reading. The results of this observational study that I performed are somewhat inconclusive, due in large measure to the significant limitation placed on the story by the size of the group being studied.

However, while certainly more could have been learned if the sample had been larger than two (the sample had originally included a third teacher, who had to withdraw because of time constraints) there was a great deal of insight to be acquired from the results of this limited study. Because only two teachers were studied, a very high degree of detail could be obtained in each set of observations.

Overall, these sets of observations supported studies in the literature to suggest that a well-trained teacher is in fact more likely to implement technology into their curriculum, with the consequences that the children who are taught by these teachers are better prepared to begin reading and to make substantial strides in reading as they progress.

Results

Technology has the potential to support children in all stages of development. In order for a technology-enriched program to be successful, it must rely on the teacher's creativity and appropriate use of technology in her or his curriculum. A teacher who incorporates technology in appropriate and creative ways into the classroom is able to teach her or his students not only a great deal about how computers themselves work but also use the power of computers to teach and improve skills in other areas such as reading.

Both of these are important elements of incorporating teaching into the classroom. Computer knowledge has become an important part of learning for today's children, who are, after all, destined to spend their lives as members of the 21st-century, computer-dependent workforce. Computer skills are not only desirable but also essential in a wide range of jobs today, and the teacher who instills basic computer skills along with other academic skills (such as literacy) is providing students with two legs up (Liu 1996). As the Internet becomes an even stronger presence in all facets of our lives and as technology in general converges with instruction in the classroom, educators must explore the possibilities it has to offer (Karchmer 2001).

This does not, however, mean that teachers should simply throw computer-based learning tools at their students. While teachers should most certainly not be afraid of technology, nor should they be over-eager to embrace it without a complete understanding of the ways in which technology can be integrated into the curriculum and the ways in which different kinds of computer technologies can help children at different developmental levels.

The teachers who are best able to help their children use and adapt to new technologies - as was seen in this observational study and as is documented in the literature - are those who are most confident about their own abilities. These are in general those who are the best trained.

Teachers who feel that they will be successful at any given task are more likely to do so because they adopt challenging goals, try harder to achieve them, persist despite setbacks (Bandura, 1997 p. 2). Students who will be entering the workforce of the 21st century need to be educated by well trained and technology astute teachers. Teachers must be willing to change to meet these challenges and must have the confidence in their own training and technological abilities to be able to pass on their own sense of assurance to the students.

The original hypothesis of this research was that using technology that is both age and skill level appropriate during early childhood education will increase literacy skills and that has been borne out by these observations. It would certainly be helpful, in terms of future research, to expand this original set of observations to include more teachers and different types of classroom arrangements to see if these findings can be generalized.

McMahon, Richmond, and Reeves-Kazelskis (1998) found that differences in instructional environment and teacher's literacy acquisitions do affect the level of children's involvement in literacy events. These researchers also found that that the quality of classroom literacy materials also have an effect on the child's success or failure in both settings. Further investigation needs to be conducted to see if the influence of teaching methods are due to school-district mandates or teacher preferred practice.

The findings from this set of observations suggests that the influence of teaching methods is based more on teacher-preferred practices rather than on school-district mandates. Many teachers are simply not comfortable with computers. One might even hazard a guess that this is why they entered the teaching profession to begin with, because they had good people skills and wished to work directly with people rather then through machines.

This bias against computers is certainly understandable, and it is certainly not required that everyone be good at the same thing. However, it is imperative that teachers be comfortable enough with technology that they be able to implement it to the extent that they can be the utmost help to their children.

One of the important findings of this research, derived through a study of the literature, is the fact that standardized tests can provide the information that teachers need to be able to integrate computer-based learning tools into the school curriculum in a meaningful and developmentally appropriate way.

For example, Barone (2002) found that beginning-of-year and end-of-year administration of the Early Screening Inventory-Revised test provided sufficiently detailed information to teachers to allow them to integrate appropriate technologies into their classrooms. However, this assumes that teachers actually do pay sufficient attention to the test results to use them as wise guides in the structuring of class time.