Are Teacher Preparation Programs Enabling Technology Literacy?

Introduction

Enabling teachers to excel in technology-rich classroom environments requires more than training on specific systems, skills, or technologies. There needs to be a strong focus on using technology to transform the learning experience so that key concepts and frameworks are internalized, while also providing students with the agility and flexibility they need to excel (Sheets & Crawford, 2012). Enabling teacher preparation programs is as much about understanding how students learn and integrating entirely new approaches to content and context delivery as it is about technology (Krueger & Kumar, 2004).

In asking whether teacher preparation programs are equipping future teachers to operate effectively in technology-rich classroom environments, we must also ask how these technologies accentuate and strengthen core teaching strategies and learning initiatives. The trade-offs between technology and teaching skill revolve around the efficacy of technology training today and its obligation to enable educators to better serve and strengthen their students (Clark, 2012).

Deciding Whether Teacher Preparation Programs Enable Technology Literacy

The contextual intelligence necessary to make the most of advanced technologies must first be present before the scalable aspects of new teaching platforms can matter. By contextual intelligence, we mean the ability to train teachers to identify the optimal mix of technologies to support and strengthen students in attaining their learning objectives. The fundamental concepts of scaffolding apply directly here, as these techniques seek to provide teachers with insights into how best to apply individualized teaching and training strategies optimized for delivery through key technologies (Kavanaugh, Puckett, & Tatar, 2013).

Research into this aspect of teacher training has shown that advanced subjects — including statistics, calculus, and other highly quantitative sciences — are made more effective through the use of hybrid technology platform approaches (Ball & Levy, 2008). Combining online, self-paced tutorials with scaffolding techniques to provide continuous guidance and feedback as students progress toward learning objectives leads to higher levels of overall academic performance (Najjar, 2008).

Contextual Intelligence and Scaffolding in Teacher Training

The components of a successful scaffolding program must focus on how technologies can be orchestrated to help students attain their short- and long-term learning objectives, while optimizing the use of current and emerging platforms (Mills, 2011). Instructors need to be trained to scale their teaching strategies in step with students' needs, using technology as an overarching enabler of greater educational effectiveness (Kavanaugh, Puckett, & Tatar, 2013).

A teacher's ability to move beyond the constraints of any single technology — and instead draw on a combination of teaching skill, scaffolding, and real-time feedback to gauge student progress — is essential for both the teacher's long-term professional development and the student's academic growth (Najjar, 2008). The components of an effective scaffolding program are well documented in educational research on adaptive instructional design, and they consistently point toward outcome-focused, personalized approaches as the most durable.

Conclusion

The advent of advanced teaching technologies is making scaffolding — or personalized instruction — more attainable for teachers at all levels of experience and teaching skill (Kavanaugh, Puckett, & Tatar, 2013). In defining the metrics of success for equipping teaching professionals with technology, there needs to be a balance between creating scalable teaching plans and integrating technologies to achieve them. Only after establishing this overall balance can any teacher preparation program succeed over the long term.

Using the metrics of scaffolding effectiveness commonly applied to evaluate these programs, preparation efforts aimed at giving teaching professionals a solid foundation for unifying their pedagogical strategies become more achievable (Najjar, 2008). Ultimately, the measure of a successful teacher preparation program is not the breadth of its technical curriculum, but its capacity to produce educators who can harness technology integration in service of student-centered learning outcomes.

References

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