Ken Pruitt has posted three great questions for school districts:
- What are the 21st century skills we want our teachers to model?
- How can we provide consistent and relevant training to 200 teachers?
- Will adequate resources encourage teachers to integrate technology into their curriculum?
The second question is a classic dilemma for school systems. Most still haven’t found a good answer to that one.
I love question 3!
We find ourselves in the lucky(?) position of really trying to answer the first two questions. Our resources are incredible and continuing to become that way though of course like all we have our share of issues with laptop battery life or occasional network traffic trouble.
But my colleague and I are trying to put together the answers to question 1 in framework of essential questions relating to those 21st century thinking skills and a de-emphasis in subject knowledge content (well actually that will be someone else’s call).
However, like you said, training is incredibly difficult. And we struggle with that continually. Voluntary attendance at workshops we think are interesting and others think are optional at best, make it hard. Everyone “means” to come, but they always have something more important.
Administration then has to make it obligatory, but will they?
I think a 4th question could easily be added and not change the discussion a bit. How are we going to finance this? Schools are more and more hard pressed to come up with ways to pay for the advancing technology.
Also, I truly believe that question 3 will be a moot point in the near future. As we graduate and hire more and more teachers the technology will become more and more ingrained in them. We have students starting colleges all over the world now who have never been without technology as we know it today. It will happen, we’ve discovered that technology has to be “accepted” as usable by educators, it can’t be forced as many of us are discovering.
Obligatory? It would be in every other “industry”, wouldn’t it? Education, for some reason, is different. That could be the topic of another discussion.
John – I don’t know how quickly those who don’t know it will be leaving the profession…I think we’ve still got some time on our hands…but hopefully those that come ingrained with it also come ingrained with the appreciation for change, since ultimately they will also be adapting to change far speedier than we have even now.
As for your additional topic, I’ll point you to Scott’s great Key Question posted a while back: http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2007/04/key_question.html
The discussion that followed was terrific.
The third question arose after reading “What makes professional development work?” (cite at bottom) The study was a three year venture dealing with urban PE teachers. Several obtained grants to receive new equipment with the obligation of continuing their education.
The surprise noted in the study is the emotional lift that the new equipment and training gave to not only the teachers but the students as well. They found the enthusiasm leaking into the entire school.
I read that study from a rural, fairly well funded district and wondered why our teachers, that have decent access, still seem so apathetic. I need to see if a complete program of both resources and PD yeild the same results here.
Thank you for the conversation.
Ken
McCaughtry, N., Martin, J., Hodges Kulinna, P., & Cothran, D. (2006, June). What makes teacher professional development work? Journal of In-Service Education, 32(2), 221-235. Retrieved July 5, 2007, from Education Research Complete database.
Dennis,
My point was 2 things. As teachers retire, they are replaced by young teachers who have been using the technology all their lives and are much more inclined to be receptive to its use. This tends to provide examples for the “older” crowd to see and emulate. I know when I was a mentor for a school district I loved the new teachers, they were very receptive and the vets saw what they were doing and many times tried it themselves.
I didn’t mean this would happen next year, but slowly it will happen. It’ll will take some time.
I’d say from my experience that the answer to question 3 is pretty clearly “no,” but things may be different at the primary and secondary levels. At the post-secondary level, at least, there just isn’t any incentive for the instructors to engage in PD. The only way to speed adoption is to offer concrete rewards.
I also think that John is forgetting that there is always attrition, and it is never enough. There are always new people coming in at the bottom, but they are always a very, very small percentage of the organization. By the time they make it to the top–or even the middle–their knowledge and training are outdated. Technology is already ingrained in pedagogy, and always has been. The problem is that it’s technology from the 1980’s and 1990’s, when today’s teachers were trained. There is no reason to believe that teachers entering the workforce today will be more up-to-date in 2027 than their older colleagues are today. By the time recent hires become a majority of the workforce, what they know will already be significantly out-of-date. And that assumes that the pedagogy they are being taught for certification–often by people who become instructors at schools of education *at the end* of successful careers as teachers–is current to begin with.
It’s a feedback loop that’s difficult to break. Unless, of course, we find ways to reevaluate PD, continuing ed, and on-the-job-training at the primary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. It needs to be a complete package.
Three Questions from Call for Data
Here are three questions from a post at Call for Data.
What are the 21st century skills we want our teachers to model?
This is a difficult question for me to answer. I could point to ISTE standards for technology for teachers and students. I wonder if …
Another Tough Question
My district will be implementing Moodle this fall. THANK YOU Paul and Elson! Anyway, Im looking forward to this opportunity to blend my class with online resources and assignments. I am positive that I will have more luck using Moodle then I did…