September 2001 — Features
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Technology in Secondary Teacher Education
- Students express a strong need for computer education as an integral part of teacher preparation, particularly for courses to include issues of curriculum and strategies for classroom implementation (Oliver 1994).
- Very few teachers are aware of what's out there and available to them because they have no long-range vision or hope for advanced technology (Strudler and Powell 1993).
- Pre-service education programs have yet to coordinate instructional technology, so prospective teachers are trained to use advanced technological pedagogy (Moss 1988).
- Teacher education students believe, as d'es society at large, that telling and/or showing is teaching subject matter (McDiarmid 1990).
- Teacher in-service has to model how to use technology in the teaching and learning process. The idea is not only to teach them how to use the hardware and software, but how to integrate it seamlessly into the curriculum (Siegel 1994).
- "If we don't intentionally think about the use of technology in teaching math and science, we're going to miss an opportunity to improve the curriculum and to make a difference in the quality of instruction" (Bruder 1993).
- Undergraduate instruction is not known for producing exemplary teacher models, and pre-service teachers see little modeling of effective instructional strategies (White 1994).
- Studies reveal that providing a comfortable environment and many opportunities for using computer technology enhances the future use of it (Johnson 1993).
The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) have adopted a set of pre-service teacher competencies for technology education and standards designed to prepare teachers to utilize technology (Wetzel 1993). But colleges and universities must make their own decisions concerning the integration of technology into the teacher education curriculum (Munday, Windham and Stamper 1991).
Unfortunately, most students complete their teacher education programs without examining their beliefs about their roles as teachers and their classrooms as contexts for learning, subject matter and pedagogy (McDiarmid 1990). Teacher educators, in many cases, do not encourage students to challenge or examine current teaching practices. Instead they focus on issues about which they and their students already agree (Brousseau and Freeman 1988). Evidence indicates that college instruction frequently presents teaching and learning as mechanical, disconnected and fragmented, just as they are at pre-college levels (Boyer 1987; Kline 1977; and McDiarmid 1990).
It is important, therefore, that colleges of education widen their offerings to prepare pre-service teachers to use technology effectively, and begin modeling proper applications of technology and teaching strategies in the learning process (Fawson and Smellie 1990).
Integrated Secondary Teacher Education Program (I-STEP)
In an attempt to address these national concerns and the Center for Excellence in Education at Northern Arizona University's mission - "To prepare education professionals to create the schools of tomorrow" - the secondary education faculty began a two-year reconceptualization of the secondary teacher preparation program in 1993.
