Technology in School Classrooms Technology in School Classrooms How It Can Transform Teaching and Student Learning Today Edited by James G Cibulka and Bruce S Cooper ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD Lanham • Boulder • New York • London Published by Rowman & Littlefield A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26–34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2017 by James G Cibulka and Bruce S Cooper All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN: 978-1-4758-3103-0 (cloth : alk paper) ISBN: 978-1-4758-3104-7 (pbk : alk paper) ISBN: 978-1-4758-3108-5 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 Printed in the United States of America Contents Foreword: Next Generation Learning in School Chris Dede Introduction to the Topic—and the Book James G Cibulka and Bruce S Cooper 1 Technology’s Role and Place in Student Learning: What We Have Learned from Research and Theories Kui Xie and Nathan A Hawk 2 Teacher Professional Development in the Digital Age: Design and Implementation of Learning without Limits Stephanie Hirsh and Michelle Bowman King 3 The State of K–12 Online Learning Michael K Barbour 4 Building Foundational Skills in Learners with Special Needs through the Use of Technology Ted S Hasselbring and Margaret E Bausch 5 Assessment Technology as a Tool to Strengthen Teaching and Student Learning Michael Russell 6 Emerging Technologies and Changing Practices in Science Classrooms John A Craven III and Tracy Hogan 7 Economic Effects of Technology: Costs and Distribution of Resources to Support Student Learning Lawrence O Picus 8 The Role of School Leaders in Leveraging Technology to Transform P–12 Classrooms James G Cibulka 9 The Current Role of Schools of Education in Preparing a Technologically Literate Teaching Workforce Karen Symms Gallagher Conclusion James G Cibulka Index About the Authors Foreword NEXT GENERATION LEARNING IN SCHOOL This book provides an excellent analysis of whether and how digital technologies can transform teaching and learning in classroom settings The authors collectively provide a multidimensional perspective on how and under what conditions technology can be productively employed by teachers to more effectively meet the challenges presented by a rapidly evolving world Civilization today presents a landscape deeply shaped by technologies—transportation, communications, and computing—that place new demands on schooling to prepare today’s students with knowledge and skills not necessary for prior generations (Fishman & Dede, 2016) This challenge has profound implications for teachers and the work of teaching, in terms of both what it means to teach and how one teaches I agree with the editors’ stance that the important issue is not the value of digital tools and media as an educational innovation for industrial-era schooling, but their potential role in the emergence of an alternative, next-generation educational model well suited to preparing students for a future quite different than the immediate past Recently, in many types of work, advances in computing and in artificial intelligence (AI) have driven shifts in the “division of labor” between technology and people, as new types of tools have taken over the tasks people used to (Levy & Murnane, 2013) As the chapters in Technology in School Classrooms discuss, these technological advances provide a useful lens for examining how job roles are changing in teaching, as well as how teachers can model for students the division of intellectual labor with technology that they, in turn, will experience when entering the workplace The fundamental impact potentially is not technology taking over teaching via AI, but intelligence amplification: technology providing a classroom infrastructure that enables teachers to direct their attention toward the students who need it the most, while supporting more proficient students to continue making progress on their own (Dede & Richards, 2012) Digital technologies can help teachers learn to shift their practice toward this new division of labor, so their classrooms center on “deeper learning” that prepares students for a global, knowledge-based, innovation-centered civilization (National Research Council, 2012; Dede, 2014) Innovative approaches to teacher learning are important because the failure to provide universal, high-quality professional development in education is in sharp contrast to other professions, such as attorneys and physicians (Dede, Eisenkraft, Frumin, & Hartley, 2016) This shortfall is, in part, responsible for continuing difficulties both in attracting strong people to teaching and in keeping them in classroom instruction more than a few years (Mehta, 2013) Moreover, a few forms of professional development have been studied using strong methods of evaluation and research, so improvement is difficult, given a lack of findings about what strategies are working well and why (DarlingHammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009) Technology in School Classrooms’ chapters highlight the central role of teachers in classroom learning and also emphasize that using digital media to automate conventional models of professional development cannot be successful in fostering transformations in instruction Ultimately, shifts in teachers’ practice require professional capacity building in which participants not only learn new skills but also “unlearn” almost unconscious beliefs, assumptions, and values about the nature of teaching, learning, and schooling (Dede & Frumin, 2014) Professional development that requires unlearning necessitates high levels of emotional/social support in addition to mastering the intellectual/technical dimensions involved In order for teachers of education to transform from presentational/assimilative instruction to active inquiry-based forms of student learning, teachers must unlearn their own mental models, which include emotional investments developed through decades of being a student receiving traditional instruction and further years of building skills in conventional instruction Without unlearning, teachers teach as they themselves were taught At this point in history, the primary barriers in transforming to a twenty-first-century educational system are not conceptual, technical, or economic, but instead psychological, political, and cultural Some people oppose any form of educational change that is not fully understood, arguing that traditional schooling was effective for them and that innovators should not “experiment on children.” But the most dangerous experiment we can perform is to keep our current systems of schooling in place, hoping that various small changes and the introduction of new technologies will make up for their shortcomings Over time, the disconnect between what society needs and what industrial-age educational models can provide is widening, and cohort after cohort of students has needlessly high rates of failure, creating terrible consequences for those learners and our nation Technology in School Classrooms describes how, with the right investment, we can have the means necessary to implement technology-enhanced models of education that prepare all students for a future very different from the immediate past Whether we have the stakeholder commitment and societal will to actualize such a vision remains to be seen Chris Dede REFERENCES Darling-Hammond, L., Wei, R C., Andree, A., Richardson, N., & Orphanos, S (2009) Professional learning in the learning profession: A status report on teacher development in the United States and Abroad [Monograph] Dallas, TX: National Staff Development Council Dede, C (2014) The role of digital technologies in deeper learning New York: Jobs for the Future Retrieved from http://www.jff.org/publications/role-digital-technologies-deeper-learning Dede, C., Eisenkraft, A., Frumin, K., & Hartley, A (Eds) (2016) Teacher learning in the digital age: Online professional development in STEM education Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press Dede, C., & Frumin, K (2014 July, 20) Unlearning and mirroring: Transforming instruction Ed Week (blog) Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning_deeply/2014/07/unlearning_and_mirroring_transforming_instruction.html Dede, C., & Richards, J (Eds.) (2012) Digital teaching platforms: Customizing classroom learning for each student New York: Teacher’s College Press Fishman, B., & Dede, C (2016) Teaching and technology: New tools for new times In D Gitomer & C Bell (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching (5th ed.) (pp 1269–1334) Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association Levy, F., & Murnane, R (2013) Dancing with robots: Human skills for computerized work Cambridge, MA: Thirdway Publications Retrieved from http://content.thirdway.org/publications/714/Dancing-With-Robots.pdf Mehta, J (2013) The allure of order: High hopes, dashed expectations, and the troubled quest to remake American schooling New York: Oxford University Press National Research Council (2012) Education for life and work: Developing transferable knowledge and skills in the 21st century Washington, DC: The National Academies Press Introduction to the Topic— and the Book James G Cibulka and Bruce S Cooper This book addresses whether digital technologies can transform teaching and learning in America’s P–12 classrooms Education technology expenditures in the United States continue to grow each year and have now become a major investment for school systems (Schaffhauser, 2016) The federal government has made large investments in promoting education technology, such as through its Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology Program (PT3) Yet technology proponents, as well as critics of public school spending and school performance, point to little evidence that digital technologies as currently employed in our schools have met their promise of improving the quality of education in America’s classrooms through new teaching practices and improved performance by students Controversy about whether technology is being used effectively by teachers and school administrators is not new Debates on this question stretch back many decades, prior to the invention of digital technology, but the question of technology’s effectiveness has taken on a new complexion and urgency today When educational television made its debut in the 1950s, for example, and film and radio before it, these innovations had quite modest objectives At that time, technologies were conceptualized as supplementing regular instruction (Cuban, 1986, 2001) Similarly, when computers initially were introduced in classrooms beginning in the 1980s, they were viewed as ancillary tools for teachers to use, often located in a separate learning lab outside the regular classroom As new technologies were promoted by school boards and administrators, many teachers enthusiastically embraced them Despite this fact, there have been continuing criticisms that too few teachers were adopting the innovations or were not using them appropriately Such concerns appear to have widespread credence Fishman and Dede (2016) argue that most schools have not achieved a high level of technology integration These schools operate at Level One (Minimal) or Level Two (Intermediate) rather than Level Three (Extensive) They argue that at Level One, technology is used “to increase interest or motivation … in whole group or large-group presentational styles of teaching” (p 1277) At the Intermediate Level, the technology is more widely available to individual students, who have better access to computer networks, and perhaps there is some differentiation of instruction “for learners at various skill levels.” ... for Student Learning In this volume, we examine the proposition that digital technology can transform teaching and student learning in American classrooms We need to think about student learning. . .Technology in School Classrooms Technology in School Classrooms How It Can Transform Teaching and Student Learning Today Edited by James G Cibulka and Bruce S Cooper ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD... reviewing the changing role of technology in student learning, they explain how technology integration can support teaching and student learning in three major areas of learning theory— human cognition,