Over the past 20 years, school reform efforts have identified teacher professional development as a key component of change and as an important link between standards and student achievement. After all, as students are expected to learn more complex and analytical skills in preparation for work and life in the “21st century global economy,” teachers in turn must be expected to teach in ways that develop those higher order thinking and performance skills, experts say.
Recognizing the importance of the matter, President Obama and congressional leaders included $650 million in the federal stimulus package for the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT ) state grant program—25 percent of which must be used for professional development on the best uses of technology—that will begin flowing to schools later this month. Don Knezek, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE ), says students not only learn differently now but that the world they inhabit today is so radically different that educators would be “silly” not to keep up with the changes.
But are they?
A new report from the National Staff Development Council, Professional Learning in the Learning Profession, basically says no. The researchers say that as a nation we have “failed to leverage professional development to ensure that every educator and every student benefits from highly effective professional learning.”
Andrea Prejean, senior policy analyst at the National Education Association, which runs its own online professional development program called the NEA Academy, agrees with the claims laid out in the report but remains optimistic about the future. The findings do not stem from a lack of trying, she says, but perhaps an unsatisfactory implementation of poorly conceived programs.
Knezek has doubts about the findings’ veracity. “Over the last five years, if you were to pick a random educator out of a hat, yes, that would probably be true,” he admits. “But there are pockets of schools where that is definitely not the case.”
Talk to educators and practitioners knee deep in the practice of improving teaching and learning and you’ll find a nascent pedagogical movement. More than 40 states have adopted standards calling for effective professional development for all educators accountable for results in student learning—with “technology integration” often front and center. And as educators put such standards into action, they are producing profound technology results for themselves and students.
Teachers Teaching Teachers
The Teacher Leadership Project, a nationally recognized, award-winning professional development model that is used in 18 states by 4,200 teachers, is a prime example of the good work being done in technology-infused teaching.
It started in the mid-1990s when the Northwest Educational Service District 189 in Anacortes, Wash., passed a large technology bond that allowed the district to put four computers in every classroom. But teachers didn’t exactly give the machines a run for their money.
Several teachers were hired as technology coaches and given stipends in exchange for training other teachers how to use an electronic grade book, access e-mail and the Internet, and save files to the network. But within two years many of the machines were sitting in the backs of classrooms collecting dust.
"The whole '21st century' mindset is more than technology itself. It's the confidence teachers have to effectively use it in class." -Monica Beglau, director, eMINTS
Becky Firth, director of the district’s Technology Leadership Center and one of the former technology coaches, says the skill-based training was done with a “just in case” attitude, not a “just in time” philosophy. Teachers forgot what they’d learned, and enormous energy was spent retraining them again and again.
“There’s a lot of technology in classrooms,” Firth says, “but not a lot of modeled training on how it can be used to transform education.”
So in the summer of 1997, funded by a small grant from the Gates Foundation, a group of 27 educators throughout Washington state gathered to explore how technology could improve student learning—an effort that has since transformed to become the Teacher Leadership Project.
The program is designed by educators, for educators. It consists of an intensive summer institute followed by online training sessions and immerses its participants in the training taught by other TLP teachers who have implemented the philosophy in their own classrooms. It has been identified as an exemplary professional development model and adopted by other organizations, and a three-day version, called the Teacher Leadership Seminar, was added to Intel’s Teach to the Future Master Teacher Training in 2000. The Mississippi Department of Education also implemented the program between 2000 and 2003 and received training for more than 100 of its teachers. TLP teachers have gone on to become district administrators, curriculum specialists, technology directors and integration specialists.
