National study to examine best ways to prepare teachers to use technology

By Chuck Carney, Published December 07, 2007

 

The Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP) at the IU School of Education in Bloomington will partner with a Washington, D.C.-area company for a first-of-its kind, $3.1 million project examining how current and emerging technologies are being used in classrooms and how to prepare new teachers to best use these tools.

 

The “Leveraging Education Technology to Keep America Competitive” study has just begun with a contract through the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Technology.

 

“To our knowledge, the federal government and the U.S. Department of Education have never really funded a comprehensive study of how cutting-edge technologies are being used in pre-service education,” said Jonathan Plucker, director of CEEP and deputy project manager of the study. Plucker said technological advances have made this a vastly different society. “But a common criticism is that that’s not really changing the way that we teach,” he said. “It’s not changing the way we deliver education. It’s not changing the way that students learn. This study gives us the resources to go out and do a very comprehensive and careful study to figure out if those things are happening.”

 

Curt Bonk, professor of instructional systems technology, is one of the key personnel in the project, serving as a subject matter expert. Other IU School of Education researchers working on the study are Thomas Brush, associate professor, and Anne Ottenbreit-Leftwich, assistant professor, both in the Instructional Systems Technology program at the School of Education; Patricia Muller, associate director and senior research scientist at CEEP, and Courtney Brown, a research scientist at CEEP. IU will be working with the Granato Group to complete the 18-month project.

 

An overall assessment of technology use in the classroom is due by April 2009, and while that final work will help direct federal policy towards technology in education, a series of white papers issued throughout the length of the project will give immediate insight into the issues the work is tackling.

 

Over a technical plan that breaks down into seven “task” areas, the project will produce an overall assessment of technology use in the classroom by April 2009. While that final work will help direct federal policy towards technology in education, a series of white papers issued throughout the length of the project will give immediate insight into the issues the work is tackling.

 

A large portion of the School of Education involvement will be in the third task, a national study of how teacher preparation programs instruct future teachers on how best to integrate technology for enhanced student learning. Another task involves finding the best ways to get such information out to teachers, often using some of those cutting-edge methods the program will study. The project began with a kickoff meeting last month. IU researchers are now preparing teams to gather data.

 

Creativity is a key portion of the study, according to Bonk. He said the study will give him and other professors “stories to tell” in backing up best practices for using technology in the classroom. “We have really unique opportunities here, not just reiterating what’s been done in the past,” Bonk said. “Not just summarizing, but really thinking innovatively about where we’re going.”

 

Brush said the study should provide something more structured for professors to follow when teaching instructional technology. He said professors now only get to compare notes at conferences and in other informal conversations. “We can use that information both to inform the Department of Education and help them in examining more broadly what teacher preparation programs are doing,” he said, “but also inform our program at IU and how we can improve the way that we specifically prepare our future teachers in Indiana to effectively use technology.”

 

The broad scope of the study will also provide insight new and current teachers. “I think that one of the most important things for me is looking at in-service teachers, what they find really meaningful,” Ottenbreit-Leftwich said. The backing of federal money will allow a large-scale perspective that wouldn’t otherwise be possible, she added. “It means a great deal, how responsible we feel in order to make sure technology is implemented in the schools to make an impact on student learning,” Ottenbreit-Leftwich said.

 

CEEP promotes and supports rigorous program evaluation and policy research primarily, but not exclusively, for education, human services and non-profit organizations. Its research uses both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. To learn more about CEEP, go tohttp://ceep.indiana.edu.

 

The department of Instructional Systems Technology program in the IU School of Education prepares practitioners and researchers to build and test processes, products, systems and services for use in education and training settings.