GATEways to Teacher Education A journal of the Georgia Association of Teacher Educators
What the Tech? Preparing Teacher Candidates for 21st Century Learners Rebecca Cooper, Tiffany Coleman, Amy Farah, and Katharine Page, Georgia Gwinnett College
One of the many challenges of educator preparation programs (EPPs) is the ever-changing field of educational technology and the support necessary to grow a teacher’s skillset to support the use of technology in the K-12 classroom. “Teachers use technology primarily for personal use with the creation of instructional materials, lesson plans, documents, and communication and do not think of it from the terms of student use in learning and critical thinking” (Stobaugh & Tassell, 2011, p.154). While teachers do believe that technology “could encourage students, augment their learning, and develop their longterm retention,” they also struggle with growing their skill-set to implement these technologies into their content (Merc, 2015, p.213). Therefore, EPPs must scaffold instruction to expand the knowledge base of teacher candidates so that they not only focus on their use of technology, but also on their students’ use of technology to create products in order to show mastery of concepts (Keating & Evans, 2001; Stobaugh & Tassell, 2011). While most of the current research cites the implementation of technology use within one graduate course (Zoch, Myers, & Belcher, 2017), this paper presents the use of technology tools in methods courses, including various content areas, within a full preservice undergraduate program. This EPP made a conscious decision in keeping with the theme of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) standards, in which technology is integrated across the standards rather than being a stand-alone item or focus.
VOLUME 28, ISSUE 1
Standards for technology integration are included in both Standard 1: Content and Pedagogical Knowledge, and Standard 2: Clinical Partnerships and Practice (CAEP, 2016). This article presents 14 technology tools that were integrated into four different methods courses in an undergraduate pre-service program. Descriptions of the ways in which the tools were implemented into the various undergraduate courses in order to prepare teacher candidates to teach effectively using technology are included. Literature Review Teacher Candidate and EPP Faculty Barriers to Technology Usage Change is a process, and the use and integration of technology into teaching and learning is a change that is requiring teachers and learners to step outside of their comfort level in order to attend to the 21st Century skills that are now expected to be taught and implemented in today’s learning environment. The “issue with technology in education is that it has been an evasive piece to understand, study, and implement because of its rapid growth and change” (Stobaugh & Tassell, 2011, p.153). Due to this impending change in practice, barriers naturally occur during this learning process. Although the barriers differ for teachers and learners, a few common barriers have been presented in the literature. One common barrier that exists in implementing technology integration is the lack of self-confidence in the various technologies or
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