There is much discussion of why teachers do not quickly adopt technology tools in their classrooms. Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler at Michigan State wrote a very thoughtful article in the Teacher College Record in 2006 that provides a good way of understanding why teachers have such difficulty and providing a framework and strategies for addressing these issues.
Their ideas of most easily captured by this figure in which they note that teaching with technology requires that the instructor integrate knowledge about content, teaching (pedagogy) and technology.
The authors write,
"our framework (Figure 4) emphasizes the connections, interactions, affordances, and constraints between and among content, pedagogy, and technology" (p. 1025).Later in their discussion they also write,
"The addition of a new technology is not the same as adding another module to a course. It often raises fundamental questions about content and pedagogy that can overwhelm even experienced instructors" (emphasis mine) (p. 1030).Too often in discussions about the failure of teachers to adopt new technologies, we are failing to acknowledge the complexity of the task we are asking them to take on. This is not say that educators are excused from trying new forms of instruction and new technologies, but there is much to learn and we also need more help in learning these new tools. For more work by Mishra see his blog and other writings.
1 comment:
Robert, good to read your post and particularly cool to read of someone from UIUC (I graduated from there way back when) thinking of the TPACK framework. Just one thought, the image you have on the posting has been updated, the latest version can be found at http://tpack.org or from my site (link below). Thanks.
Post a Comment