In light of current understanding about the conditions necessary for effective and sustained learning, the changes in societal needs for educational outcomes for all students, and new technologies that can support these educational goals, the roles of teachers will change substantially in coming years.
The world is changing. Education needs to change as well, since it prepares people to participate in and enjoy this changing world. The knowledge and skills that are taught need to be continually re-examined. One important factor is technology. Media now infuse our lives and the ways in which we encounter and appreciate ideas, information, knowledge. More and more of the work of our society will use new interactive media, and there will be an increasing use of technological tools in science, mathematics, and engineering.
These changes now intersect with conceptions of education, including the restructuring of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. New skills and knowledge need to be integrated into the curriculum, pedagogical methods need to be further developed and implemented and ways of assessing learning and education need to further examined and redesigned.
Curriculum is being reconceptualized to emphasize project-, problem- and case-based approaches to the development of understanding. While such approaches to redesigning curriculum and assessment are now enjoying broad attention, they also exist in somewhat uneasy tension with struggles to define "common knowledge" or discipline-based standards that can be nationally shared. Teachers' will need to thoroughly understand these new definitions and range of practices, because they will have more responsibility for orchestrating a much wider array of experiences for students than in the past. Their roles will shift in response to these developing conceptualizations of core knowledge, effective curriculum, and flexible coordination of resources.
Education will become substantially more distributed across multiple persons and resources. Teaching will shift from emphasizing individuals who are fully responsible for learning in self-contained classrooms to distribution of teaching/expertise across teachers, disciplinary experts, and content resources. For teachers, there will be greater emphasis on skill in facilitating and coordinating learning experiences for individuals and groups of students. While teachers' command of foundational content will remain key, the diversity and depth of expertise required to support learning for all students leads to a teaching model that can comfortably and thoroughly draw on distributed resources. Development of robust ways to compose and coordinate such distributed teaching will be an essential feature of future schooling. Across developmental levels, teachers will be expected to understand the needs of individual students in-depth, to support these diverse students in meaningful sustained inquiry, and to coordinate the resources (both expert persons, and material resources) that are necessary to students' pursuits. To accomplish this kind of education, teachers will need substantial support to shift from traditional teaching to roles emphasizing:
This will require developing educational infrastructure for distribution of expertise and resources--including the new roles for teachers, students, and "outsiders".
Not only does technology pose a challenge for education, but it also provides new tools for meeting that challenge. As the society outside education increasingly uses telecommunications, innovative cognitive tools, and other technologies, education can use those technologies to integrate learning much more broadly with resources and practices outside of schools. The roles of teacher and student can be re-examined and redistributed. Students can use for their learning many of the same new technologies that scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and other adults use in their work. Adults outside the current educational system can be involved in ways that mutually benefit students and themselves.
The use of these new technologies and these new ways of thinking can help integrate education back into the rest of society in ways that mutually benefit both. Education can become a collaborative partner with the rest of society. The vision provides direction and boundaries for the development of a research agenda.
In defining a research and design/research agenda for a combined effort of EHR and CISE, certain issues run as threads through all parts of the territory that must be explored. These issues include:
A research agenda on the changing roles for teachers must define and coordinate research in a broad territory. We are concerned with two overall issues here. First, the goals for and practice of teaching is changing, and we must understand more about these changes in classrooms, and in contexts of professional development. Second, these changes can be enabled and supported by designing and incorporating technologies to advantage. This requires thoughtful analyses and exemplary design.
We need to know more about teaching and learning in the new distributed conditions we imagine. There are three foci for such inquiry:
In order to design for more effective teaching, we need to know more about the new learning situations that are now being created in schools, and teachers' new roles in those situation. Thus, a central (but often overlooked) research question in educational technology is what do we know about the changing roles of teachers and students as a basis for design of usable technologies?
This is a question that needs to be explored at several levels. At the highest level, descriptive studies must be conducted of the political, social, demographic, and economic issues contributing to change in the classroom in order to better understand the context for which new technologies will be designed. At a much finer-level of detail, there is also a need for descriptive/observational studies of how instructional practice has actually changed in schools that embody these new approaches. Note that in asking this latter question the emphasis is on change in enacted practice rather than changes in pedagogical theory. From these studies it is hoped that some normative theories of what constitutes exemplary instructional practice in the technology-enriched classroom can be developed (i.e., What's the job description for a "learning coach"/"team facilitator"/"knowledge broker"?). Further, it is hoped that these studies will shed some light on what aspects of the new teacher's/student's roles are difficult, thereby suggesting possible opportunities for the development of new support tools.
A second, but related research question, pertains more specifically to the relationship of technology to change in instructional practice. In what ways have computer and network technologies changed classroom practice? Were these anticipated or unanticipated effects of the introduction of technology? Conversely, how do new technologies become appropriated into local practice (i.e., how does utilization of a 'technology' vary across situations of use)? Studies of this sort may provide guidelines for the design of more flexible and readily adapted applications in the future.
Furthermore, how are learning environments reflecting new learning approaches integrated into the classroom context, and what changes in teaching practice are required to support effective use of learning environments that foster students as active learners? For example, how can teachers support students as they work in interactive inquiry-based environments? How can classroom activities reinforce and complement the new learning approaches reflected in such interactive learning environments?
Teachers' new roles create new demands on them in managing a productive learning environment. Teachers are now being asked to be facilitators or coordinators of their classes of students who are working independently as individuals or small collaborative groups on different projects. How can teachers deeply understand, monitor, and support the work of students who are each actively engaged in interactions with resources, perhaps exploring a different topic, using a different approach, and working at a different pace? Technology-based tools and environments will be needed to support teachers in the new roles. Research questions to be addressed include the following issues.
First, how can technology be used to produce the diversity of expertise and experiences required to support more student-directed learning? Telecommunications resources such as electronic mail, electronic bulletin boards, and the World Wide Web can provide students with a wealth of information and advice. How can these resources best be utilized to provide students with meaningful learning experiences? What sort of structure, if any, needs to be imposed on these technologies to increase their effectiveness? What kinds of learning opportunities and experiences can be provided by technology such as simulations or multimedia environments?
Second, how can technology be designed to assume or distribute some of the responsibilities for helping guide or structure studentsı work? How can computers function as coaches? How can technology be used to structure studentsı work on complex problems? How can technology be used to provide feedback and comment on students' work? How can technology be used as an information resource? When some support is designed into the technology, how are the responsibilities for guidance and facilitation shared and coordinated between the teacher and the technology? What technological support can help teachers provide direction for studentsı work, e.g., how can technology facilitate the performance of teachers as information brokers?
Third, how can technology be used to facilitate teachers' understanding and evaluation of students' work? What kind of work environments for students can be created that leave a trace of their growing, changing understanding? What should the contents of these records be and what media best communicates this information? How can records of students interactions and work products be summarized in a way that makes them manageable for teachers to monitor? What tools can be provided for students so they can communicate their achievements in project work to teachers, e.g., technological support for portfolios? How and when should these records be made available to other interested parties, e.g., parents, school system personnel, researchers, etc.? What kind of assessments can be supported by computers? How can technology be used to assess higher-order thinking skills? What are some effective strategies for implementing assessments of computer-based collaborative learning?
Fourth, how can technology be designed so that teachers can adapt and extend the new designs for their own classrooms? For example, how can learning environments be designed to be extensible and customizable by teachers? Can learning environments provide a supporting structure, e.g., basic inquiry tools, while allowing teachers to extend the content of a system?
Finally, how can the technology be designed to enable teachers to integrate an innovation more effectively. For example, how can tools for curriculum planning augment an interactive learning environment to allow teachers to consider how to weave a learning environment into their curriculum rather than treating it as a stand-alone unit? How can technology be used to provide examples (e.g., video cases) of other teachersı use of the technology to serve as models? What types of support materials can enable teachers to adopt a teaching approach reflected in a learning environment, e.g., a focus on inquiry and explanations, in other activities in their curriculum?
Tools and environments are needed to support teachers in new practices. In particular, technology-based tools should be explored to help with the new features of teachers' roles that we highlight in the vision: tools that help teachers to facilitate the learning of their diverse students in complex classrooms where students simultaneously pursue multiple strands of inquiry; tools that support in-depth assessement of understanding; tools that help teachers to coordinate the distributed teaching/learning that we imagine, helping them to adapt and integrate the new materials.
One final note: Students can lead teachers toward new practices by their expectations, questions, work. To encourage this, tools developed for students should coordinate well with tools developed for teachers. Student tools are considered elsewhere in this report. We encourage an agenda that coordinates the technology-enhanced environments for students with those designed for teachers.
The rapid technological changes in tools for communication and collaboration and the continuing emergence of new and more powerful environments for student learning make imperative the development of substantially re-conceived models for the professional development of teachers. Without such new models, the potential of emerging educational technologies is likely to fall far short of achieving the vision of education that is needed for the 21st century. There are three areas of research and development that need to be examined in order to achieve such new models: (1) research on exemplary models of professional development that include all elements of a teacherıs growth; (2) research on technological support for professional development; and (3) how can the transition to such new models be developed and supported?
Traditionally, "in-service training" experiences for teachers are short and circumscribed; schools of education are currently little altered by changed ideas, practices, and tools. Telecommunications and visual media can be a key part of new backbones for the interactions that underlie professional change. The technologies need to be exploited to create the circumstances of sustained trial, observation, coaching, and reflection that characterize effective professional development.
Technology based learning environments and new tools for communication and collaboration thus simultaneously provide an opportunity to create new models for the professional development of teachers, and they demand that we do so in order to realize the potential of such technologies. Changes in the role of the teacher, changes in curricula and learning goals, and changes in assessment must be integrated into such new models. At the same time, proposed new models of professional development need to examine the full time-scale of a teacherıs career--pre-service and in-service development and the larger school and community context in which that development takes place.
Large- and small-scale projects and studies need to be supported. For example, large-scale projects can create comprehensive programs in teacher development built upon new collaborations of practitioners, educational researchers, local community members, workers in local and remote businesses, undergraduate students, schools of education, developers of educational technology and national research centers. Such collaborations could serve in themselves as demonstration sites for the uses of new technologies in support of teacher development and provide a testbed for examining research questions about the nature of the interactions and synergies among the system components.
Such longer term studies are needed to understand how to break the cycle of teachers teaching the way they were taught, undoubtedly the most powerful source of ideas about teaching. Other studies should analyze successful (and unsuccessful) implementations of technology in education and explore why or why not teacher beliefs have changed. To what extent teacher practice has changed? And what has been the impact on student achievement? What are the variables that impact success? What tools are needed to help structure collaborative discourses in such new professional communities? What sub-models of the larger paradigm are useful to other communities as they seek to re-structure themselves?
Smaller-scale research studies are needed to examine new models of professional development. What are the best designs? How can tools (todayıs and emerging) affect the kind of professional support it is possible to provide? In what ways can teachers reflect on and assess their own practice within the professional education community? What are new ways for teachers to contribute to the knowledge of the professional community? How can a re-distributed role for teachers, that draws on multiple sources of information and supports many levels of interactions, be implemented? What are the key conditions for the success of the new models?
Technology makes possible new strategies of professional development for teachers that greatly extends the range of ways to reach teachers at remote sites. Current successful approaches include the use of video to construct case studies of exemplary teaching practice or to allow teacher to discuss examples of their practice with other teachers. There are a number of research questions concerning the use of technology to foster learning new approaches (both pre-service and in-service), reflection on practice, and communication with colleagues.
How can libraries of video cases be made available to teachers? What type of context of use is most effective for teachers to use the case library? What type of case content is important, e.g., examples of students, student work, teacher-student interactions, teacher reflections, etc.? How can technology support the use of cases in pre-service teacher development programs? How can video-case technology support in-service teachers as they experiment with new curricula, technology, or teaching approaches?
How can video be used to allow in-service teachers to reflect on their own practice? How can technologies such as interactive video, videoconferencing, and satellite broadcasting be used to continue their professional development? How can technology be used to enable teachers to communicate with colleagues about their work so that they can learn from each other? How can technological support for communication with peers facilitate adoption of an innovation? What types of materials (e.g., examples of student work, video of classes, activities and commentary) and social context fosters productive sharing of ideas?
Current models for teachers' professional development are well-formed by constructivist theories of learning and social theories for collaboration. However, they are considerably less grounded in either practical or theoretical examination of the impact of technology on student learning. It is clearly inadequate to layer new technologies on top of existing goals for student learning. In their professional development, teachers need to be examining and posing appropriate new goals for student learning and effective pedagogies to reach those goals. This has far-reaching implications for curricular change. How can more distributed teaching and learning environments be implemented?
Any model of teacher professional development must also address crucial issues in the assessment of student learning. As described earlier, computer-based learning technologies raise new questions of how teachers understand their students work in a technology rich environment. How can technology support teachers learning new approaches and sharing ideas about assessment?
How, for example, can teachers use software tools to assess high order thinking skills? What tools need to be developed to help students assess their own higher order thinking skills? How do such assessment tools relate to both the pedagogies and the goals for student learning?
New models of teachers professional development will need to demonstrate the capacity to sustain changes, to modify and adapt changes, and to continue to evolve as the technology changes. Critical research questions to be examined include investigating how teachers appropriate new technology-enhanced learning environments? What are the variables that impact success and sustain continued change? What are the infrastructures that support teachers in continuing and evolving roles as users of technology? What and how do technological tools support those changed roles? What kinds of tools are needed to encourage sustained reflection upon practice?
New models for professional development must address the critical transition issues for todayıs teachers to the vision of new roles for teachers. In considering these new designs for teaching and for professional development, it may be necessary to focus specifically on the state of transition that we now inhabit in education. Instead of a strategy that develops the final advanced environments and then implements them, it may be interesting to consider classes of "transitional tools" that help teachers to move from traditional to new practices;
How can we design software for todayıs teacher that will help teachers evolve to new roles? new curriculum? and new tools? How can the technology itself be used to improve the effectiveness and fluidity of the change process within schools and the larger communities within which they are embedded?
In addition to specific studies about innovative practice, and new models for professional development and community, the research agenda should explore the workings of different models for socially organizing schooling in the ways we imagine. If teaching and learning are to be more broadly distributed, and to include resources and outside communities in robust ways, we need to know more about how such complex systems might work. There are alternative ways of organizing these new relationships; promising models should be deliberately explored and analyzed.
As interest grows within schools in ways of increasing the authenticity of in-school experiences, new technologies (e.g., email, web, videoconferencing) offer unprecedented opportunities for bringing the outside world into the classroom. The result may be an increased connection of the school to the community that surrounds it.
New approaches to learning and instruction are needed that reflect this view of the situated classroom, as well as research on technology to support this connection and make it a productive one. How can technology bring outside expertise into the classroom, i.e., technologies to enable students to communicate with telementors? How can technology connect students and teachers, in school and at home, to the nation's cultural resources now housed in libraries and museums? How can students contribute to the community, work on authentic projects outside the classroom? How can families be involved more directly in the schooling process, e.g., communicate with teachers, access school information from home, etc? How can technology foster connections between schools and the research community? Another issue of social support concerns the connection of teachers with their colleagues. Environments need to be created that support vibrant, sustained professional exchange among teachers that transcend the traditional boundaries of schools. Technology-based designs need to be conceived that allow this traditionally highly-isolated profession to evolve a new infrastructure--the basis for continuing reflection and renewal. To go beyond the traditional delivery-model of change, an entirely new professional structure needs to be created such that the profession itself has on-going capacity to consider, debate, distribute effective innovations as they arise. Well-designed technological supports are key.