TEACHER EDUCATION TRANSFORMED

Teacher education programs in this century have generally been organized around an applied science model within which discrete courses are framed by philosophical and theoretical content, and these in turn are followed by short-term "practice teaching" in schools.  Beginning in 1996, the University of Calgary embarked on a course of action to discontinue its teacher education programs formed in the conventional mould, and to replace them with a program in which the elements of the professional degree program are integrated, the learners are treated as professionals-in-the-making, the richness of pedagogical knowledge is acknowledged, and cooperative problem-solving is valued.  In this new Master of Teaching (MT) program, "courses" in the traditional sense have disappeared to be replaced with professional, case, and field seminars, independent studies, and extensive field experience.  The scope of "field" has been extended beyond schools to include a requirements that every student spend a block of time in some alternate educational setting, e.g., zoo, art gallery, museum, prison, special needs facility, social agency, human resources department.  Students spend approximately equal amounts of time on campus and in the field from the first day in the program, and the one experience is expected to inform the other.

The campus elements of the program include case, professional, and field seminars.  Much of the "academic" content of the program is carried by a series of cases with which students must wrestle, research, take positions toward, and defend their stands.  There is a logical progression of series of cases encompassing learners and learning, teachers and teaching, curriculum contexts and issues, living cases from the field during their most intensive field experience, and ethical cases (broadly defined).   Each case encompasses far more knowledge than any one student can deal with in the time given—hence the incentive for cooperative endeavors. Team work and collaborative inquiry and problem solving is encouraged, valued, and rewarded. Field seminars provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and experiences gleaned from the variety of educational settings in which a group of students find themselves, not to mention dealing with many of the pragmatic issues which characterize the lives of teachers and students.  Professional seminars offer students an opportunity to critically reflect on themselves as teachers-in-the-making, to pursue topics and skills of particular interest, and to engage in the many debates that surround the nature of education and teaching. Now in its fourth year, the MT program has clearly demonstrated its capability to prepare teachers who are energetic, reflective, cooperative practitioners capable of solving problems, confronting new challenges, and taking and defending positions on complex issues. The move away from courses taught by specialists has not been without its challenges, however, and one of the first to rear its head was how to re-examine the integration of technology.

THE MT PROGRAM MEETS NEW PROVINCIAL TECHNOLOGY CURRICULA

Concurrent with the changes in teacher education at the University of Calgary is the introduction of a new curriculum by Alberta Learning (the provincial department of education), Information and Communication Technology, Kindergarten to Grade 12: Interim Program of Studies (Alberta Education, 1998). Best described as a requirement to teach technology across the curriculum, this approach emphasizes the seamless relationship between technology and the subject disciplines, the process nature of technology itself, and the co-existence of knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) for technology alongside those for subject areas. The emergence of this new technology curriculum follows in the wake of technology competencies that have been published for beginning and experienced teachers.

Our efforts to design professional development for technology integration are further motivated by a specific requirement that teachers develop competency using communications technology in order to qualify for teacher interim certification. Provincial legislation, in form of the Alberta School Act and specifically the Ministerial Order #016/97 Policy 4.2.1., defines the following technology requirement for teacher interim certification:

Teachers who hold an Interim Professional Certificate are expected to demonstrate consistently that they understand:  j) the functions of traditional and electronic teaching/learning technologies. They know how to use and how to engage students in using these technologies to present and deliver content, communicate effectively with others, find and secure information, research, word process, manage information, and keep records (Alberta Education, 1998).

A considerable amount of research and careful thought went into transforming teacher education at the University of Calgary. What now needs to be considered carefully as this new program evolves is how to address the needs of students to gain the technology competencies and thinking skills required for interim certification. The Master of Teaching program accepts 400 students per year, which translates into approximately 800 students in progress each year.  The MT program must address technology in education BUT it must do so within the structure of the new program—the reintroduction of courses is not an option.

TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION STRATEGIES: YEAR ONE

The authors were charged with the task of developing a framework that dovetails technology with the MT program. We determined it necessary to conduct a needs assessment to identify present technology skill levels and areas of highest need. To this end, we distilled the required learning outcomes of the Alberta curriculum into a competency set that served as the basis for an online survey of students in program. Survey information was used to identify areas upon which we should concentrate our professional development efforts. A complete set of survey results has been published on the World Wide Web (Clark & Jacobsen, 1998). Comparison of 1998 survey findings with Ott's (1996) findings from education students in 1995 permitted us to draw some conclusions about the differences in clientele and entry level skills. For example, more MT students have a computer at home than did students in 1995 (i.e., 84% versus 67%), all of our students hold at least one prior degree (i.e., compared to 20% in 1995), and students entering our program have a higher degree of prior experience with word processing, email and spreadsheets. In brief, our needs assessment told us that with regards to previous computer experience, our students reported the most expertise with word processing, e-mail and WWW browsing and searching. However, a percentage of students also reported having "none" or "a little" word processing experience (9.5%), electronic mail experience (25.5%), and WWW browsing and searching experience (33.3%). Skill areas we targeted for immediate professional development support were those with which a majority of students reported having "none" to "a little" expertise. The high need areas included: accessing library resources using the WWW, spreadsheets, database creation, presentation software, and WWW page creation and editing.

Technology professional development was provided for students in three areas of the MT Program: weekly lecture, a technology skill and integration workshop series, and in professional seminar.  As part of their campus experience, MT students attend a weekly lecture series on topics identified with each thematic unit. In order to focus on the integration, communication, decision making, and problem solving aspects of educational technology, the authors prepared and presented two of the winter session lectures for first year MT students on integrating technology. We organized a series of technology workshops to provide skill and integration training in four "high need" application areas: (1) presentation software, (2) web page design, (3) spreadsheets, charts & graphs, and (4) databases for social science. Upon completion of the workshop and a project, such as a web page with internal and external links and graphics, students are presented with a certificate for their teacher portfolio.

INTEGRATING TECHNOLOGY INTO PROFESSIONAL SEMINAR

The first author experimented with integrating authentic technology requirements into the full year Professional Seminar (prosem) she taught with 21 students. The basic intent of prosem is to promote self-conscious learners and teachers. More specifically, prosem opens a space in which students become aware of the differing, sometimes competing sets of values and beliefs that support and frame different kinds of educational practice. Students are encouraged to see teaching and learning from multiple viewpoints-- to understand the complexity and contradiction inherent in these perspectives, to be able to choose and generate multiple possibilities for action, and to see what one's choices both allow (legitimate), or disallow (suppress).  The instructor structured prosem using the following five components: (1) Weekly readings with required written interpretive and critical responses, (2) Group discussion/debate, and individual and group presentations, (3) Generative discussion periods for articulating and examining lived experience, (4) Biography of Learning / Independent Inquiry / Scholarly Writing workshop sessions, and (5) Individual consultation / feedback sessions. Student assessment was narrative, and was based upon participation and contribution to weekly seminar, responses to required readings, creative writing and narratives, two independent inquiries, and three biographies of learning.

Given the goal of creating a collaborative on-line community of scholars, students took on the task of learning how to publish and exchange the results of their written coursework and investigations using individual World Wide Web homepages. Students met with the instructor for additional hands-on instruction both before and after scheduled seminar time, and on alternate days, in order to develop their skills in HTML and web publishing. Eventually, all students learned how to find resources on the web, create new HTML documents, convert existing word processed documents into web pages, incorporate graphics and links, and upload their web pages to a public web server. Some students learned how to convert and upload PowerPoint presentations to their web sites, to construct animations, and incorporate sound and video into their web documents.

This experiment with integrated technology requirements in professional seminar worked. We created images of how students in the MT Program can work with technology and web-based environments to create scholarly electronic communities. The integration of technology into prosem also assisted us in better defining the challenges ahead as we work to integrate technology across the Master of Teaching program. The additional time required to prepare for and to integrate technology in this one course, and the ability and skill levels required of the instructor, lead us to conclude that issues of faculty workload and professional development requirements will be primary considerations in drafting plans for faculty-wide integration. Several additional hours per week over an entire semester, for both faculty and students, is a significant commitment to ask of people. Therefore, we will have to focus carefully on the learner outcomes the faculty plans to target and realize that any and all integration efforts will require that individuals invest time in their own professional development and instructional planning in order to yield the expected returns. Even with years of educational technology experience and bushels of enthusiasm and commitment, the lived curriculum with regard to technology integration can be anything but neat and tidy! Computers freeze, network connections are busy or go down, the projector bulb burns out, floppy disks and hard drives die, and students ask questions that cannot be answered on the spot. However, in the midst of all of this apparent chaos, students create amazing and extensive projects, develop remarkable technology skills, discover the fallibility of technology, overcome some of their technology-related fears, and invent neat ideas for technology integration in their future classrooms. The challenge will be to convince our colleagues to persevere in spite of these expected, and often inevitable, technology glitches and failures, and provide the necessary support and just-in-time training as they work toward meaningful integration of technology into learning goals and processes.

NEW MEETS NEW IN YEAR TWO

A number of recommendations, in the form of goal statements, were made to the Faculty of Education Curriculum Planning Committee as a result of our first year technology integration efforts and literature on technology integration, professional development, and ICT leadership (Jacobsen, 1998; Stein, Smith & Silver, 1999; Yee, 1999): (1) take steps toward the ubiquitous integration of technology into the MT  program, (2) plan for and support faculty members' professional development for technology integration, (3) create an electronic communication medium for all MT students and faculty, (4) disseminate instructional materials about technology access and requirements, and (5) offer an extended MT technology workshop series in 1999/2000.

TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION COMMITTEE

The first recommendation was to reconceptualize the end goal of "ubiquitous integration of technology for learning" from being a sole responsibility of the "educational technology folks", and repositioning it as a faculty-wide vision and commitment. The new provincial curriculum requires all teachers to integrate technology across the K-12 curriculum. Technology as process is every teacher's responsibility. Therefore, technology integration efforts on campus should be undertaken by faculty across all curricular specializations, rather than relegating it to the technology specialists. To this end, one of us has formed and now chairs a Faculty of Education Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Integration Committee. When selecting potential committee members, careful consideration was given to appropriate representation and diverse membership. A goal was to promote a faculty culture that explored fundamental teaching and learning issues, rather than emphasizing the adoption of technology for technology sake, so it was important to solicit and include views from both adopters and non-adopters in the faculty, in schools, business, and government about the relative advantages of technology for teaching and learning.  Therefore, the committee includes Faculty of Education colleagues with expertise in areas other than educational technology, colleagues with expertise in educational technology, the Director of the Doucette Resource Centre, individuals from Calgary-area school boards, a member from the Galileo Educational Network, an individual representing Alberta Learning and the leading author of the new Information and Communication Technology Interim Program of Studies for Alberta, and an individual from industry with technology expertise.

The committee's goal is to create a shared vision by working to establish a Faculty Wide Technology Integration Plan. This document will provide a flexible and responsive plan that will guide rather than constrain integration efforts that are in alignment with the University Technology Integration Plan and the teacher certification requirements of Alberta Learning. An outcome of this Technology Integration Plan will be to address the second goal, that of determining the technology professional development requirements of faculty members, and developing appropriate strategies access to technology, training, and support. In order to realize the potential benefits from technology, the faculty as a whole needs to find ways to encourage and assist faculty members with the adoption of technology for a variety of teaching, administrative, and research tasks. Without attention to the human infrastructure, nothing of value will be achieved with the technological infrastructure (Jacobsen, 1998).

SPECIAL TOPICS SEMINAR FOR SECOND YEAR STUDENTS

An opportunity for advanced technology infusion in the MT Program has presented itself in the form of the second year special topics seminar. In their final semester, second year students enroll in a special topics seminar which allows them to extend and deepen their understanding about a particular aspect of education. A list of diverse topics for special seminar is made available to students in semester three, and students indicate their preferred topics. A special topics seminar entitled "Integrating Technology Across the Curriculum" has attracted 45 second year students for the Winter 2000 semester. The normal class size for special topics seminar is 15 students. Instead of offering 3 separate seminars, the first author and two colleagues with expertise in educational technology have been afforded the innovative opportunity to team teach a combined seminar with all 45 students. Goals of this seminar include: (1) investigating fundamental teaching and learning issues that surround the use of information and communications technology in educational settings, (2) examining both the potential and the limitations of educational technology use, (3) providing a forum for discussion of conceptual issues related to educational technology and the Alberta Learning Technology Outcomes, (4) participating in a collaborative, electronic community to publish, exchange and consider emerging ideas, (5) engaging in practical exercises that have classroom application for student learning, and (6) acquiring some proficiency in the use of various computer applications. A component of the seminar will be to critically analyze, build and extend upon innovative professional development strategies described by Stein, Smith & Silver (1999) with regard to technology integration, and approaches to ICT leadership outlined by Yee (1999). Students will be responsible for producing a portfolio demonstrating advanced technology understandings and skills. Portfolios will be assessed by the seminar leaders, along with student-selected peers, public school and university faculty members.

 EGALLERY: ELECTRONIC PUBLICATION OF EXEMPLARY STUDENT WORK - http://www.ucalgary.ca/~egallery

The third goal, to create an electronic communication medium for faculty and students, has opened a space for an innovative publication medium for student work. A number of faculty members, teachers, and two second year MT students have formed an editorial team and have created the EGallery, a web-based peer-reviewed publication of exemplary student scholarship. EGallery's mission is to provide an electronic medium for international publication and consideration of exemplary scholarly work produced by Master of Teaching students in the Faculty of Education. The editorial team seeks submissions of critical essays, independent inquiries, and biographies of learning from first and second year Master of Teaching students. All submissions are subject to a peer review process.

To get to the stage of a full-scale launch of the EGallery, a number of different development tasks needed to be undertaken by the editorial team. We needed to: (1) discuss and develop a mission statement, (2) define our intended audience, (3) outline our purpose, (4) establish publication and submission guidelines, (5) establish a review process and criteria, (6) consider how we might involve others, (7) consider who might become reviewers, (8) design advertising and promotion strategies, (9) canvas for academic and financial support, (10) establish an e-mail account and web page directory on the University of Calgary server, and (11) design and develop the website.

Development work has also included, not exclusively: (1) designing HTML documents and graphics for the core website, (2) designing and publishing paper-based promotional materials, (3) formatting and publishing the first two submissions for review, (4) creating a review form that will e-mail results to the editors, (5) inviting others to become part of the editorial team, (6) inviting peers and students to become reviewers, (7) fielding numerous questions from peers and students, (8) recording and discussing suggestions and advice from others, and (9) editing, refining, and maintaining the web site.

There are some technological and infrastructure requirements to consider when launching an online publication of this type. The EGallery website is hosted on a University of Calgary public web server, and linked to the official Faculty of Education website. The editorial team considered it crucial to have both the Dean and the Associate Dean’s public support of the EGallery, and sought their advice and advocacy.  The Department of Teacher Preparation in the Faculty of Education has generously supported EGallery by providing photocopying for promotional materials.

We have published a prototype issue of the EGallery with two exemplary independent inquiries about teaching mathematics. Our immediate goal is to publish the first issue of EGallery in January 2000 with six exemplary pieces of student scholarship. Our future plans are to fully explore how EGallery can become an active and inviting space for critical discussion among experienced educators, faculty members, and student teachers about educational issues and topics. We plan to investigate how the editorial team might facilitate ongoing and sustained conversations that build and extend upon issues raised in the published work.

TECHNOLOGY HANDBOOK

The fourth recommendation was based upon an observed need for instruction, access, and support materials that students could access for individual training and support needs. Plans are underway for the creation of a technology handbook for faculty members and students. This document will be available on the Faculty of Education web site as both HTML and PDF documents, and will provide useful information about technology integration activities, professional development, and resources. A preliminary list of topics and resources that will be addressed in the Technology Handbook are: 1) requirements and expectations for technology integration by Alberta teachers for Interim Certification by Alberta Learning, 2) where to access and how to print Alberta Education online resources (PDF files) and curricular documents, 3) how to get e-mail account and how/why to use it (i.e., communication with faculty, peers, cooperating teachers), 4) how and why to sign-up for list server, and 5) the URL for Faculty of Education web site and description of relevant online resources.

 MT TECHNOLOGY WORKSHOP SERIES

We have organized an extended MT Technology Workshop Series for the 1999/2000 instructional year that includes instruction in getting started with technology, personal writing, communication and research skills, creating computer-based slide presentations, and graphics creation and integration. A fundamental goal for all of the workshops is to provide images of how the new ICT curriculum might be lived out in the classroom with students.

The first workshop was designed for beginners who wanted to develop a better understanding of computer terminology and components, to navigate basic operating system features, to word process, save to disk, and print a basic document, to access technology resources in the faculty, and to set up an email account with the university. The second workshop was developed for beginners who wanted to refine their writing, communication and research skills using a computer. The workshop was designed to help students to develop general word processing skills (i.e., new, open, save, print, page numbers, double spacing, formatting, insert clip art, and so on) for their major writing assignments, to use email to communicate with others (i.e., instructors, partner teachers, and peers) and to exchange attached files, to use various search engines to locate research information on the World Wide Web using a browser, to download and open Curricular documents, such as the Technology Outcomes document, from the Alberta Learning Website (Alberta Education, 1998). The third workshop was designed to provide instruction on developing computer-based slide presentations. Students learned how to create PowerPoint presentations using the Wizard feature, design a new presentation from blank slides, develop a new presentation using the color templates, add graphics and special effects, and most importantly, explore how presentation software can be used for writing and research in the classroom with/by students. The fourth workshop built upon skills learned in the first three workshops. Students learned how to integrate graphics into word processing and presentation documents, to create graphics using a flatbed scanner to digitize photographs, drawings, and other media, to use a spreadsheet to create simple charts and graphs, and to create drawings and figures using draw tools. Students also learned how to download images from the World Wide Web for use in word, presentation, and web documents.

Three additional workshops will be offered in the Winter 2000 instructional session: database design and integration, manipulating numerical data using spreadsheets, and web design and HTML.

Alberta Education. (1998). Information and communication technology, kindergarten to grade 12: An interim program of studies. Curriculum Standards Branch, June 1998. [On-line]. Available: http://ednet.edc.gov.ab.ca/techoutcomes/

Alberta Education. (1998b). Teaching quality standard applicable to the provision of basic education in Alberta . Alberta School Act, Section 4 - Ministerial Order - #016/97. Policy, Regulations and Forms Manual Policy 4.2.1. [On-line]. Available: http://ednet.edc.gov.ab.ca/educationguide/pol%2Dplan/polregs/421.htm

Clark, B., and Jacobsen, M. (1998). Educational Technology Needs Assessment Survey Results Report. [On-line] Available: http://www.ucalgary.ca/~dmjacobs/mt/results.html

Jacobsen, D. M. (1998). Adoption Patterns and Characteristics of Faculty Who Integrate Computer Technology for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Doctoral Dissertation, Educational Psychology, University of Calgary. [On-line]. Available: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~dmjacobs/phd/diss/

Ott, S. M. (1996). Preservice teachers and computers: A survey of attitudes and experiences. Unpublished Masters Thesis, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Calgary, 1996.

Stein, M. K., Smith, M. S., &  Silver, E. A. (1999). The development of professional developers: Learning to assist teachers in new settings in new ways. Harvard Educational Review, 69(3), 237-269.

Yee, D. L. (1999). Leading, Learning, and Thinking with Information and Communications Technology (ICT): Images of Principals' ICT Leadership. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Graduate Division of Educational Research, University of Calgary.