I am working on the book revision and attempting to address an issue that continually surfaces as a criticism – why isn’t the investment in technology having a stronger influence on learners? Part of the answer is – the learners do not spend much time using technology. Why?
I think we used to assume that the issue was a problem in teacher preparation. Cuban argued a counter position when he noted that technology integration was not really happening even when teachers were sophisticated users.
Russell, Bebell, O’Dwyer & O’Connor have reached a similar conclusion. In fact, their data seem to indicate that new teachers feel confident and skilled themselves, but use technology less in the classroom that teachers who have been in the system 6-10 years. Pretty hard to explain this away as an access or a teacher preparation issue. Maybe this just means new teachers just have too many challenges and don’t see tech integration as essential. Maybe this means personal technology skills are not the same as technology-based instructional skills. If this finding generalizes, this will be an interesting observation to explain.
