Day: November 20, 2002

I recently completed updating the references for our book and I found that several web references were no longer available. This is hardly a unique experience when working with web resources. Several of the missing references were resources maintained by the government. Today Cindy showed me a document that was being circulated by AERA (American Educational Research Association) requesting North Dakota members of AERA contact our state senators and congressman to protest the deletion of government hosted educational web resources that may not “reflect the priorities, philosophies, or goals of the present administation.” A general “action alert” from AERA is available online. I looked up the government references I had difficulty with to see if they were still on government sites. They were. I guess it would not bother me that sites linked from whitehouse.gov in one administration not be linked from the whitehouse site in another administration. I would be bothered if such documents were no longer available from government servers.

When preparing future teachers, when does a specific content area deserve it’s own course?

I think about this some because Cindy and I write “Integrating Technology for Meaningful Learning” – a book intended to help future or practicing teachers use technology in classrooms. We make some assumptions about how the book will be used. Because of the broad approach of the book, the length, and the cost, we assume that using technology in teaching will be the focus or at least a major focus of a course. More and more I am running into programs that feel they can integrate topics on using technology into existing courses and do not need a stand alone course. I am bothered by this and I attempt to sort out what might be a bias related to self interest from what I feel about teacher preparation.

I am for a stand-alone course AND experiences integrated into other courses and apprenticeship experiences. I do not feel teachers are typically adequately prepared based on distributed embedded experiences, but I may have different ideas about what adequately prepared means. I also think my gut feeling about this does not come from my experience with preparing teachers to use technology, but rather from my experiences teaching educational psychology. Many institutions have also dropped required courses in educational psychology. I am mostly concerned about something that might be described as depth of understanding. Depth comes from both the amount of information covered (think of this as options) and the time allowed for reflection. Without options and reflection, future teachers are left with “classroom recipes.” What happens when the classroom situation is not what you anticipated or when the world changes (e.g., a different computer, new software, colleagues who assume things should be done differently)?

We have a core “methods” course in my department (Psychology) called research methods. In this course, students learn the research process and learn to write in the formal way that researchers write. This course does not stand alone, but extends other academic experiences. The formal writing style we attempt to develop builds on more general writing skills students are expected to acquire in composition courses taught in the English department. Psychologists have their own writing style, but we see what we teach as an extension of fundamental skills. We don’t assume responsibility for providing the breadth of experiences students require to be effective writers. The research tasks we provide as “authentic experiences” require the analysis of data by statistical procedures. We review some of the basics of the statistical tests that are appropriate to the specific experiments students happen to experience in a given semester, but we assume that statistical skills have already been developed in a statistics class which in turn requires a backgound in mathematics based on courses taught in the mathematics department. There is not time to thoroughly develop general statistical concepts, to provide research experiences that would require the application of all statistical procedures students should be familiar with, or to teach basic algebra. We do provide students opportunities to apply some of the knowledge and skills that has been developed in other courses.

I am comfortable requiring students to take English Comp, College Algebra and Statistics before they take Research Methods. Is there some different type of relationship between the topics of Educational Psychology or a basic “technology for teachers” course and the skills future teachers develop in methods courses?

These are important issues and probably have a lot to do with priorities. I would certain welcome the opportunity to consider other perspectives.