Opposite Intended Effect: A Case Study of How Over-Standardization Can Reduce Efficacy of Teacher Education, The

Teacher Education Quarterly, Summer 2004 by Hughes, Bob

The technology standards are limited to assessing teachers' proficiency and mastery of computer technologies; however, even there, they fall short. As the work of Becker (1999), Cuban (2001), and others have noted, getting teachers to use technology as a component of their teaching is not that easy to do. The Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (Apple, 1995) 10-year study suggests that the technological skills development of teachers occurs on a continuum. This continuum involves the following developmental sequences:

Stage What Teachers Do

Entry Learn the basics of using the new technology.

Adoption Use new technology to support traditional instruction.

Adaptation Integrate new technology into traditional classroom practice. Here, they often focus on increased student productivity and engagement by using word processors, spread-sheets, and graphics tools.

Appropriation Focus on cooperative, project-based, and interdisciplinary work-incorporating the technology as needed and as one of many tools.

Invention Discover new uses for technology tools, for example, developing spreadsheet macros for teaching algebra or designing projects that combine multiple technologies. (Apple, 1995)

As I have noted elsewhere (e.g., Hughes & Yenkin, 1998), that evolution from entry to invention can take as long as five years for experienced teacher, even with significant support and access to technology. The evolution requires that teachers' needs as learners be addressed. The factors that influence their growth as technology users include their access to technologies, their affective response to them, and their self-perceptions as technology users. A demand to grow, as in the case of any developmental learning, will not create growth. In the case of beginning teachers, this developmental process can be entirely subverted by insistence on meeting mandates. Dede (1998) has noted that getting teachers to use technology appropriately takes time and significant effort. If we expect beginning teachers to become appropriators and inventors with technology, then we must create learning opportunities for them to grow into that awareness. These opportunities must allow for the gradual development that they will undergo through their explorations.

The teachers in my program are teaching in schools where the technology they have available to them is more than likely in a computer lab with individualized learning systems which do little to encourage inventive uses of technology. If they have a computer (or computers) in their classroom, the software they have available is most likely limited to low-level games or restrictive and self-paced study programs. Moving from entry to invention is not something that people naturally do, and little (for the candidates I see) in their environment encourages that evolution. My program needs the flexibility to allow our candidates to acclimate and develop within these contexts, but the standards do not allow us to make any accommodations - the standards demand that we teach all of our candidates to use digital media. While asking beginning teachers to develop proficiency as users of technology (at the same time they are being mandated to meet all of the other standards required of them), any program preparing teachers must question how it can help them developmentally and within the contexts they encounter.