The Educational Technology Journal
Vol 13|No 1|September|2003
You will find the full, free September issue of FNO
at http://fno.org
There are two major articles and a cartoon this month.
1. Pedagogy Does Matter! (Excerpt below)
http://www.fno.org/sept03/pedagogy.html
By Jamie McKenzie
McKenzie argues that artful teaching strategies offer the greatest
promise of improved student performance - not equipment or scripted
lessons.
2. Technology as Diversion
http://www.fno.org/sept03/diversion.html
By Jamie McKenzie
Some technology integration lessons are diversionary according to
McKenzie, who argues that classroom teachers now seek powerful ways
to improve student reading, writing and reasoning. Forced to jump
through NCLB hoops and cope with high stakes testing, teachers
require something better than trivial pursuits and powerpointlessness.
3. The September Cartoon - Laptop Wonders
http://www.fno.org/sept03/septcartoon.html
Why would anyone put all their eggs in a single basket?
Ask the politician in Michigan who dreamed up a laptop
program just for sixth graders.
--------------------------------
Pedagogy Does Matter!
By Jamie McKenzie
=A9 2003, Jamie McKenzie, all rights reserved.
These are dangerous times for American schools as powerful outside
forces impose changes poorly grounded in theory, research and
practice.
In one speech, the Secretary of Education pretty much dismissed the
importance of pedagogy.
Education Week reported on June 19, 2002 that the Secretary of
Education had questioned the importance of teachers learning pedagogy:
Paige Uses Report As a Rallying Cry
To Fix Teacher Ed.
Many schools of education have continued business as usual, focusing
heavily on pedagogy, how to be a teacher, when the evidence cries out
that what future teachers need most is a deeper understanding of the
subject they'll be teaching, of how to monitor student progress, and
how to help students who are falling behind," Mr. Paige told hundreds
of state, school district, and higher education officials gathered
here for a Department of Education conference on teacher-quality
evaluation.
The implications of this statement are chilling, especially since a
lack of attention to pedagogy (how teachers orchestrate classroom
learning) explains why many children bog down in schools or drop out
entirely. A lack of devotion to pedagogy also explains why new
technologies have failed to realize their potential in many
classrooms across the land.
The Secretary incorrectly defines pedagogy as "how to be a teacher."
In other statements he has dismissed the "art" of teaching and argued
for a scientific approach.
Roget's defines pedagogy as "The act, process, or art of imparting
knowledge and skill."
The American Heritage=AE Dictionary of the English Language defines
pedagogy as "The art or profession of teaching."
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards defines
pedagogy as follows:
Content pedagogy refers to the pedagogical (teaching) skills teachers
use to impart the specialized knowledge/content of their subject
area(s). Effective teachers display a wide range of skills and
abilities that lead to creating a learning environment where all
students feel comfortable and are sure that they can succeed both
academically and personally. This complex combination of skills and
abilities is integrated in the professional teaching standards that
also include essential knowledge, dispositions, and commitments that
allow educators to practice at a high level. (See
http://www.nbpts.org/)
It is because we failed to fund professional development and pretty
much ignored pedagogy that many schools have suffered from the
screensaver's disease and found little return on their technology
investments.
A series of reports have identified a severe lack of professional
development as a major cause of disappointing results, but even these
reports define the task in terms of technology and software training
rather than pedagogy.
Although state funding for technology-related staff development
remains low, teachers across the country are saying that is exactly
what they need. Fewer than half, 42 percent, of novice teachers
report feeling well or very well prepared to use computers for
instruction in their first year of teaching, according to the U.S.
Department of Education's 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey, or
SASS. And MDR data show that in 23 percent of schools across the
country, at least half the teaching force was identified as
"beginners" in using educational technology.
Quoted from Education Week, May 8, 2003, "Tracking Tech Trends." By
Susan E. Ansell & Jennifer Park (Click for full report.)
Too often technology training has shown teachers how to spreadsheet
or PowerPoint while failing to demonstrate how these tools might
impact learning in their fifth grade classroom, their biology
classroom or their art classroom. Schools have offered few courses
that focus on classroom management issues or ways to customize
learning to match the interests, skills and needs of the learners. We
have seen too little focus on curriculum rich strategies.
We have too often shown teachers word processing without
demonstrating how writing might improve with strategies like those
outlined by FNO in a June, 2003 article, "Writing the Right Way" at
http://fno.org/jun03/writing.html.
*Writing as Process
*Mind Mapping
*The Six Traits Approach
Even though a program like Inspiration=81 makes a great companion to a
word processor to support writing and thinking, because we tend to
teach them to teachers separately, we miss out on much of the
learning potential.
In contrast with the Secretary's demotion of pedagogy to lesser
status, FNO takes the position that we need informed pedagogy now
more than ever and that knowledge of content must be balanced with a
solid grounding in effective teaching strategies, especially when we
hope that teachers will dramatically shift the performance of
students who have been failing or struggling.
Continued at http://www.fno.org/sept03/pedagogy.html
--
Jamie McKenzie
Editor, From Now On - The Educational Technology Journal
fromnowon@earthlink.net
http://fno.org
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