Information Technology Underused in Teacher Education

Information Technology Underused in Teacher Education

"In the past few years the preservice teacher education programs have made substantial progress in preparing future teachers in information technology," says Dr. David Moursund, Executive Officer of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), "but they still have a long way to go."
It was with the goal of evaluating teacher education programs that the Milken Exchange on Education Technology commissioned ISTE to survey teacher-preparation institutions across the country. Survey results -- gathered from 416 institutions representing approximately 90,000 graduates per year -- suggest that these programs should increase teachers’ exposure to appropriate education technology if they are to aptly prepare them for today’s classrooms.
Recent federal government estimates suggest that as the number of American students and demand for smaller student-teacher ratios increase, the education system will be forced to hire approximately 2.2 million new teachers over the next decade. A large proportion of those new teachers will be recent graduates of colleges of education.
"What better time to investigate the possibility of improving teacher preservice training in information technology," suggests Cheryl Lemke, Executive Director of the Milken Exchange on Education Technology.
The survey, titled "Information Technology in Teacher Education" asked faculty members about the extent to which future teachers were being exposed to technology in their classes, field experience and curriculum materials. The majority of faculty-members revealed that they do not, in fact, practice or model effective technology use in their classrooms.
"There is inconsistency between what teacher-training faculty know about technology and what they are training teachers to do in their courses," says Lemke. "We can be confident that there is more technology awareness and experience out there, but it is not being used in teacher training to the extent nor in the manner we think necessary."
Over 70 percent of teacher training programs surveyed require students to take three or more credit hours of instruction with information technology (IT). And on average, preservice teachers get an equivalent amount of IT built into their non-IT courses. But despite the course requirements, most faculty did not feel that IT training was adequate or effectively modeled for the future-teachers they serve.
"It takes a great deal of education and experience to achieve a comfortable level of expertise in this field," says Dr. Lynne Schrum, president of ISTE. "We want preservice teachers to learn how to use information technology as a tool for helping their students learn."
Survey researchers also asked about the field experiences of teachers — whether or not information technology was available in the K-12 classrooms where preservice teachers get their field training. They found that most of those classrooms have information technology available, but student-teachers do not routinely use that technology during their field experience.
"The use of technology in everyday classroom and practicum experiences — seems to be more important than specific computer classes," says Talbot Bielefeldt, a researcher for the survey. "Specific technology training has a role, but only up to a point. The institutions that reported the highest levels of student technology skills and experience were not those with heavy computer course requirements, but those that made use of technology on a routine basis throughout the teacher training program." observes Bielefeldt.
Says Lemke, "The findings in this report should be a wake-up call for higher education institutions and policymakers across the country — today’s students live in a global, knowledge-based age, and they deserve teachers whose practice embraces the best that technology can bring to learning."