Setting the stage for staff development : uniting constructivist  (Page 7/7)

This introduction of concept was guided by several objectives, encouraging teachers to:

• interact with the principal regarding the role of leadership in technology;
• consider the concept of leadership and technology influencing each other; and
• draw attention to the support (financial and philosophical) necessary from leadership if technology is to have an impact on teaching and learning.

One teacher’s interaction with the principal on the discussion board stated:

“I think technology implementation can suffer from too much leadership as it can from too little. Sometimes a principal displays total control over technology because it is his or her agenda. Often, principals don’t solicit input from staff. At one end you may have the principal who does not accept the role of leadership with technology implementation and appoints a person or committee (often non-instructional) to control the use of technology. At the other end, you may have a principal with her own agenda, diverting technology from serving the needs of the entire staff and student body.”

Last several weeks:

During concept application, students (teachers) work on new problems with the potential for evoking a fresh look at the concepts previously studied (Brooks&Brooks, 1993). The culminating activity for the course involved teams of three (2 teachers, 1 principal) designing an instructional unit in any content area implementing the use of technology. Included in the design were references to each of the 12 principles of constructivist teaching and activities covering each. Notice that the principal’s role was crucial and perhaps a bit overwhelming: the principal participated as a member of each of the small groups.

Constructivists believe students (teachers) should work on problems and situations simulating and representing authentic tasks. For this reason, teachers in the course were asked to implement the instructional unit in the classroom during that current semester. The assessment would involve a post-discussion with the principal and teachers at the end of the implementation phase.

Design effective technology staff development programs

Hopefully, displaying examples of how we tie constructivist principles to the use of technology in the classroom will help you as you begin to plan staff development activities in your own school. Though we may be in agreement about the value and strength of constructivist learning theory, we must be cognizant of the fact that staff development programs must match individual school site needs with available resources utilizing an effective delivery method. Obviously then, we must guard against adopting“canned”methods or strategies for the development of technology staff development programs. Only through assessing the needs of your staff, their expertise and deficiencies, then considering your available resources, can you hope to create a method of delivering appropriate and sustaining professional development in technology.

Think for a moment about the existing staff development methods used in your school or district. If they are anything like the methods observed in most schools, they are heavily focused on workshops, with an occasional outside speaker from a nearby college or university. We have a tendency to select activities without considering how this activity helps to meet the goals and objectives of our school. Existing technology staff development is no exception. Much consists of“hit and miss”workshops related to hardware and/or software, with little tie to instructional theory and even less of a tie to what will help students achieve. Before we leave this thought, let me present the National Education Association Research Division’s suggested 19 methods of staff development program delivery:

• Classes and courses
• Institutes
• Conferences
• Workshops
• Staff meetings
• Committee work
• Professional reading
• Field trips
• Travel
• Individual conferences
• Camping
• Work experience
• Teacher exchanges
• Research
• Professional writing
• Cultural experiences
• Professional association work
• Visits and demonstrations
• Community organizational work

Using our model of connecting technology use to constructivist teaching, will you agree that the list above provides many more opportunities than we thought available for designing effective, productive, (and fun) staff development programs for the use of technology to improve instruction.

Concluding thoughts

David Pepi and Geoffrey Scheurman from the University of Wisconsin (1996) draw three parallels existing between Hans Christian Anderson’s (1949) tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes, and our headlong rush to maximize the use of computer technology in public school classrooms. Remember the story?

Two charlatans hoodwinked the Emperor and his court by claiming they could weave the most beautify cloth in the world. Interested in keeping them with the gold metals and silk threads they claimed they needed to weave the magnificent cloth. As the weeks passed, the weavers called for more and more gold and silk thread. Instead of using any of the gold or thread for weaving, they squandered the money on themselves. When presenting the“non-existent”clothes to the Emperor, they explained it had magical powers, one of which could be seen by ordinary folks. It took a child, free of the burden of self-doubt to shout, But the Emperor has nothing on at all!!!(Andersen, 1949, p. 41)

Pepi and Scheurman’s three parallels to our use of technology in schools are:

• Like the Emperor, education has a long history of gravitating toward the latest fashion, often at great cost to the profession and those it serves;
• Just as in the weaving of magic cloth, computer technology takes money. With money comes power, and power can corrupt (consider the percentage of money allocated for technology in our operating budgets); and
• The lure of computer technology has a magic air about it. Faced with silvery disks with rainbow hues and an abstract highway that makes the yellow brick road seem mundane, the uninitiated may find it hard to question the legitimacy of the movement, much less say no or whoa to it. (p. 230)

Closing this chapter on staff development with a quote from Philip Schlectly’s Inventing Better Schools (1997) seems appropriate:

Whether the present demand that our schools be restructured will be positively responded to remains to be seen. But I am confident of one thing: without leaders who will stay the course and without staff developers who understand what leads men and women to the frontier in the first place and what these men and women need to keep on going, all our efforts to reform our schools will fail. (p. 220)