Game changers: developing graduate faculty for a technology-rich  (Page 6/14)

Figure 2. Three Pronged Targeted Circular Design

The NCDPI-supported IMPACT V grant endorses the thinking behind our three-pronged perspective. The education agency provides substantial funds for the K–12 public schools involved to secure 21st-Century technology and media tools for supporting and catalyzing school improvement efforts. As a prerequisite for qualifying for the grant program, schools had to be identified as high needs based on socioeconomic criteria, including a lack of technology facilitator support personnel. Interested districts then completed an extensive visioning and planning process that took 4 months. The Impact V model involves school teams comprised of the principal or assistant principal, four teacher leaders representing core curricular areas, and one media specialist. The district level media/technology director also constitutes the team. The core curricular teachers are currently participating in a fully online Masters of Instructional Technology program at another university in North Carolina while the practicing administrators are earning the EdS degree through our new online program, which functions informally as a cohort. These school teams are figuring out how to work collaboratively to develop a school improvement action plan and provide professional development for their schools while seeking support and resources from their district office. As the NCDPI Division Director expressed,

"By implementing the IMPACT model, these districts will join a network of model schools across the state [that spearheads] collaborative planning among teachers, media coordinators, and technology facilitators… This particular IMPACT model initiative will focus onbuilding 21st-Century school and classroom leaders, and will rely upon a cohort of cross-curriculum teachers to provide the ‘just-in-time’ and formal professional development normally provided by technology facilitators. We look forward to learning how other schools can affect technology- and media-related professional development through this model." (as cited in NCDPI, 2011, para. 4)

In addition to substantial funding for the school teams’ graduate programs, professional development, and technological equipment, the grant provides modest funding to support some teaching components of our faculty professional learning initiative. We have situated this project in support of student-centered learning principles and social constructivist theory more generally.

Framing professional learning as social constructivism

In the technology interventions reported in the literature, students in higher education and public schools have made gains through environments designed to foster student-centered learning using principles of social constructivism. In a current study, Berry and Staub (2011) reported that 8th graders advanced in a learning environment in which they were guided to take responsibility for their development through the creative and dynamic use of software tools in multimedia learning. The graduate student part of this equation that focuses on the leading and learning of adult learners has also been introduced in the literature (e.g., Papa&Papa, 2010).