Who should keep up with the research?
Yesterday I was with a group of people discussing assessment of technology and the research that is available on what we know about its effects on learning. It was a good discussion. One of the questions that we asked was, “Who should be keeping up with the research?” Some people thought the state. If they are going to make all the mandates, then they should be making those mandates based on research and best practices. Therefore, they should be the ones to keep up with what is happening in technology and education.
I threw out the idea that it should be the local decision makers. I think most of our school leaders don’t understand the true potential of technology. They do understand the learning from technology idea. Drop a few kids in front of computers, have them practice some knowledge or take a multiple choice test and ,voila! - technology integration. That is the typical limited understanding of technology’s role in schools. There is little to no understanding of what learning can be like with technology. These are the folks, dare I say, that need to be educated. This can happen by being aware of what is happening in the world of instructional technology.
Clearly, the direction is in the area of project-based, authentic problem solving, and using the many facets of technology to streamline the process and allow students to more creatively think about and use content. This then led into an off-shoot discussion about why schools focus on what they do - test scores. Our school system is backward in many ways. States mandate initiatives to schools. Central Office personnel mandate to principals. Principals direct teachers. And teachers manage and control students. Remember that we are trying to create a classroom in which teachers and students are working and learning together. The teacher certainly has experiences that come in to play during a lesson, but the teacher is not the end all in terms of knowledge. We don’t want teachers to force learning on students. But everything else in the system is forced - top-down. It becomes a real challenge to change the classroom when all other parts of the system are imposing directives on other parts, without any consideration for need, interest, and often times kids.
So to say the state people should be up on the research is flawed. Sure, they should be, but more importantly, it should be the district decision makers. Only when we understand the way the system operates, and why it does, can we begin to change it...every so slowly.
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