Saturday, March 19, 2005

Powering Up

From the Forward by Richard Elmore:

The relationship between technologies and learning theory:
“Technology enables teachers with well-developed working theories of student learning to extend the reach and power of those theories; in the absence of these powerful theories, technology enables mediocrity.”

The importance of context in implementation of innovations:
“People who specialize in applications of technology to education tend to be fascinated with their own gizmos. They are interested in getting teachers to “adopt” and “implement” particular instructional technologies that they believe will exercise a profoundly transformative effect on instructional practice and student learning. In this way, they beocme victims of their own rhetoric. By adopting this posture, they fall into the “implementation trap.” That is, the results they promise depend on teachers’ faithful implementation of the design specification of their gizmos. We have known, with about as much certainty as possible to know anything in the social sciences, for at least 30 years that this is a bankrupt theory of educational improvement. The variability of practice and performance among teachers implementing a common model predictabley exceeds the variability in practice and performance among competing models. Another way of saying this is that instructional models, no matter how well-designed, never dictate practice; individual knowledge and skill and organizational culture always trump externally initiated models. Yet the sponsors of technological innovations in education continue, with Sisyphian regularity, to urge adoption and implementation.”

Still thinking on this one.

Posted by Randy on 03/19 at 01:52 PM
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