Technology professional development program and real-life working context of teachers

Technology professional development program and real-life working context of teachers

Yamagata-Lynch, L.C. (2003). How a technology professional development
program fit into the work lives of teachers. Teaching and Teacher
Education, 19(6), 591-607.

I remember very well four years ago when I was a trainer for a primary teacher professional development program for 50 hours. There was no course outline or any specific content from the above authorities. They just gave us the budget two weeks before the starting date. We had to design the content of the training for primary school teachers without any chance to study the need of the recipient groups. I felt sorry for the teachers in that programs who didn’t have the opportunity to participate in the design of the training program. That’s why many of them reflected at the end of the training that they learnt nothing from the training as it had nothing to do with their real-life teaching. Next time if there is something like university training for school teachers, I will invite local school teachers as many as possible to join us in the program planning and designing the program evaluation criteria.

Anyway, the flashback of my career was intrigued by an article that I read today. The article is about technology professional training which was designed by university staff for school teachers in Indiana district. It’s very interesting that the researcher mentioned the “complex” environment of teachers’ working life. Everyday teachers are constantly negotiating and renegotiating classroom decision to meet multiple goals and demands from the students, community, peers, administrators, and themselves. The social structures prevalent in schools and classrooms influence the decision-making and the activities in which teachers choose to participate (Cuban, 1986; Cuban, Kirkpartrick, & Peck, 2001)

Therefore, teacher pedagogical beliefs are not separable from the context of teaching. The knowledge of a teacher is a shared identity which is constantly affected by social negotiation (Hutchin, 1993; Lave, 1988; Gallimore & Tharp, 1990). Teachers and their knowledge always play a critical role in professional development and educational reform (Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman & Yoon, 2001). When it comes to technology training for teachers, the first step is to invite practicing teachers to provide their perspectives about technology. Before recruiting teachers to the program, the majority of teachers should be given the opportunity to participate in the critical decision-making phrase of the reform. Any program that fails to include teachers in the beginning process may have difficulties to build the teachers’ intervention between the knowledge and real-life practice.

One more thing that I found very useful to know about teachers and technology is the list of activities that teachers integrate technology in their teaching. It was presented as a summary of the project which indicates what teachers can do in the learning and teaching with the technology enhancement. (See Table 1, P.596)

The list of technology activities from this article will be very useful for researchers who want to develop a questionnaire asking about teaching behaviours with regard to technology integration in both secondary and tertiary levels.