Determining Success of Technology Integration in Classrooms, Schools, and Districts (Part 4)
I ended my last post by writing that attaining the top stage of popular models of technology integration was often equated with “success.” I stated that it was “unfortunate.”
Why?
The top stage in each model (and similar ones) implies that when the teacher has reached this apex of implementation, students are thoroughly engaged in learning tasks and the classroom has become a site of active student learning—the unspoken goal of process-driven cheerleaders of student-centered classrooms. In effect, those teachers who have reached the top rung of the ladder have fully implemented technology to produce the highest levels of student involvement in learning content and skills. Implicitly, that top rung becomes the gold standard of effective teaching in integrating technologies into classroom lessons. And that is unfortunate.
What many smart people ignore or forget is that describing exemplars of technology integration is not synonymous with student-centered teaching. And student-centered teaching is not the same as “success” in student learning. This bias toward one form of teaching leading to student “success”–however defined–is historic (see here).
After all, should K-12 teacher practices change when they reach the apex of the models for integrating technology into their lessons? Certainly, the technologies themselves do not require such a fundamental change from teacher-centered to student-centered. Evidence of technology use in Europe, Asia, and the Americas (see JECR PDF) have pointed out how powerful devices often end up being used to support teacher-centered instruction.
What’s missing from the assumption that student-centered learning is the same as “successful” technology integration is that reaching the final stage in these models says little about whether students have actually learned anything from Determining Success of Technology Integration in Classrooms, Schools, and Districts (Part 4) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: