Content area specific technology integration: a model for educating teachers.

In this article we present a model of content-area specific technology preparation. This approach was premised on the fact that even if preservice teachers know how to operate technology, they need help to understand how to flexibly incorporate new technology resources into their knowledge of a content area in ways that enhance student learning. Important factors for implementation success were our collegewide support for the model, technology-using K-12 teachers who facilitated technology integration into methods courses, and taking a content-area specific view of technology integration. We conclude that it will likely take a systemic view to implement a collegewide innovation of content-area specific teacher technology preparation, and that faculty would need motivation, opportunities, and support to learn. To sustain such a model would likely require it become a basic, underlying assumption of the program of teacher preparation.

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The call to better prepare teachers to teach with technology has been repeated several times during the last decade (CEO Forum, 1999, 2000; Office of Technology Assessment, 1995). In response, there are now standards in place to which new teachers are being held that explicitly describe the technology skills all teachers should have to be prepared to teach in a 21st century school. These include the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium standards (INTASC, 1992), used by many states as licensing requirements, and the National Education Technology Standards for Teachers (ISTE, 2000), which were adopted by National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) as a part of their accreditation requirements. These standards call for teachers to be able to use technology in the classroom to plan and design learning environments and experiences, and support teaching, learning, and the curriculum. Although the standards are in place, the leading teacher education organizations have acknowledged shortcomings in teachers' preparation to use technology as an effective instructional tool and emphasized that teachers must receive rich opportunities to learn to use technology (American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, 1999; American Council on Education, 1999; National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, 1997; National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 1996). But how best to support preservice teachers' learning needs around these standards?

There is some consensus that in order to support preservice teachers' technology learning needs, teacher education faculty need to model how technology can be used during teaching and assist in the assessment of student performance (CEO Forum, 1999, 2000; OTA, 1995). A study of exemplary approaches to train teachers to use technology discussed four schools of education (Beryl Buck Institute for Education, 1995). The study highlighted that these programs' students regularly observed college instructors and classroom teachers modeling the use of technology and were required to access information and communicate over computer networks about meaningful problems and questions. The authors concluded that through such activities, these programs made students "aware of the instructional possibilities of educational technology" (p. 10.5). Strudler and Wetzel (1999) followed up with these same four colleges and added that these sites developed a college-wide plan for students' technology preparation (spanning both technology-specific and methods courses) that drew upon national technology standards for direction and emphasis. They reported that these four sites also emphasized field experiences where students were able to teach with technology.

There is increasing interest in preparing teachers to use technology in the context of their subject area (Bell, 2001; Sprague, 2004). Such an approach is supported by the research on learning to teach, which suggests that to develop the abilities to teach a particular subject matter, educators must not only learn the language, artifacts, and essential principles on which learning in their content area is based, but also must develop their ability to structure and enhance similar learning opportunities for students (National Center for Research On Teacher Learning, 1991; Stuhlmann, 1998; Stuhlmann & Taylor, 1999). Subject matter resources can improve a teacher's ability to connect students' learning to the real world only if that teacher understands how students learn a particular subject matter and how to provide feedback to students in ways that foster learning. In other words, teachers must know why essential concepts are important and know how to flexibly incorporate new resources into their knowledge of a discipline in ways that enhance learning (Davydov, 1995; Doering & Beach, 2002; Brown & Duguid, 1989).

The National Technology Leadership Initiative (NLTI), a group representing 12 professional organizations in math, science, English, and social studies content areas and educational technology, for each of the afore mentioned content areas, has published goals for integrating appropriate technology in teacher preparation, definitions of technology, and issues surrounding technology in teacher preparation in the Contemporary Issues in Teacher Education (CITE) Journal (http://www.citejournal.org) (Flick & Bell, 2000; Garofalo, Drier, Harper, Timmerman, & Shockey, 2000; Pope & Golub, 2000; Mason et al., 2000). CITE is an example of a forum where this interest in content-area specific uses of technology is promoted. Each issue dedicates sections to the educational uses of technology in social studies, English, science, and math. Authors published in this journal describe how technology in the classroom can be used in these four content areas to access or develop new resources for learning (Moore & Huber, 2001; Sherman & Hicks, 2001), process or see information in new ways (Alibrandi & Palmer-Moloney, 2001; Pace, 2001), and promote the amount of and different forms of communication (Carico & Logan, 2001; Germann & Young-soo, 2001; Larson & Keiper, 2002). However, the majority of these authors are writing about their own individual efforts as instructional technology or methods area instructors to integrate technology, or within one or two licensure programs of core content areas (Flores, Knaupp, Middleton & Staley, 2002; Shoffner, Dias, & Thomas, 2001), rather than how to integrate throughout an entire college, school or department of education--and including noncore content areas.

In this article we present a model of content-area specific technology preparation implemented throughout the initial licensure programs of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota over a five year period. This work was significantly catalyzed and supported by a 1999 Implementation grant from PT3. This grant initiative, named Ed-U-Tech, sought to combine the characteristics of the exemplary college-wide approaches previously mentioned with attention to the specific needs for technology within the many licensure areas in which the college prepares teachers: social studies, English, science, math, art, music, physical education, family and consumer science, agriculture, second languages and cultures/ESL, early childhood, elementary, and special education. (While we acknowledge that early childhood, elementary, and special education are licensure programs and not content areas like science and English, we will use the phrase "content area" and collegewide throughout this article to connote our work with all of our college's licensure programs.)

PROJECT MEANS AND GOALS

In September 2003, the Ed-U-Tech project completed five years of planning, implementation, and evaluation work in the college. Funded in 1998 by a seed grant from the university, the project dedicated its efforts the first year to implementing a small pilot in one content area, planning for college-wide expansion, and seeking additional funding. Next, a year was dedicated to planning and preparation in the college as well as with project partners for the subsequent two years of implementation. During the next two years, the project staff worked with over 30 instructors from 13 different teacher licensure programs within the college. During the last year the authors and other project staff members worked on sustaining the gains the project made. The last four years the project were sponsored by a $1.38 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education as part of the Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) program, which was matched one-to-one by local funds. The first author was the Ed-U-Tech project director, the second author was the main instructor for the college's technology course required of all preservice teachers, and the third author was the project's lead evaluator.

Ed-U-Tech's goals focused on faculty development, curriculum development, establishing opportunities for preservice teachers to plan for and practice using technology as a support to instruction and receive feedback about those efforts, generating and disseminating support materials and knowledge about technology use, and preparing teachers to use technology. The fact that the college's size allows for faculty specialization by licensure program and that most licensure programs are postbaccalaureate programs with a cohort of about 30-35 students facilitated our taking a content-area specific approach to preparing teachers to use technology. The primary strategy for building the necessary knowledge and skill required to implement this approach was to bring in 14 experienced Minneapolis public school teachers to act as mentors to teacher education faculty in 13 different licensure programs. These inservice teachers, referred to as Ed-U-Tech fellows, were each matched by content area (e.g., science, mathematical, or agricultural education) or licensure program (e.g., elementary or special education) with two to three teacher education faculty and then advised and trained faculty in that area or program during their nine-month, full-time residency in the college. Half of the content areas worked with a fellow in year three, and the other half worked with a fellow in year four of the project.

Other activities of Ed-U-Tech project included the development of a website robust with content-area specific technology integration resources, technology training sessions for faculty, the purchase of technology hardware and software, and the sharing of evaluation data with participating faculty to further their research on technology and teaching and learning.

EVALUATION METHODS AND DATA

The data on Ed-U-Tech presented here comes from the project evaluator administering surveys of the faculty, fellows, and preservice teachers, and conducting individual interviews and focus groups with faculty and the fellows. In addition, the fellows were trained to make structured observations of classes, write regular, short reports about their planning and training interactions with their faculty members, and fill in logs of technology-involved assignments made in the methods courses. The amount of data collected varied by licensure program: not all fellows were equally conscientious about class observations, and some faculty members did not choose to complete surveys (collected at the outset of their implementation year) or participate in interviews (at the end of their participation semester or year, and for the early implementers a year two follow-up). During the year the licensure program had an Ed-U-Tech fellow, the preservice teachers were surveyed during their student teaching experiences. In addition to the paper's data sources and amounts detailed in Table 1, all fellows completed at least one interview with the project evaluator.

Faculty and fellow surveys and interviews, biweekly progress reports, observations, and assignment logs were imported into QSR NVivo 1.3 for qualitative analysis. The project evaluator applied a set of codes for instructional method, reference and use of technology, type of technology, cognitive activity, and implementation activity to these materials. Technology was conceived to include more recent forms of information technology that make use of computers in some form. (Other forms of technology used in education such as VCRs and overheads were not considered technology for purposes of the evaluation.) Given that the reflective use of technology was an implicit goal of the program, mentions of reflection and/or use of technology were noted. In other words, discussion of technology use in teaching was coded alongside actual uses of technology. Open-ended questions on the student survey were coded by the project evaluator and joined with close-ended responses in an SPSS 10.0 data set. The project evaluator drew upon all of these results to write 10-15 page summaries of the project work and the impact in each of the 13 licensure programs with which the Ed-U-Tech project worked. These summary reports were subsequently imported into NVIVO and coded by the first and second authors for topics related to the broad areas of faculty learning, supports, and barriers encountered, and integration results by faculty and preservice teachers. These coded summary reports were the primary source of information for this article. The original raw data sources were reviewed as necessary for follow up and clarification. Thus, a two-stage approach was used to code and summarize the data collected over the life of the project.

INSTRUCTOR LEARNING, KEY RESOURCES, AND RESULTS

During the 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 academic years, the Ed-U-Tech fellows worked with 34 faculty members to make changes in the content, presentation, and/or assignments of 57 methods courses and the 13-plus sections (elementary education had multiple sections) of the required Technology for Teaching and Learning course. Additionally, the schedule offerings and listings of the technology course were modified so that each section was designated as for a specific licensure program. In this article we do not present all of the details and outcomes resulting from this work. Rather, we emphasize in the following three sections what we consider to be the key aspects of this collegewide content-area specific approach; within these sections we discuss the resources and activities that were necessary to implement this approach and examples of the resulting outcomes. First, we describe importance of the instructors being willing to learn individually about technology and its appropriate integration into their course and the subject matter their students will eventually be responsible to teach in K-12 schools. Second, we discuss the methods and technology course instructors' coordination of their course plans to improve technology integration, and how the help of a fellow was often key for this outcome's success. Thirdly, we discuss the nature and extent of the resources that were critical for this work to occur.

Learning By and Coordination Between Instructors

The Ed-U-Tech fellows proved to be key supports in implementing our content-area specific model for teachers' technology preparation. They helped methods area faculty learn about technology and the technology course instructor learn about the various content areas. Furthermore, they served as ongoing coordinators as the methods and technology course instructors implemented their integration of technology and content, respectively. Other resources were also available in the college to support faculty members learning about technology; this helped the fellows focus their efforts on the project's goals and allowed faculty to access other help to learn how to, for example, set up a WebCT site for their course.

Instructors' learning about technology or content. The learning process began the semester before the fellows arrived at the college. The technology course instructor, and usually the project director, met with the methods course instructors in each content area to learn about the standards, important ideas and processes in that content area, and the learning outcomes for the methods courses. During these meetings we introduced the concept of mindtools (Jonassen, 1996) and started to identify, which technologies might be best for their students to learn. The mindtools concept, and later the notion of using technology to add value to instruction and assessment (i.e., technology making possible something otherwise impossible to do or difficult to achieve) proved to be generative concepts for the faculty members' learning. These ideas helped the faculty members focus on topics in their content area where technology could really help teaching and learning. That we argued from the outset that technology wasn't a panacea, but rather a tool with capabilities that could be very helpful in carefully selected instances, also lent credibility to the project staff and technology course instructor's efforts.

These conversations led to a request by faculty to develop and present to students a framework for thinking about technology integration and implementation. The three classroom-level and three school-level educational technology integration and implementation principles (eTIPs; Dexter, 2002) were developed and are now introduced to all students in the required technology course (Table 2). These guiding principles for instructional decision making are a common learning outcome for all students in the initial licensure programs in the college and also serve to give the faculty an idea of the scope and nature of the integration emphasis in the technology course. In that course the eTIPs are introduced directly and then further reinforced through online, multimedia cases (the eTIP Cases), which are further described later in this article.

After these initial planning meetings and the arrival of the fellows a week or two before the semester began, more detailed content-area specific technology integration work got underway. The conversations that occurred between the methods instructors, the technology fellows, and the technology course instructor provided a forum where decisions about the technologies to teach and how best to illustrate their potential were made based on research and practice. The technology course instructor met, on average, three times before, during or after each semester with either the technology fellow or the faculty members--but usually with the fellow and faculty members--to select the technologies to introduce, to determine the content area examples to illustrate the potential uses of the technology, as well design the assignments that would provide the best learning opportunities.

Across these 13 content areas the technologies identified to provide an added value were purchased for the college with grant funds and then learned (quickly!) by the technology course instructor. Some of the software programs were mindtools that spanned multiple content areas. For example, programs such as Inspiration[TM] and Hyperstudio[TM] were purchased to develop semantic networks and multimedia projects in the social studies, science, English, agriculture, business, and art cohorts. Kidspiration[TM] and KidPix[TM] were purchased to span elementary education, early childhood, and special education cohorts. There were also technologies specific to just one or two content areas, such as global positioning systems (GPS) and Arc-View[TM], a geographic information system (GIS), which had to be mastered by this instructor.

The work of selecting the best tools, planning ways to introduce them, and learning the new technologies led to the technology course instructor developing new syllabi for each of content area specific sections of the new educational technology course. These curricula changes shifted the technology courses from a general course where all preservice teachers learned the same technologies--no matter if they were prospective math, art, English or early childhood educators--to a cohort-based and content-specific course where specific technologies were carefully selected based on current practice and research, and introduced with subject-specific and grade-level appropriate examples.

The extent of the technology integrated into the methods courses varied. How much these methods course instructors emphasized technology depended on their prior knowledge about and experience with technology, the amount of time these faculty members committed to the project, and their willingness to learn and change their course(s). Through conversations, reports, and interviews we concluded that the fellow's own collaboration skills, views and knowledge of technology, and their ability to make insights about course and technology connections also had a big influence on how much the faculty members learned and then integrated (Dexter, Riedel, & Doering, 2004). The technology course instructor observed that if a methods course instructor previously had not integrated technology, but was working with a fellow who was very knowledgeable about various technology options and their integrated uses, the methods course instructor's learning was scaffolded quite a bit. On the other hand, some methods course instructors who were willing to learn but did not collaborate well or often with the fellow appeared to not learn as much nor add new ideas or assignments to their courses.

Technology and methods course instructor coordination. The dialogue that facilitated the faculty learning about technology integration also led to more coordination between the technology course instructor and the method's course instructors. At minimum, the technology instructor met with the methods course instructor prior to the beginning of the semester and the two coordinated so that the software that was introduced was the best possible match for that subject area and the sequence of its introduction was timed to try and support activities in the methods course. Then, once the initial technology and content integration plans were underway, the fellows strengthened the liaisons between the technology and methods instructors. One factor that contributed to fellows' abilities to coordinate technology uses between courses was that they attended all the class meetings of the technology and methods courses and were therefore able to help with the integration of collaborative technology projects between the courses. The fellows also met every other week with the methods course instructors to review the class observations they were submitting to the project evaluator and to discuss the content area's efforts and progress to integrate technology. The fellows' awareness of integration activities within all of the courses strengthened, or in some cases catalyzed, deeper levels of collaboration efforts between the technology and methods courses faculty members.

The technology course instructor reported that some instructors who worked with him at a very high level of coordination would even facilitate and encourage projects that spanned the technology and methods courses. For example, social studies preservice teachers developed a webquest in the technology course, and in their methods course had to teach with their webquest and/or integrate it in the writing of their lesson plans. The coordination of this assignment between the two instructors helped the preservice teachers to see why they were developing the technology projects and how they could be successfully integrated within their future classroom.

Summary. This dual integration (technology integrated in the content area methods course, and the content area integrated into the technology course) is the essence of the model of teacher technology preparation we present here. The fellows were essential as they were the bridge between these two domains of knowledge as well as between the instructors of the technology and methods courses. All participants' willingness to learn and to organize their efforts around the teaching and learning of that content area was also essential.

Content Area Specific Technology Tools

Here we will only discuss content-area specific technology tools that were a focus in the licensure programs. Several general software and computer resources were already owned by the college and additional general tool software, such as Inspiration[TM], KidPix[TM], and HyperStudio[TM], were purchased through grant and matching funds and incorporated into a variety of content areas in the manner best suited to instructional needs. In addition, faculty members had access to Dreamweaver and WebCt for creating websites supporting their courses and some technical and instructional support.

Each of the college's licensure programs that worked with a fellow was allocated an average of $2,000 of grant funds to purchase technology resources specific to that area. In addition to these resources, selected in consultation with the fellow and project staff members, faculty members could draw upon additional resources collected by the college from a student technology fee. Some of these funds were distributed to departments where technology committees set priorities for their use. A smaller portion of these collected fees were awarded to college faculty members through a competition emphasizing the development of instructional materials. In addition, the university's initiative to support technology-enhanced learning provided a small amount of competitive funds for the development of instructional materials.

Any hardware or software package(s) selected reflected the manner in which the methods course faculty and fellow understood technology could add value to the subject area. Where the mathematics educators asked students to buy TI-89 calculators and wanted a device to project the calculator's screen, both art and science educators wanted a document camera so they could project, respectively, 2-D and 3-D art, and experiments or models. The instructors in the licensure programs of agricultural education and family and consumer science felt that since these programs spanned a variety of topic areas, such as horticulture and small engine repair to family education and nutrition, they needed to expose their students to the variety of topical digital resources out on the market. However, since many of these resources were found to be of marginal quality, the instructors acquired only demonstration or single copies so as to inform students and provide materials for comparison and critique. The technology acquired for use in physical education reflected that field's emphasis on personal fitness; for example, Fitness Gram, nutrition software, and heart rate monitors were all used in several methods courses in the Physical Education initial licensure program. Elementary education, recognizing the need for modeling the simpler kid-friendly software used in schools requested the purchase of KidPix[TM] and Kidspiration[TM]. In special education, the fellows and faculty advocated that in addition to adaptive technology that learners would use, educators seeking special education endorsements needed to be exposed to the appropriate tools they would use for the paperwork and record keeping demanded of them. Second language methods course instructors wanted their students to realize the wealth of authentic materials on the Internet but also to learn some of the methods for weaving those together into coherent curriculum support, such as webquests and online portfolios.

Summary. Because one of the organizing ideas behind our moving to a model of content-area specific preparation of teachers to use technology was to illustrate when and how technology could add value, it required investing in hardware and software oftentimes unique to the content area. These resources allowed the methods course instructors to focus on helping students to learn to teach key concepts, ideas, and skills in the content area, and seeing how technology could be a support to their doing so.

Illustrative Materials and Assignments

The technology course instructor developed, with the support of the fellows, exemplary models of technology projects and pedagogy for each of the technology course sections (i.e., content areas). The impetus for this was provided by his research collaboration with a methods area faculty member during the Ed-U-Tech project; they found that although preservice teachers may know how to operate the technology, they do not know how to integrate it effectively within their daily lessons plans, mainly citing that they were not able to envision the type of projects their K-12 students could develop (Doering, Hughes, & Huffman, 2003). An example of what the technology course instructor modeled to the science cohort of preservice teachers was an Inspiration[TM] project that illustrated how K-12 students could construct an understanding of clouds using concept mapping. This project was supplemented by modeling effective teaching practices using concept mapping in the science classroom. The goal was to move the preservice teachers from focusing not only on the development of a final technology project in the course, but getting them to think about successful integration in their future classrooms. The technology course instructors placed these developed examples online so the preservice teachers had access to them at all times. These resources were a support to them in that for each new technology that was introduced in the technology course the students were shown an example of its use with appropriate content and then asked to make a product with that software also using content area knowledge. In addition, students were asked to describe how they might use this hardware or software in a K-12 classroom setting.

Students were also taught with the technology integration eTIP Cases, which were developed for each content area. These cases presented a school scenario where the learner was to imagine him or herself as a first-year teacher. The students were asked to make an instructional decision about technology integration or implementation keeping a particular set or individual eTIPs in mind. Cases were developed for each curriculum area, providing specific information about standards, instructional sequence, and available content area software. Unlike many cases, which are text-based and in narrative form, these multimedia cases were presented online to students with the case information split up into categories, with each sub-category a hyperlinked menu item (http://www.etips.info). This arrangement allowed the software to track what menu items users requested, in what order, and how long they spent there. This information served as formative feedback to the student, along with feedback they got about their essay response. Analysis of a set of 100 elementary education students' performance data on three of these cases, including their scored essays and search of the menu items, concluded that most students said they would integrate technology, citing K-12 students' motivation and need to learn technology as key reasons for doing so (Dexter, Greenhow, Riedel, & White, 2003); their answers illustrated many creative integration ideas and overall reflected the technology course emphasis on using technology to add value to teaching and learning.

The activities and assignments used to illustrate and implement best practices for technology integration varied by methods area instructors. We will characterize these in terms of three levels: (a) talked about it, (b) modeled it, and (c) truly integrated it. These levels represent the different sorts of activities and assignments the students would experience. "Talkers" about integration were the methods course instructors who would encourage the use of technology within the lesson plans that the preservice teachers would develop, encourage the use of technology by the preservice teachers when presenting in class, and/or direct the preservice teachers to articles that highlight technology use within their content area or pertinent websites.

Integration "Modelers" were the methods course instructors who would encourage the use of technology by the preservice teachers for class assignments, but would also model the use of the technology or have the technology fellow assist in modeling the use of technology within the method's classroom. An example of this is was provided by a group of elementary methods course instructors all teaching sections of two literacy courses; they drew upon software the students learned in the technology course, specifically the use of KidPix[TM] and Inspiration[TM], to model how a teacher might really use these programs in the classroom. In one instance the instructor modeled a reader response lesson with a children's book. She read it to the class and then asked her students to respond to the text, which they did by recording their thoughts in Kid Pix. Their responses were then made into a slideshow and described as the sort of product that could be scrolling during parent teacher conferences. This sort of modeling often led to hands on experiences for students in manner authentic to the content area.

One example of a project instigated by a "True Integrator" is provided by an English education methods course instructor. He and the technology course instructor designed multi-genre writing project where English preservice teachers and middle school students co-constructed technology projects to enhance literacy practices (Doering & Beach, 2002). This project was an assignment with parts that counted for both courses, with the technology course introducing the necessary software and its application to this assignment and the methods course reinforcing how its use could further the language arts development in K-12 students and add value to instruction. The preservice teachers got experience working with K-12 student in a co-learner mode and experiencing the role the technology played to support learning.

Summary. The integration activities and assignments observed in the technology and methods courses, recorded in the assignment logs, or mentioned in interviews fell mainly into the NETS-T (ISTE, 2000) standards area called II, Planning and Designing Learning Environments and Experiences. The students experienced technology as a resource for teaching and learning in the context of a specific content area. The pedagogy leading to these experiences varied, and thus so did the students' amount of paper- or talk-based learning experiences, as compared to hands-on experiences.

Conclusion

Deciding to implement a content-area specific model of preparing teachers to use technology required a commitment on the part of the college leaders and all of the licensure programs in the college: resources and facilities had to be adapted, staff involved in scheduling and advising had to understand what changes were occurring and why, and faculty members had to learn and then make changes to their courses. While the Ed-U-Tech project helped make substantial changes to the required technology course with students now learning about technology in the context of content area pedagogy and designing such instruction, the nature and amount of these kinds of opportunities continue to vary among the methods courses. Even less consistent across the content areas are students' opportunities to implement technology-integrated teaching with preK-12 students and to receive feedback on their efforts.

Essential resources for the implementation of this content-area specific model were adequate access to supported resources, faculty members' opportunities and willingness to learn, and factors that facilitated communication and coordination. More specifically, the prior condition of an infrastructure that provided ready access to supported, managed classroom and lab-based technology allowed instructors to trust that any planning efforts could then actually be carried out in college classrooms. The additional resources provided for by the grant or through the college made it possible for them to instigate new content-area specific uses of technology. The content area and technology experience of the preK-12 teachers we hired for a yearlong residency in the college were key factors both for supporting the technology course and methods courses' faculty members in their learning; but the fellows were only effective to the degree that the faculty members were willing to spend time learning, and revising their courses. They served as an important resource about subject area information for the technology instructor, helping him learn about important overarching ideas in the content area, and typical K-12 curriculum and school-based resources. The fellows were also key in keeping the communication flowing between the technology course faculty member and the instructors of the methods courses, and thereby more tightly coordinating the integration efforts in both types of courses.

Implications

Departments, schools, or colleges of education that seek to implement a content-area specific model of preparing teachers to use technology would benefit if they had key leaders behind the initiative and a forum in which to develop a wide base of support for the implementation. Because this proposition will cause reverberations throughout the system--impacting multiple courses, scheduling, advising, and increasing the necessary number, type, and likely the demand for technology facilities--its scale and significance should be acknowledged. Implementation should not just be considered as an optional change in a course made one instructor at a time. It will likely take a systemic view to implement a collegewide innovation of content-area specific teacher technology preparation.

In addition to providing essential supporting factors to make such a change, the system should acknowledge that the proposition of a content-area specific model of teacher technology preparation is at heart about faculty learning and changing pedagogy. Thus, faculty would also need motivation, opportunities, and support to learn. Where simply integrating technology may not serve as a motivator for uninterested faculty, the leaders behind such an initiative could seek to find mutual goals served through a content-area specific approach, whether this be aiding classroom teachers through new tools in how to teach difficult concepts or extending formative assessment capabilities. The opportunities and supports for faculty to learn about content-area specific uses of technology can be implemented in a variety of ways; however, these supports should be designed from a learning point of view. For example, learners may indicate they need time to learn and a proposed support might be a course buyout or summer salary. However, if necessary prior knowledge or expertise is not present during that time frame, just providing time may not be enough of a support. Carrying out a formal or adapted cognitive task analysis and needs assessment might aid the teacher education and technology leaders in planning for the necessary levels of learning opportunities and support.

Finally, teacher education and technology leaders in the department, school, or college of education must consider how they will be able to sustain a content-area specific approach to teacher technology preparation. After the initial goals are accomplished, new technology tools will come out, technology-integrating faculty will leave or retire, and research on teaching, learning, and the appropriate role of technology will change our understanding of best practices. These conditions suggest that sustaining faculty learning about technology might not only require a teacher education institution to develop organizational structures and processes that support change and espouse such a model as a goal, but also that it becomes a basic, underlying assumption of the program of preparation. That is, content-area specific teacher technology preparation becomes part of "the way we do things here"--a part of the culture of the teacher education institution.

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Author Note

The authors wish to acknowledge the work of the fellows and faculty who participated in Ed-U-Tech as well as thank the Council for Teacher Education, participating department's chairpersons, and the college's administration for their support. Thanks to research assistants Jen McNertney and Cassie Sharber, who aided in the collection and analysis of the data presented here and the preparation of this manuscript. The Ed-U-Tech project was supported by a PT3 grant from the US Department of Education for $1.38 M, which was matched one-to-one by local funds.

SARA DEXTER

University of Virginia 

Charlottesville, VA USA

[e-mail]

AARON H. DOERING AND ERIC S. RIEDEL

University of Minnesota

Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN USA

[e-mail]

[e-mail]

Table 1 Data Sources by Content Area

Content Area
(number of      % of Participating faculty completing
participating                               Follow-up
faculty)        Pre-Survey  1-2 Interviews  Interview  Courses Observed

Agriculture     100%        100%            100%       -3 Methods
(n=2)
Early            33%        100%            100%       -Technology
childhood                                              -3 Methods
(n=3)
Elementary       85%        100%            100%       -Technology
(n=7)                                                  -2 Methods
English          66%        100%             33%       -Technology
(n=3)                                                  -2 Methods
Science         100%        100%              0%       -Technology
(n=2)                                                  -2 Methods
Math              0%        100%            100%       -Technology
(n=2)                                                  -2 Methods
Art             100%        100%            NA         -Technology
(n=2)                                                  -6 Methods
Music            33%        100%            NA         -Technology
(n=3)                                                  -5 Methods
Physical        100%        100%            NA         -Technology
education                                              -4 Methods
(n=2)
Family and      100%        100%            NA         -Technology
consumer                                               -3 Methods
science (n=1)
Second          100%        100%            NA         -Technology
languages/E                                            -2 Methods
SL (n=2)
Social studies   25%        100%            NA         -Technology
(n=4)                                                  3 Methods
Special           0%        100%            NA         -6 Methods
education
(n=6)

Content Area
(number of
participating   Course Observation
faculty)        Reports Completed   Number of students surveyed

Agriculture     --                   4
(n=2)
Early           -Assignment log     --
childhood       -32 Bi-weekly
(n=3)           reports
Elementary      -Assignment log     50
(n=7)           -5 Bi-weekly
                reports
English         -7 Bi-weekly        12
(n=3)           reports
Science         -Assignment log     19
(n=2)
Math            --                  13
(n=2)
Art             -Assignment log     23
(n=2)           -22 Bi-weekly
                reports
Music           -Assignment log     --
(n=3)           -5 Bi-weekly
                reports
Physical        -Assignment log     13
education       -4 Bi-weekly
(n=2)           reports
Family and      -Assignment log     19
consumer        -15 Bi-weekly
science (n=1)   reports
Second          -Assignment log     17
languages/E     -10 Bi-weekly
SL (n=2)        reports
Social studies  -Assignment log     26
(n=4)           -6 Bi-weekly
                reports
Special         -Assignment log     --
education       -11 Bi-weekly
(n=6)           reports

Table 2 Educational Technology Integration and Implementation Principles
(eTIPs): Conditions that Predict the Effective Use of Technology

Classroom-level eTIPs                School-level eTIPs

eTIP 1. Learning outcomes drive the  eTIP 4. Ready access to supported
selection of technology              technology is provided
eTIP 2. Technology use provides      eTIP 5. Professional development is
added value to teaching and          targeted at successful technology
learning                             integration
eTIP 3. Technology assists in the    eTIP 6. Professional community
assessment of the learning outcomes  supports technology integration and
                                     implementation