No one way: working models for teachers' professional development.

This study investigates the role of professional development in the implementation of computer technologies in schools across Canada and elsewhere. Three examples of professional development in Canada are examined, each functioning at a different administrative level (faculty of education, school-district and school-based), and each employing a different strategy or set of tactics for professional development. The programs are described in general terms, elucidating the methods and practices which support and hinder teachers in their technological development. Teachers' and administrators' own stated preferences for "what works" and "what doesn't work" are examined as they attempt to make more and/or better use of computers in their classes and schools. The data collection methods that were used in this study were documentary research, onsite visits, workshop observations, and semi-structured interviews with teachers, project developers and administrators. A common range of issues encountered when teachers pa rticipate in large- and small-scale professional development programs was identified, and certain key elements that should be considered when designing and implementing professional development programs for teachers are suggested.

**********

This study examines an often over-looked aspect of the implementation of computer technologies in schools across Canada and elsewhere: it seeks to identify, describe, and clarify examples of teacher professional development from the standpoint of its participants--namely, teachers and their administrators.

As the number of computers accessible to students and teachers in classrooms and labs has increased, especially in the last 10 years, there has been a corresponding emphasis on "integrating technology across the curriculum." Teachers' effective use of computers in their classrooms, however, remains an elusive goal. Researchers have identified numerous barriers to teachers' use of computers in their classes, such as limited equipment, inadequate skills, minimal support, time constraints, and the teachers' own lack of interest or knowledge about computers (Bryson & de Castell, 1998; Berg, Benz, Lasley, & Raisch, 1998; Clark, 2000; Ertmer, Addison, Lane, Ross, & Woods, 1998; Hadley & Sheingold, 1993; Laferriere, Breuleux, Baker, & Fitzsimons, 1999; Macmillan, Liu & Timmons, 1997; National Center for Educational Statistics [NCES], 1999; Schrum, 1994, 1997, 1999).

Rightly or wrongly, teachers have come "under fire" as insufficiently

skilled to make use of promising new technologies. In the early stage of computer adoption in the classroom we have too often faced the spectacle of enormous resources being dedicated to hardware and software while neglecting the human part of the equation--teacher support and development.

Governments, faculties of education, school districts, schools, communities, and individuals have belatedly come to understand the need to give teachers access to training and development in required information technology skills. In British Columbia, for example, in 2001, the Ministry of Education earmarked $1.6 million for professional development in the integration of technology, into classroom instruction for 1,000 teachers of Grades 6-9. While programs for providing professional development have varied widely and have been examined in detail in a number of US based studies (see, more recently, Hoffman & Thompson, 2000; NCES, 1999; Sorg & Russell, 2000; Schrum, 1999; Swain, 2000; Walbert, 2000) and a Canada-wide study (Laferriere, Breuleux, Baker & Fitzsimons, 1999) this work focuses on three examples of professional development in Canada, each functioning at a different administrative level (faculty of education, school-district, and school-based), and each employing a different strategy or set of tactic s for professional development. These programs are then described in general terms, elucidating the methods and practices which support and hinder teachers in their professional technological development. The concluding focus of the work described here is on the diversity of teachers' and administrators' own stated preferences for "what works" and "what doesn't work," as they attempt to make more and/or better use of computers m their classes and schools.

Teachers and administrators respond to and speak differently about the programs in which they are involved. This article attempts to clarify the disjunctures between what, from their particular subject positions, teachers and administrators identify as salient and relevant professional development, and what the professional development program itself purports to accomplish. Administrators and teachers have divergent perspectives on these issues which are delimited both by their individual subject positions in relation to technology and by their positions within the institutional structure of schooling. These institutional structures, in many ways, demand that persons within the school take up particular speaking positions in relation to it, and although not explored in depth in this study, it should be emphasized that this is certainly an important (and often crucial) interpretive lens through which to critically examine issues in professional development for practicing teachers (Bryson & de Castell, 1998).

METHODS

The work reported on here was part of a larger study, conducted over two years, in which a team of researchers visited 30 schools and 18 school districts in five Canadian provinces. We interviewed teachers, technical support staff, and administrators to document the difficulties, questions, and possibilities they encountered making use of computer technologies in the classroom. (1) This research was intended to produce a series of detailed case studies that would examine the implementation and integration of computer technologies in Canadian classrooms, and its focus is on the human, rather than technical, dimensions of this new social environment. To better understand and then show how teachers and their administrators were attempting to come to terms with top-down, provincial, and district mandates to make more and better use of computer technologies in teaching and learning was important.

Several methods were employed for gathering data for this work: documentary research, onsite visits, workshop observations, and semi-structured interviews with teachers, project developers, and administrators. Through these techniques, a common range of issues encountered when teachers' participate in large- and small-scale professional development programs was identified.

The methodology for reporting the examples in the form of a set of short case studies developed here was based on earlier work on classroom uses of technology (Jenson, 1999). That earlier research was facilitated by the construction of mini-narratives or "vignettes" which could capture and represent in a "snap shot" kind of way, the wide variety of approaches which teachers took for dealing with the problems and possibilities of integrating technology in classrooms. This approach elucidated not only the array of strategies and tactics teachers employ as they try to cope with enormous internal and external demands to make use of new technologies but also made it possible to compare and contrast their approaches in ways which gave a fuller, more accurate, everyday accounting of whether and how teachers took up and made classroom use of new technologies for education.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR PRACTICING TEACHERS

A University-Based Program

The Teaching and Learning in an Information Technology Environment (TLITE) is a two-year post-baccalaureate program offered by Open School in collaboration with Simon Fraser University (SFU) in British Columbia. Open School is a division of the Open Learning Agency, which provides programs (at a distance or in classrooms using print, television and Internet sources) geared toward the K-12 curriculum for students and teachers.

TLITE is a self-directed, collaborative-based program designed specifically to aid teachers in using technology effectively in their classrooms. Over the two years, teachers meet face-to-face and online with peer mentors, as well as occasionally with university-based mentors (instructors from the faculty of education) to design their courses of study, learn new skills, develop projects, and for general accountability. They also meet as a large group for two weeks (usually in the summer) with their school-based mentors for collaborative skill building and minimal pedagogical and theoretical studies.

TLITE is an excellent example of a scaffolded, peer-supported program in which teachers explore and learn to use technology, setting goals for technology applications in their classrooms based on their own subject interests. It makes use of both face-to-face and online instruction and support. In the next section, the TLITE program is described from the perspective of two teachers with very different levels of teaching experience, who imagine widely variant uses of computers in their classrooms.

Teachers' Perspectives

At the time of the study, Sue and Terry were both teachers in an inner-city elementary school in British Columbia's Lower Mainland region, and were taking the TLITE course. Each was interviewed mid-way through their program and again near its end. Sue had been a teacher for 22 years at a number of elementary grade levels, and was currently teaching English as a Second Language to multiple grades. Her use of computers before taking the course was "quite limited." Over the years, Sue had taken numerous district workshops, but she found it difficult to apply what she had learned to her own classroom practices (a recurrent complaint about workshop-based programs), usually because her school's software differed from those used in the workshops or because she had forgotten key elements from the workshop, which left her unable to complete the task on her own.

Terry had been teaching just two years (a Grade-2 class). She had two Mac Classics in her room (which she said "broke down" constantly) and a "very old" computer at home that she used for word processing. She felt that she had not had much opportunity in her recently completed teacher training to think about how she might use computers in her classes; the TLITE program was her first formal computer training.

Sue and Terry's reasons for taking the course were quite similar: they both said that the increase in pay appealed to them (taking the program counts as ongoing education credit for pay purposes), as well as the opportunities to increase their computer skills and to consider how best to make use of those skills in their classrooms. Not surprisingly, Sue and Terry's interests, goals, and needs from the course differed widely. For Sue, the most important aspect of the TLITE program was that she had access to various kinds of computer help in her self-specified interest area: there were workshops, one-on-one tutorials, demonstrations, hands-on group work, and ongoing support online from her mentor. Also of significance to her was that the help she received was given by other teachers who were in the program with her and who didn't talk "over her head" with technical jargon, but who would patiently go through the steps and give her enough time to take notes.

One of the biggest benefits of the program for Sue was the way in which methods of collaborating with other computer users was modeled. For example, after she started TLITE, the school librarian approached her with questions on using the Internet. Sue began teaching her what she had learned and, as she had done in the program, began strategizing with the librarian about how to help students do research on the Internet, working with her to develop ideas for different Internet-based projects that classes throughout the school could perform.

Terry's approach to the TLITE program was somewhat different from Sue's--she did not find the peer support network, the group work, or the workshops consistently useful, preferring instead to "work on her own" or to ask for help from people around her. For Terry, one of the best things about the TLITE project was that it made her independent and more confident as she learned to troubleshoot her way through problems--and her skill-level on computers increased so that more often than not she could figure out a way to fix a computer rather than to simply "shut down the computer and restart it and see if that helps."

Both women indicated that they were now using computers more often with their classes and in more meaningful ways, and their colleagues at school now called on them for advice and support. Unlike traditional workshops offered by the district, which offered no follow-up, TLITE offered teachers the opportunity to experiment with using computers and to be held accountable for their own learning through the completion of projects and on-going interaction with a program mentor. They each agreed that the program's greatest strength was in its "focus on the teaching, not the technology;" an approach that presents an answer to the question of "whether or not you want a good teacher with a piece of chalk and a chalkboard or a bad teacher with a Pentium."

In the district where Terry and Sue work, TLITE has been an attractive alternative among teachers who are seeking technology skills. As an administrator, the district superintendent stated that the program was an extremely cost-effective solution given that teachers each paid for the training (although they received salary increases upon completion), and because the "training" occurred after school, on weekends, and during the summer so that teachers were not taken away from their classes. Both the superintendent and the district technology support administrator reported that the program had resulted in almost half of their elementary school teachers becoming more skilled using computers, most of whom (they commented) were women.

What is most notable in Sue and Terry's experience of this professional development program is the variety of instruction and mentorship opportunities they were offered--face-to-face, online, and in large and small groups--and the individualized aspects of the program where each was able to choose her own interest area. However, while TLITE promises that its graduates improve their "technology skills," this does not necessarily mean that they are especially skilled in classroom uses of computers. For Sue, the greatest benefit of the program was that it enabled her to "get comfortable" using computers. With her students, Sue ended up simply using current ESL software and her printer for printing students' written work. While Terry acknowledged that her own use of computers had increased at home, she said that she had found it difficult to further her classroom applications. She had tried a computer-based drawing project, but she felt that it took up too much time and that the students could have more easily do ne the drawings with paper and pencils.

These very real differences--between Sue and Terry's actual uses of computers and the expected "outcomes" of the program--are too often overlooked in research and reporting on professional development. In this case (and those which follow) such an examination is crucial as it clarifies the difference between the course's purported "outcomes" and its participants' "uptake" of those outcomes in their daily practices.

A School District Example

Many school districts have developed, funded, and implemented professional development in Instructional Technology (IT). In the summer of 2000, one Ontario school district's "leading" school in technology hosted 60 teachers and principals from five schools at a four-day conference on technology in the classroom. None of the participants were paid to attend. The teachers from the host school (these demonstrator-teachers were paid $100 to be there for the four days) presented most of the education-related content and showcased their technical skills and applications at the morning workshops. In the afternoons, two technicians from the district offices gave hands-on workshops for conference participants, while the teachers presenting in the conference offered supporting help. While nearly all of the workshop participants were women, all of the technical instruction came from male teachers or technicians. Although none of the teachers we spoke to commented on this stereotypical distribution of expertise, one of t he district technicians acknowledged that he felt he was "talking over the heads" of many of the teachers and that he felt "ineffective" communicating with them as he didn't know "teacher talk."

The four-day workshop was followed by additional workshops, site visits to the host school, and online mentoring throughout the year. All schools participating in the program received additional funding for computer and software purchases, and teachers received four additional days in the year of release time to plan together and/or meet with the mentoring school's teachers.

The expectation of the conference organizers was that the teachers would create a single instructional unit that made use of computers and that would be implemented in their classes during the school year. Participants were given time over the four days to plan their instructional unit in groups and were encouraged to work in the same groups in the postconference workshops. The program culminated at the end of the school year with each group making a presentation to all participants demonstrating the outcomes of using the unit of study they had designed for their classes.

Searching for a "Solution"

We attended the four-day workshop, follow-up workshops and meetings, and met with teachers and principals who participated in the workshop in their own schools. During the course of these interviews, similar issues and themes emerged which varied less by subject and more by individual conditions and contexts. The viewpoints we describe here are representative of a range of understandings and concerns that we encountered in this study.

All of the principals who participated in the workshop were requested to attend by the superintendent of the district, and, in turn, they approached their vice-principals, technical support teachers, librarians, and other teachers in their school, asking them to participate. Some of the teachers refused the "invitation" on the grounds that they did not want to do any unpaid extra-curricular work, but most teachers agreed to attend.

All of the principals participated in the conference by attending the various workshops and planning sessions. One session, in particular, provided an opportunity for principals to talk among themselves about technology-related issues in their schools. During this discussion, most of the principals agreed that the majority of their teachers had little or no familiarity with computers, and that this conference was at least making a few teachers more "comfortable." Because a majority of school computers were sitting unused by most students, many principals also discussed the ways they had each reconfigured the location of computers in their schools: some had chosen to move individual computers out of classrooms and into the library where teachers could use them concurrently for projects with their classes; others felt that computers could be better used by dismantling portions of their labs in order to move more computers into classrooms.

Following the conference, the principals we spoke to observed, in general, that the teachers who attended the conference had started to make more use of computers in their classes (if only for small, short projects), but that their enthusiasm and knowledge had not yet been shared with other teachers. Contrary to research findings, (Watson, 1998) and the practical experience of teachers in their schools, most principles continued to believe that teachers who do integrate technology can cause a "ripple effect" in the school, whereby other teachers in the school become curious about using computers and interested students become more "enthusiastic." Rather than imposing technology use requirements on teachers, these administrators believed that the "train the trainer" model was ultimately more effective "inspire, not require" teachers to integrate technology into their classroom practices--an approach that all noted as being difficult to sustain once its leader is gone. They also agreed that neither incentives n or a mentoring approach is as important as a teacher's own interest in learning about new applications and uses of IT.

The principals we spoke to felt that most of the teachers in their schools who participated in the conference were now more actively working to implement technology in their classrooms. The greatest issues facing these teachers involved the question of how to fit computers into the space and routine of the classroom. For the principals and the teachers, the workshops in the conference "gave teachers good ideas" (though it did not always follow-up with practical skill-based instruction) and provided opportunities for them to do planning together to accomplish at least one computer-based class project in the coming school year. These elements also helped teachers to overcome feelings of incompetence that principals reported as being significant among most teachers as well as themselves.

The conference combined workshop and skills oriented professional development with teachers' own subject-related interests for using technology with their students. It provided support for teachers throughout the school year, both online and face-to-face. Even more uniquely, it mentored and supported the school principals involved in the project as they attempted more fully to commit their staff to technology-use.

As with so many professional development initiatives, there were two primary short-comings: (a) the conference took place at the board office on software which many teachers did not have available in their schools; (b) there was little practical connection between the skill-based training teachers received and the project-based lesson plans they were attempting to create for use with their students.

In interviews conducted two months following the four-day workshop, and after two follow-up sessions had been completed, we spoke to approximately one quarter of the teachers who had attended. They said they found the workshops valuable as a "showcase" of what they could do with their classes, but that most of what they had learned, in terms of skills, they could not remember well enough to incorporate it into a classroom activity. This was partly a function of not having enough time during the day to practice, and also (for some of them) a result of their school not having the software that they had learned on in the conference. When asked if they used computers more frequently with their classes following the workshops, all of the teachers indicated that they had future intentions of using computers more, but that thus far, they had not used the machines any more or less than they normally did. The single exception was a teacher who had been appointed the "network expert" in her school and who, as a result, was receiving weekly networking tutorials from three grade five boys and had teamed up with another teacher for a class project using a paint program.

There was an inherent contradiction between what the teachers expressed as having accomplished, which was little or no additional use of computers, and their principals' perceptions of those teachers as knowledgeable and active users of computers with their classes. This contradiction was also prevalent in the follow-up workshops which began with the presumption that all the teachers were "continuing their work" when few of them had even looked at their unit of instruction since the summer institute. Because the teachers were expected to present a "unit of study" in which their classes had made use of computers at the end of the project, a few of the teachers expressed anxiety over the possibility of having "nothing" to present. Significantly, however, these feelings were repeatedly placated through consistent teacher reports, which were presented at the institute, of technology integration taking at least three years, thus justifying the reluctance of the remaining teachers to use computers with their studen ts

A School-Based Example: Flexibility and Constraints 

One individual working within a school, with the support of a principal, can do much to aid his/her colleagues in their use of computers with their students. Jane, a teacher at an elementary school in British Columbia provided technology-related assistance in her school, giving teachers access to professional development and support in their use of computers. She offered, for example, skills-based, one-on-one help before and after school and during lunch upon the request of other teachers, and she assisted them in planning the use of computers for different aspects of the class projects they were each working on. She also provided hands-on help for teachers for the first three or four times they used the computers for their class projects, working with them side-by-side with their class. Jane was able to provide "just-in-time," individualized support for teachers in her school more easily because her principal arranged for her to take two hours of "release time" from teaching per day.

Jane began helping other teachers in her school with their uses of computers because she had been dissatisfied with district workshops. Largely self-taught, Jane admits to having attended a number of district workshops over the years, but generally found them "uninteresting" and unrelated to particular skills that she most wanted to learn. One of the only district workshops she felt was "worth the time and money," for example, was conducted by a high school computer science teacher who taught web page authoring using a particular piece of software that she was interested in learning to use. As other teachers in her school began to express a "willingness to learn," she approached the principal to suggest that she be scheduled a few hours out of class (per week) to offer assistance to them. The principal supported her in this, and as demand increased, he increased her hours of release time.

Jane also ran workshops after school, making them available to teachers from a number of neighboring schools. She was not paid to run the workshops, and the teachers who attended were not compensated by the district for their time. She found it increasingly frustrating, however, as only a few teachers usually attended and of those, most did not usually return to their classes to use computers with the students in any substantial or different ways saying that it was too difficult to go back and "try it" in their classes without more practice or without someone more knowledgeable being there to help. Jane felt that follow-up was crucial for teachers, and in the workshops she gave or that were put on for professional development days in the district, there was no follow-up. When she was able to work one-on-one with teachers outside of the workshops, she noticed that these teachers made substantially more use of computers in their classroom projects. Because teachers knew that she would help, they would come and talk with her about their ideas, she would make suggestions and then help them in their classes for the first few times they used a particular piece of software. After receiving such individualized support, Jane indicated that these teachers usually felt more "comfortable" with the process and less anxious over not "being the expert."

Jane felt that time and "personality" were her greatest limitations. Concerning her time, the principal was able to give Jane only a few hours a day to help other teachers in the school with their technology planning, projects, or classroom excursions--duties that could easily fill her whole workday. She further asserted that her status in the school as "computer expert" interfered with her being of help to some teachers, particularly those who were most "intimidated" by technology and, as a result, were "afraid" to talk to her. Jane found that many of these teachers who required the most assistance received the least amount of help in using computers with their classes. She believed that there needed to be some alternatives for these teachers to receive training and support in their implementation of technology in their classrooms; support that should come from within the school.

This method of peer-training and support works best when teachers and principals cooperate to take advantage of the expertise of one or more individuals who are capable of providing flexible, ongoing, onsite support. Success depends entirely, however, on the good will of the actors, including a supportive principal, and the issue of sustainability is of chief concern. Specifically, the departure of the key person (Jane, for instance) would bring this type of support program to a halt. Staffing and budget cuts often prohibit even a few hours a week of release-time for a position like Jane's, and such is particularly susceptible to changes in administration that result in a lack of emphasis on teachers' use of technology. The principal indicated that the assistance Jane was giving had also led to "union difficulties," since the district had technology support people who were contracted to do this work. Furthermore, there was some discrepancy between Jane's description of her support work and teachers' perceptio ns of that work, as one teacher felt that Jane spent far too much time "fixing machines" when she should be helping the teachers in the school "at least learn how to use the Internet better."

Both the principal and the teachers in the school more generally viewed the role which Jane had assumed as the "technology expert" as important to the ongoing use of computers in the school. For the principal, her work was significant and justifiable because it supported, albeit in a very limited way, the everyday, practical operation and maintenance of computers. While Jane's colleagues appreciated her technical expertise, they were more in tune with the importance of having someone whom they could go to for technical help and who also could make suggestions and recommendations about how best to make use of computers within their given curriculum/subject area.

CONCLUSIONS

As many districts and schools have discovered, professional development can be the Achilles' heel of technology integration. From the research we have described, we can suggest some key elements that should be considered when designing and implementing professional development programs for teachers. It is not unusual for these elements to be unproblematically placed in a bulleted list with little consideration of the shortcomings of each issue. Such a list also implies a kind of lock-step movement towards "success," without consideration of individual conditions and contexts. While we have provided our own requisite, more positive list, we have also generated a counter-list, which problematizes the more familiar features of the positive list. We hope that in the spaces between these two lists, we might better call attention to the illusory and often contradictory construction of "best practice" lists (Laferriere, et al., 1999), suggesting instead that what is wanting in the field of IT professional developmen t for teachers is a more accurate accounting of their material conditions which does not conveniently forget that what professional development most often means for teachers is their "volunteering" their own money and time before, after school, during lunch, on weekends, and over the summer.

As other researchers have also noted, in our observations of and interviews with teachers around IT professional development we found that there were some key areas which albeit general, are worth repeating here: incentives, both financial and time; the importance of play and discovery; flexibility which makes allowances for all levels of competency and interest; ongoing technological and curricular support, both online and in person; onsite work, where teachers learn on the computers they will be using with their students; an activity-based emphasis--teachers don't learn "stand alone" skills, but instead use computers in relation to the activities they design and will ask their students to do; and the importance of scalability and sustainability of any program.

What the previous list leaves out, because it is inherently general, are the contradictions which occur in any work of this kind. Instead, therefore, of ignoring those contradictions, we have created a "counter-list" which we developed out of the inconsistencies we noted between the self-reports of professional development participants and the program reports of its organizers. This list of inconsistencies includes: "self-motivation" as "volunteerism"--teachers attend and pay for their own training and "upgrading" of skills/knowledge; supporting innovation usually means supporting the one or two teachers who are already making use of technology, and does little to assist other teachers in the school; little or no recognition of "audience"--workshop facilitators often use technicist language that is not well understood by teachers; little or no acknowledgement that it is mostly female teachers who seek out and take IT professional development; self-display as a method of presentation--workshops which solely fo cus on demonstrating the technical knowledge of the presenter, who does little or nothing to advance the technical know-how of his/her audience; epistemological disparity--there is often a great difference between the proclamation of a certain knowledge or skills-base (by workshop and program organizers) and its "uptake" (actual implementation and use) by teachers.

Neither of these lists are, of course, exhaustive but each is illustrative of those elements that teachers felt made their professional development experience with computers either more or less "successful."

Professional development for teachers in the area of information technologies is an issue that cannot currently be easily ignored, nor can it be assumed that old models will work with new systems and technologies. In fact, some of the very characteristics of new technologies of computing and communication that make them so effective and challenging to use in the classroom also pose challenges and opportunities for teachers and their professional development. While this study could easily be said to provide directions for "best practices" in the area, what might be emphasized instead is that it is in the spaces between practical "to do" lists and their cautionary counterparts, where we might suggest the most productive and ultimately practical means for providing professional development for teachers which pays attention to the social and economic conditions and constraints of teachers and administrators, and begins to make more apparent the extent to which the uptake, and especially the actual outcomes of pro fessional development "opportunities" depend on factors quite outside institutional reach, factors such as individual interest and ability, time, and personal economic resources. Perhaps most important of all, though, is to take serious notice of the ways in which a professional ethic of collaboration, supportiveness and civility might actually be impeding progress in technology integration: in each of these cases, we can see significant divergences between what teacher participants are actually doing with computers in their classrooms following professional development instruction, and what participants, organizers and providers, and school principals and administrators are saying about the outcomes of such provision. Reassurances that "integration takes time," participants' sense of personal accomplishment and satisfaction with their professional development program, as well as administrators' assumptions that teachers increasing personal interest in and familiarity with computers automatically translates i nto their increased educational uses of technology in their classroom instruction, and that providing support in the form of teacher release time assures that teachers, especially novice users, are being given the kinds of help they themselves seek in order to make good educational uses of computers, each of these factors, while they serve to alleviate anxieties of teachers, administrators, program organizers, and providers, can in fact function to obscure from view how little effect such professional development provisions may be having on technology integration in everyday classroom practice.

While best practice lists certainly could be useful for signaling what, given the correct conditions, "can be done," the prevalence of these discourses has distracted from the more difficult work of carefully documenting local conditions and issues, both negative and positive, and developing solutions tailored to local needs. Best practice lists focus on just that, "best practices," and often ignore a whole range of possibilities, from work which fails to that which is exemplary. It is to these possibilities that research on professional development impact and evaluation should begin more thoroughly to be addressed.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper, co-authored by Brian Lewis, "Beyond the Workshop: Educational Policy in Situated Practice" appeared in Education Canada, 41(3), 28-31.

Thank you to Suzanne de Castell for her contribution of both thoughts and words to this piece.

Note

1. The study described in this article was conducted as part of a larger study funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) called "Schools for the Knowledge-Based Economy." Principle researchers on this study included Dr. Brian Lewis (Simon Fraser University), Dr. Richard Smith (Simon Fraser University), and Dr. Stan Shapson (York University).

References

Berg, S., Benz, C.R., Lasley II, T., & Raisch, D. (1998). Exemplary technology use in elementary classrooms. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 31(2), 111-123.

Bryson, M., & de Castell, S. (1998). Gender, new technologies, and the culture of primary schooling: Imagining teachers as luddites indeed. Journal of Policy Studies, 12(5), 542-67.

Clark, K. (2000). Urban middle school teachers' use of instructional technology. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 33(2), 178-95.

Ertmer, P., Addison, P., Lane, M., Ross, E., & Woods, D. (1998). Examining teachers' beliefs about the role of technology in the elementary classroom. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 31, 54-73.

Hadley, M., & Sheingold, K. (1993). Commonalties and distinctive patterns in teachers' integration of computers. American Journal of Education, 101. 261-315.

Hoffman, E., & Thompson, G. (2000). Putting the research to work: Professional development models from Michigan. Tech Trends, 44(2), 20-23.

Jenson, J. (1999). Girls ex machina: A school-based study of gender, culture and technology. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

Laferriere, T., Breuleux, A., Baker, P., & Fitzsimons, R. (1999). In-service teachers professional development models in the use of information and communication technologies. TeleLearning, Inc. [Online]. Available: http://www.tact.fse.ulaval.ca/ang/html/pdmodels.html

Macmillan, R., Liu, X., & Timmons, V. (1997). Teachers, computers and the Internet: The first stage of a community-initiated project for the integration of technology in the curriculum. The Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 63(4), 222-234.

National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) (1999). Teacher quality: A report on teacher preparation and qualifications of public school teachers. Washington, DC: Author.

Schrum, L. (1994). First steps into the Information age: Technology infusion in a teacher education program. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 10(4), 12-14.

Schrum, L. (1997). Rural telecommunication for educational professional development and instructional improvement: Two federally funded models. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 4(3/4), 247-62.

Schrum, L. (1999). Technology professional development for teachers. Educational Technology Research and Development, 47(4), 83-90.

Sorg, D., & Russell, J. (2000). A strategy for effective change in instructional behavior: Staff development that works. Educational Technology, 40(6), 46-48.

Swain, C. (2000). Predicting sunny skies: The improved forecast of K-12 technology integration in the state of Florida. Tech Trends, 44(2), 25-28.

Walbert, D. (2000). The LEARN NC model: Overcoming obstacles to technology integration. Tech Trends, 44(2), 15-17.

Watson, D. (1998). The reality behind the rhetoric of information technology policy for schools. Policy Options, 19(6), 71-75.