3.0: Teaching: Prepare and Connect

Professional educators will be supported individually and in teams by technology that connects them to data, content, resources, expertise, and learning experiences that enable and inspire more effective teaching for all learners.

Other Information:

Teaching today is practiced mostly in isolation. Many educators work alone, with little interaction with professional colleagues or experts in the outside world. Professional development typically is provided in short, fragmented, and episodic workshops that offer little opportunity to integrate learning into practice. A classroom educator’s primary job is understood to be covering the assigned content and ensuring that students test well. Many educators do not have the information, the time, or the incentives to continuously improve their professional practice from year to year. Not surprisingly, half of freshly minted teachers leave the profession within the first five years (Ingersoll and Smith 2003). These conditions exist because our education system and the institutions that prepare educators often fail to give educators the tools to do their job well. Our education system holds educators responsible for student achievement but does support them with the latest technology the way professionals in other fields are supported. Although some preservice programs are using technology in innovative ways (Gomez et al. 2008), widespread agreement exists that teachers by and large are not well prepared to use technology in their practice (Kay 2006). As a result, the technology of everyday life has moved well beyond what educators are taught to and regularly use to support student learning. Meanwhile, policymakers and education leaders point to a lack of effective teaching and the need for greater accountability among teachers as the key to fixing education in America. Although the expectation of effective teaching and accountability for professional educators is a critical component of transforming our education system, we also need to recognize that we must strengthen and elevate the teaching profession. This is necessary to attract and retain the most effective educators and achieve the learning outcomes we seek for all learners. Just as leveraging technology can help us improve learning and assessment, technology can help us better prepare effective educators and increase their competencies throughout their careers while building the capacity of our education system to deliver effective teaching. Technology can do this by enabling a shift to a new model of connected teaching.

Stakeholder(s):

• Professional Educators

Objective(s):

3.1: Content, Resources, and Tools

3.2: Social Networking

3.3: Online Access

3.4: Professional Learning

3.5: Teaching Force

Content