Labels DO Matter! A Critique of AECT’s Redefinition of the Field

AECT has recently (yet again!) redefined our field, reverting back to the use of the term educational technology. We believe this recent change is problematic for a number of reasons, but primarily because of the weak rationale offered for the change. This change affects how external audiences view our profession and is likely to confuse practitioners in corporate and higher education settings in particular. We offer a review of job postings, program titles, and listserv discussions to support our case. The labels we use to define ourselves are critically important - and we hope to see a stronger case made for changes for our foundational definitions in the future.     

从21世纪教育发展趋势看未来教师角色特征的变化

21世纪是一个社会急剧变动的时代.教育也将发生巨大变革.过去的教育,包括教育目的、内容、方法、手段、组织形式等诸多方面,将会逐渐演变为更加适应21世纪社会要求的新教育.因此,在教育活动中扮演重要角色的教师,也必将随之进行角色的转变.未来教师角色的变化主要表现在这样四个方面:在师生关系上,教师作为权威逐渐由外铄的权威转变为内生的权威;在教育教学过程中,由于教师由知识的传授者逐渐转变为学生发展的促进者;在教学组织过程中,教师作为纯粹管理者的角色日益淡化,教师的教育教学方法由简单逐渐变得复杂,教师逐渐成为能依据环境、对象、内容等的变化,即时性、创造性地展开教育教学活动的艺术家.对于教师自身,教师素质只有处于不断提高过程中,才能胜任未来教育教学的需要.所以说,21世纪的合格教师,是权威、促进者、艺术家、学习研究者的复合体.     

A theory-to-practice leadership learning arrangement in a university context

Higher education institutions are increasingly recognizing the importance of organizational change as they face complex challenges. Leadership learning has been identified as an important way of supporting change management. We describe a leadership learning arrangement that arose in the context of two of the authors needing to learn how to become effective university chairpersons of departments. This involved the other author, an expert in educational leadership as a theory broker, who brought theory to the learning arrangement and mediated it. We wish to show how the learning arrangement supports the theory-to-practice connection and personal authoring of leadership for all involved.     

Analyzing Educational Policies: A Learning Design Perspective

In this article we describe and illustrate an analytical perspective in which educational policies are viewed as designs for supporting learning. From the learning design perspective, a policy comprises 3 components that we term the what, how, and why of policy: the goals for the learning of members of the group targeted by the policy, the supports for their learning, and an often implicit rationale for why these supports might be effective. We unpack the how of policy by describing 4 types of support for learning: new positions, learning events, new organizational routines, and new tools. Based on our discussion of the rationale for each type of support we conjecture that policies that are effective in supporting consequential professional learning will involve some combination of new positions that provide expert guidance, ongoing intentional learning events in which tools are used to bridge to practice, carefully designed organizational routines carried out with a more knowledgeable other, and the use of new tools whose incorporation into practice is supported. We present an analysis of a policy that was central to an urban district's efforts to support middle school mathematics teachers' development of ambitious instructional practices. The data that we analyzed included audio-recorded interviews conducted with teachers, mathematics coaches, school leaders, and district leaders. The sample analysis illustrates that the learning design perspective is useful both when designing policies and when revising policies after implementation to make them more effective.     

THE CONCEPT OF FUNDAMENTAL EDUCATIONAL CHANGE

A bstract .  In this essay, Leonard Waks contributes to a reconceptualization of "fundamental educational change." By distinguishing sharply between educational change at the organizational and the institutional levels, Waks shows that the mechanisms of change at these two levels are entirely different. He then establishes, by means of a conceptual argument, that fundamental educational change takes place not at the organizational, but rather at the institutional level. Along the way Waks takes Larry Cuban's influential conceptual framework regarding educational change as both a starting point and target of appraisal.     

Educational reform in teacher preparation: Proposals,reactions, and implementation

The article by Benton and Hoyt provides data that creates an opportunity for a significant discussion concerning the role of educational psychologists in education reform. Education reform in teacher education has three identifiable stages. The first stage is the series of proposals that have been generated by a number of groups implying that education reform efforts will bring about positive change. The second component has been reactions or debates surrounding the proposals and significant changes proposed by national reports. Finally, there have been component parts of the proposals implemented in experimental ways in schools and colleges of education. Clearly, a segment of the educational psychology academic community has been involved in all three phases of education reform, and the need for maintaining a research posture and a demand for documentation of improvement is necessary from all educators—and in particular educational psychologists. The 1980s were the years for proposing and reacting. The years between now and the twenty-first century will be the time of implementation and evaluation of changes. The opportunity is present for active involvement of all interested educational psychologists. The article by Benton and Hoyt is a meaningful article for educational psychologists because it points out our differing opinions and provides some basis for us to understand our differences concerning specific issues in teacher education reform.     

The influence of direct executive managers on lecturers’ perceptions on new organizational aims in times of academic drift

During educational change, managers can contribute positively to the professional’s sense of coping ability. The question remains as to whether the managers of lecturers can also influence the perception of lecturers on newly formulated organizational aims. Recently, the changes in many European institutes of higher professional education (HPE) have been considerable. The innovationsathand include the Dutch HPE institutes changing from teaching-only institutes toward hybrid organizations for teaching and research. The role of lecturers is central in implementing research into HPE, especially into the educational programmes. Hence, lecturers’ view on the new organizational aims are crucial. Based on a quantitative design, lecturers’ perceptions on the new organizational aims are measured. As part of a structural equation model, these perceptions are related to how lecturers perceive their direct executives’ leadership style, directly as well as mediated by executive-imputed organizational structures as collaboration systems and decision-making processes. The results show that the direct influence of executives based on their leadership style is limited, while initiating lecturers’ participation in decision-making processes is an important influence on lecturers’ perceptions on new organizational aims. More empirical insight into leadership factors and organizational structures can enlarge the improvement of goal achievement during organizational change.     

我国教育信息化发展的三大趋势

经过二十多年的发展,我国教育信息化已进入一个较高的发展平台,同时也处于一个关键发展期,将呈现由点到面的发展趋势,具体体现在:(1)教育信息化将加速教育系统的体制变革;(2)教育信息化的推进作为创新扩散将以扩展型扩散为主要形式;(3)教育信息化将呈现出服务型业务特征.     

Levers for sustainable improvement of Spanish schools in challenging contexts

The need for innovation in the Spanish educational system has become more evident in the wake of the last PISA reports. To find our own way to achieve better schools we must take advantage of what schools that managed to sustain changes over time have learnt from such a process. This paper reports on findings from an inquiry that tried to shed light on the knowledge embedded in the practices of schools commended by external advisers as they had institutionalized a recognisable dynamic of changes. In order to meet this goal, five primary, four secondary and one special education school—most of them in challenging contexts—from two different regions in Spain were studied by means of ethnographic methodologies. The results described in this paper depict the main levers for improvement shared by these schools. Important support for change processes was found in the narratives deployed about the disadvantaged context surrounding the schools and the high value of teaching in these circumstances. On the other hand, the leadership that supported the change dynamics was clearly distributed and the leaders used diverse power sources in order to tackle changing contexts. Other key factors that apparently facilitated the sustainability of change were the priority given to supportive school climates; organizational cultures that encouraged teachers to take risks and essay new ways of teaching; and the practice of innovation by adopting an emergent, unplanned, free-flowing pattern. These findings are discussed in the light of common issues of the recent school improvement literature such as: sustainability, organizational knowledge and learning, communities of practice and building capacity to change.     

THE RELEVANCE AND CONSEQUENCES OF PISA SCIENCE IN A DANISH CONTEXT

This article reports a case study that described and analyzed the changes in the Danish school culture induced and encouraged by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results. The educational policy and reforms that were temporally connected with the publication of the PISA 2000 results are outlined and the related socioeconomic and sociopolitical influences are explicated. Furthermore, we investigated to what degree the PISA science assessment framework and test system were in accordance with the Danish educational goals in science in order to discuss the relevance of PISA as a catalyst for the educational actions taken. The results of our inquiry revealed areas of good correspondence and fundamental differences related to values underlying the Danish school system and PISA, respectively (e.g., Bildung orientation versus cognitive skills/competency orientation, different learning/assessment paradigms). We argue that such differences are crucial when considering curricular relevance, validity, and the use of PISA as an agent of change on the national level.     

Policy makers’ rhetoric of educational change: A critical analysis

Reforms in education often fail due to insufficient time to implement them, too few charismatic leaders, the influence of the preceding culture, scarce resources or an incapacity to comprehend the complexity of the education system. Most studies dealing with the cognitive aspects of educational change investigate the meaning of change through the lens of the educators and principals and there is not as much research available on the perception and interpretation of change by policy makers and the language they use to communicate messages about policy that affect sensemaking–sensegiving during the process of learning about the changes. Guided by the premise that the language of a reform movement is shaped by its ideology, this article illustrates how press releases of the Ministry of Education in Canton Sarajevo in Bosnia–Herzegovina reflect an exploitation-oriented dominant reform logic. The results of frequency analysis, hierarchical clustering and multidimensional scaling imply that MoE is driven by a top-down perspective to educational change, with a focus on the procedural, organizational and collaborational aspects of reforms that primarily alter the structure of the education system but not its internal substance. We end this paper by suggesting that educational system as complex adaptive system cannot be controlled, but effectively managed through distribution of control and creation of few attractors, benefiting from self-organization in the technical core and making change in the official top-down rhetoric.     

The paradoxical future of digital learning

What constitutes learning in the 21st century will be contested terrain as our society strives toward post-industrial forms of knowledge acquisition and production without having yet overcome the educational contradictions and failings of the industrial age. Educational reformers suggest that the advent of new technologies will radically transform what people learn, how they learn, and where they learn, yet studies of diverse learners’ use of new media cast doubt on the speed and extent of change. Drawing on recent empirical and theoretical work, this essay critically examines beliefs about the nature of digital learning and points to the role of social, culture, and economic factors in shaping and constraining educational transformation in the digital era. An erratum to this article can be found at     

The AECT Project: Modeling the Effective Use of Technology in Teacher Preparation

Conclusion The AECT Project builds on ISTE’s groundbreaking work in the development of technology standards for teachers. The Project adds specificity and has developed a comprehensive set of tools for pre-service teacher education. Teacher educators can use these tools to ensure that their graduates leave with the technology skills needed for their selected teaching specialty. The commitment and leadership demonstrated by the U.S. Department of Education in offering the Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers for Technology program has earned their leaders our respect. Through this program the AECT Project has been able to develop tools and can now offer them at no cost to institutions of higher education. The PT3 Program has galvanized educators across America, has helped to create important, ongoing collaborations, and has helped to instill an unprecedented mass consciousness valuing educational change. The partners in the AECT Project are proud to have this opportunity to contribute, in important ways, to technology integration in teacher education. We are honored to join with all of the other PT3 Projects from across the Nation in creating teaching and learning opportunities that will shape our educational systems in the 21st century. We welcome other teacher education institutions and professional associations as partners as we move ahead. For more information, please contact us through our Website athttp://aect.org/pt3, or send email to us ataect@psu.edu     

School innovation in district context: Comparing traditional public schools and charter schools

Market reforms in education are part of the educational policy landscape in many countries. Central to arguments for market reforms is the idea that competition and choice will spur changes in schools to be more innovative, which in turn will lead to better student outcomes. We define innovation in terms of a practice's relative prevalence in a local district context. A charter school is innovative in its use of a practice if the traditional public schools in its local school district are not using that practice. We explore factors based on arguments for charter schools that may affect a charter schools’ propensity toward innovation to explain variation in levels of innovation across charter schools. We find that, on the whole, charter schools do not fulfill their promise of innovation. Teacher tenure is the most notable exception. Parental involvement is the only characteristic of charter schools that significantly predicts variation in levels of organizational innovativeness.     

‘Development in reverse’? A longitudinal analysis of armed conflict,fragility and school enrolment

This paper presents a longitudinal analysis of cross-national data on armed conflict, state fragility, and enrolment in primary and secondary schooling. The study is motivated by questions raised in the 2012 Human Security Report, which challenges the widely held assumption that conflict is necessarily detrimental to educational outcomes. We use multilevel modelling techniques to determine how conflict and fragility relate to changes in enrolment. Our findings suggest that growth in enrolment is significantly lower in conflict-affected countries but that the effect is dependent upon countries' overall enrolment level. However, when we control for fragility, the effect of conflict is not significant, which is consistent with the Human Security Report's suggestion that fragility is an underlying cause of both conflict and poor educational outcomes. We conclude by discussing the relevance of our findings and challenges for future research on fragility and education.     

On Going (Way) Beyond One’s Data: A Proposal to Restrict Recommendations for Practice in Primary Educational Research Journals

To counteract what we see as a growing research-reporting concern, we propose the following editorial-policy change regarding the content of primary research articles in educational research journals: Contributors should restrict their discussion and conclusions to their data and not offer recommendations for educational practice nor speculate about the educational policy implications of their research. We believe that this change will be beneficial for maintaining a separation between evidence and opinion concerning the legitimate warrants of empirical research. We suggest viable accompaniments and alternatives to authors offering practical recommendations and policy speculations in primary-research journal articles. Among these is to rely on all sources of evidence, including systematic research syntheses based on the aggregated contribution of multiple research studies from different sources, with recommendations for practice tailored to specific situations so that both their validity and utility will be increased. It is hoped that our proposed policy change will initiate a conversation among researchers, editors, reviewers, and educational-policy experts with respect to the scope and purpose of primary research journal articles.     

高等教育管理的创新及产业化

泰罗、法约尔、韦伯等创立的西方古典组织理论模式保证了西方现代社会及其教育有序向前发展。我国的教育管理也将面临着一场深刻的革命，即由传统的、经验的、低效的管理模式向科学的、高效的管理模式转变。而教育产业化为这种模式的转变提供了一个支持系统。     

School effectiveness: new managerialism,quality and the Japanization of education

School effectiveness is a microtechnology of change. It is a relay device, which transfers macro policy into everyday processes and priorities in schools. It is part of the growing apparatus of performance evaluation. Change is brought about by a focus on the school as a site-based system to be managed. There has been corporate restructuring in response to the changing political economy of education. There are now new work regimes and radical changes in organizational cultures. Education, like other public services, is now characterized by a range of structural realignments, new relationships between purchasers and providers and new coalitions between management and politics. In this article, we will argue that the school effectiveness movement is an example of new managerialism in education. It is part of an ideological and technological process to industrialize educational productivity. That is to say, the emphasis on standards and standardization is evocative of production regimes drawn from industry. There is a belief that education, like other public services can be managed to ensure optimal outputs and zero defects in the educational product.