Principles of Technology Integration and Curriculum Development

Abstract

To better prepare pre-service candidates for teaching in the information age, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has defined National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) to guide technology integration into teacher education programs. Based on these standards, Brigham Young University (BYU) has implemented strategies for technology integration into their teacher education program by creating curriculum design teams composed of School of Education faculty, public school personnel, and instructional design and technology specialists. This paper describes basic principles that have led to the successful development of curriculum design teams for systemic reform in teacher education.     

Beyond the Classroom: A Framework for Growing School Capacity in a Digital Age

Abstract

Rapid technological advancements promise unprecedented educational opportunities to foster student-centered and personalized learning, yet many schools are underprepared, lacking comprehensive organizational strategies for technology enhanced learning. This study sought to provide a framework to guide K-12 school leaders to build and evaluate digital-age school capacity by identifying essential criteria for digital learning in schools, resulting in the development of the Digital Learning Implementation Framework for Education (D-LIFE). Geographically dispersed digital learning experts contributed to a six-round Delphi study gaining consensus on 148 essential criteria for school administrators and policymakers to appraise strategic evaluation of technology implementation. When compared to prominent frameworks, D-LIFE confirmed high-level alignment with ISTE Essential Conditions, providing a comprehensive evaluation framework for K–12 schooling not addressed in prominent standards or frameworks.     

Beyond a battery hen model?: a computer laboratory,micropolitics and educational change

This paper investigates what happened in one Australian primary school as part of the establishment, use and development of a computer laboratory over a period of two years. As part of a school renewal project, the computer laboratory was introduced as an ‘innovative’ way to improve the skills of teachers and children in information and communication technologies and to lead to curriculum change. However, the way in which the laboratory was conceptualised and used worked against achieving these goals. The micropolitics of educational change and an input–output understanding of computers meant that change remained structural rather than pedagogical or philosophical.     

Finding the Hook: Computer Science Education in Elementary Contexts

The purpose of this study was to investigate how elementary teachers with little knowledge of computer science (CS) and project-based learning (PBL) experienced integrating CS through PBL as a part of a standards-based elementary curriculum in Grades 3–5. The researchers used qualitative constant comparison methods on field notes and reflections to describe the teachers' participation in professional development to create CS-infused projects to be implemented with their students. Categories that emerged included standards integration, student autonomy, and challenges of infrastructure and time. The data are from the first 6 months of a 3-year, National Science Foundation-funded project. (Keywords: computer science, project-based learning, integration, elementary curriculum)     

The development of mathematical competence in Flemish preservice elementary school teachers

A large-scale longitudinal study was conducted in which the elementary mathematical knowledge and skills of a large group of Flemish preservice elementary school teachers from 15 different institutes was assessed by means of a paper-and-pencil test that was administered both at the beginning and at the end of their 3-year training. The 30-items test covered the new standards for mathematics in the elementary school curriculum in Flanders. The test was divided in six subsets differing in terms of the curricular subdomain and of the cognitive operations being addressed by the item. The results confirmed the frequently heard concern that at the beginning of their training preservice elementary school teachers have rather weak mathematical competencies. At the end of their 3-year training, the overall test performance had become substantially better, although there were still reasons to be seriously concerned about the readiness of some student teachers to teach mathematics to elementary school children. A number of more specific comparisons helped to identify the relative role of two different factors—selection and instruction—in student teachers’ gain from pretest to posttest. Besides documenting the development of elementary mathematical competence in preservice elementary school teachers, the study also resulted in an instrument for (self-) assessment of elementary school mathematical competence. This instrument is now being used in many institutes for elementary school teacher training in Flanders.     

CURRICULUM SEQUENCING AND THE ACQUISITION OF CLOCK-READING SKILLS AMONG CHINESE AND FLEMISH CHILDREN

The present study addresses the impact of the curriculum on primary school children’s acquisition of clock-reading knowledge from analog and digital clocks. Focusing on Chinese and Flemish children’s clock-reading knowledge, the study is about whether the differences in sequencing of learning and instruction opportunities—as defined by the curriculum—result in differences in accuracy and development of clock-reading knowledge. By means of (1) an in-depth qualitative analysis of the Chinese and Flemish mathematics curriculum standards and textbooks and (2) a quantitative analysis of 11,743 students’ accuracy in reading the time, the current study mirrors the differential impact of alternative curriculum designs for primary education. The results of the analyses reveal that Chinese children acquire clock-reading knowledge—for analog and digital clocks—2 years earlier than their Flemish peers, due to a 2-year earlier exposure. Discussing these results, it is argued that the Flemish curriculum tends to underestimate what children are capable of and that clock-reading within the Flemish primary mathematics curriculum builds on dated assumptions and research results. Building on these outcomes, it is argued that curriculum development should be the result of collaborative inquiry involving policy makers, researchers, and teachers.     

大学计算机基础课程教学方法探讨

计算机基础教育是一项面向现代化、面向未来的教育,随着信息技术在社会各个领域的飞速发展,社会对计算机应用能力的要求不断提高,给大学计算机基础课教学提出了更高的要求。新时期做好计算机基础课程教学、培养出高素质的应用型人才,是适应社会发展、加快我国信息化进程的需要。     

Reforming practice or modifying reforms?: Elementary teachers' response to the tools of reform

Understanding the interaction between internally constructed and externally imposed aspects of the teaching context may be the missing link between calls for school reform and teachers' interpretation and implementation of that reform. Although the context of the local school culture has a profound impact on teachers, there are other external forces that are specifically aimed at influencing teachers' pedagogical and curricular decisions. These externally imposed aspects of context include some of the existing tools of reform, such as national standards, mandated state core curricula, and related criterion‐referenced testing. However, little is known about how these reform tools impact teachers' thinking about science and science teaching or how teachers respond to such tools. This study examined the interactions between individual teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning science in elementary school and the tools of reform that are imposed upon them. Comparative case studies were conducted in which two elementary teachers' science instruction, teaching context, and related beliefs were examined, described, and analyzed. In this study, the teachers' fundamental beliefs about science and what it means to teach and learn science influenced their interpretations of the sometimes contradictory messages of reform as they are represented in the standards, mandated curriculum, and end‐of‐level tests. Suggestions about what these findings mean for needed aspects of teacher professional development are offered. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 396–423, 2007     

农林专科院校计算机教学面临的现状及其改进措施

随着中小学信息技术教育的开展,农村现代远程教育的深入,进入大学的新生计算机知识和水平也在逐年提高。目前,他们的计算机水平究竟达到什么程度?在中小学阶段开设过哪些信息技术课程?他们学习计算机知识的主要途径是什么?本文通过调查,进行了分析,并指出当前农林专科院校计算机教学改革所应采取的措施。     

关于高校计算机教育改革的思考

高校的计算机基础教学对非计算机专业学生计算机知识与能力的培养起到了重要作用。计算机基础教学课程丰富了学校基础课和选修课的教学内容。在目前大学教育中,对计算机基础教育应继续给予高度重视,并结合各专业课程的需求及人才培养的目标,不断完善计算机基础教学。通过深化教学改革,使课程设置更加合理、教学内容更加科学、教学模式更加有效。     

Bugs,butterflies, and spiders: Children's understandings about insects

This article explores elementary children's ideas about insects. The study involved 20 children from each grade level, kindergarten through fifth-grade, for a total of 120 children. The data collection procedure was designed to investigate what an insect means to children, through the use of three different tasks: draw and explain, interview about instances, and the formulation of a general rule. Considering children's responses to the three tasks, I found that their ideas about insects reflect understandings based on physical characteristics of size and shape, arthropod characteristics, insect characteristics, human-insect interactions, life habits of insects, feeding habits of insects, and means of locomotion. Children's understandings are juxtaposed to that of a scientific perspective, elucidating implications for curriculum development and instructional practice.     

Learning progressions from a sociocultural perspective: response to “co-constructing cultural landscapes for disciplinary learning in and out of school: the next generation science standards and learning progressions in action”

This article discusses a case for a different, socio-cultural way of looking at learning progressions as treated in the next generation science standards (NGSS) as described by Ralph Cordova and Phyllis Balcerzak’s paper “Co-constructing cultural landscapes for disciplinary learning in and out of school: the next generation science standards and learning progressions in action”. The paper is interesting for a number of reasons, and in this response I will identify different aspects of the paper and link the points made to my own research, and that of colleagues, as complementary perspectives. First, the way that the science curriculum is conceived as an expanding experience that moves from the classroom into the community, across subjects, and across time, links to theoretical positions on disciplinary literacies and notions of learning as apprenticeship into the discursive tools, or ‘habits of mind’ as the authors put it, that underpin disciplinary practice. Second, the formulation of progression through widening communities of practice is a strong feature of the paper, and shows how children take on the role of scientists through this expanding exposure. I will link this approach to some of our own work with school—community science partnerships, drawing on the construct of boundary crossing to tease out relations between school science and professional practice. Third, the demonstration of the expansion of the children’s view of what scientists do is well documented in the paper, illustrated by Figure 13 for instance. However I will, in this response, try to draw out and respond to what the paper is saying about the nature of progression; what the progression consists of, over what temporal or spatial dimensions it progresses, and how it can productively frame curriculum processes.     

Analysis of students' assessments in middle school curriculum materials: Aiming precisely at benchmarks and standards

Assessment influences every level of the education system and is one of the most crucial catalysts for reform in science curriculum and instruction. Teachers, administrators, and others who choose, assemble, or develop assessments face the difficulty of judging whether tasks are truly aligned with national or state standards and whether they are effective in revealing what students actually know. Project 2061 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science has developed and field‐tested a procedure for analyzing curriculum materials, including their assessments, in terms of how well they are likely to contribute to the attainment of benchmarks and standards. With respect to assessment in curriculum materials, this procedure evaluates whether this assessment has the potential to reveal whether students have attained specific ideas in benchmarks and standards and whether information gained from students' responses can be used to inform subsequent instruction. Using this procedure, Project 2061 had produced a database of analytical reports on nine widely used science middle school curriculum materials. The analysis of assessments included in these materials shows that whereas currently available materials devote significant sections in their instruction to ideas included in national standards documents, students are typically not assessed on these ideas. The analysis results described in the report point to strengths and limitations of these widely used assessments and identify a range of good and poor assessment tasks that can shed light on important characteristics of good assessment. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 889–910, 2002     

Communicate with curriculum

“What did you do in school today?” asks the eager, interested parent. “We played,” responds the child. Parents have a right to know what their children are doing when in a day care center, nursery school, or kindergarten, and teachers have the responsibility to communicate what happens during the day children spend in a center.     

Meaning and Money

This paper examines how the inclusion of everyday mathematics into classroom instruction can make mathematics more meaningful to students. The concept of mathematical meaningfulness is reviewed and then compared to the experiences of children learning about money at home and at school. The empirical study used interviews and observations to determine what activities Hawaiian children from preschool through second grade did with money at home, while shopping and during classroom lessons. The interview data are used to show what kinds of knowledge children derived from these experiences at different ages. This everyday knowledge is compared to what children were expected to learn about money in school. The data support the conclusion that certain kinds of differences between everyday and school mathematics can make the inclusion of everyday mathematical topics in classrooms problematic. The paper concludes with a discussion of how everyday mathematics can be more profitably included in the curriculum, with examples from several mathematics programs.     

All the Nines: Creativity in English Curricula in England in 1919, 1989 and 2019 as a Reflection of Britain’s Place in Europe

ABSTRACT

Just after the First World War the English Association published The Teaching of English in Schools. It argues that developing children’s ‘creative spirit’ is fundamental to maintaining peace in Europe. Seventy years later, the first National Curriculum promotes a creative, unitary English appropriate for ‘a European context’.

In contrast, today’s national curriculum contains no reference to the role of English in international relations; simultaneously, all references to creativity have disappeared.

As Britain struggles to cope with the fallout from Brexit, this paper – written from a hermeneutic perspective – discusses the correlation between how each of the three documents positions English in an international context and how they value creativity. Without wishing to over–simplify complex issues, it questions how to what extent a curriculum might echo or shape national politics. It calls for a new curriculum that embraces a creative, internationalist view of English to inspire communities of the future.     

基于"专业标准"的教师教育:澳大利亚的实践与启示

澳大利亚以＂教师专业标准＂为基础的教师教育实践,对我国教师教育具有重要的借鉴价值：建立和出台我国教师专业标准框架,为教师资格制度、教师培养与培训、教师管理与评价提供依据,奠定基础;研制中小学教师培养机构的资质标准和培养课程标准;建立教师培养的认证评估制度;对小学教师实行综合化培养;改革和完善我国教师资格证书制度;建立国家教师培训的指导性规范。     

The Media and Information: children's responses to the Gulf War

This paper analyses research that took place in a European country not involved with the Gulf War to explore the reactions of school children to the news dealing with that particular event. It sought to ascertain the kind of knowledge accumulated about a media event, what impact it has on the school curriculum and the relationship of such news events to levels of anxiety and areas of interest. The results showed the separation between children's knowledge of the news and the curriculum at school, the different styles of gathering information and the lack of detailed discussion about such events.     

An Investigation of How a Physics Professional Development Course Influenced the Teaching Practices of Five Elementary School Teachers

This paper reports the results of an investigation of how a professional development content course based on the Physics and Everyday Thinking (PET) curriculum affected the teaching practices of five case study elementary school teachers. The findings of this study highlight different ways that teachers use what they learn in content courses to teach science to elementary children. While some teachers transferred pedagogical practices along with the content, others transformed the content to be useful in already existing pedagogical frameworks, and still others show little or no evidence of transfer. The range of transfer is explained by considering how each teacher interacted with the learning context (the PET curriculum) and their initial ideas about teaching science.     

关于小学科学教材中生态文明教育的思考

生态文明教育包括生态文明知识、生态文明意识、生态文明行为、生态文明理念等多个方面。小学科学课程中的很多内容属于生态文明知识,有着对生态文明行为的要求,渗透着生态文明意识的培养,在技术与工程领域需要运用生态文明理念进行思考。在小学科学教材编写中,应从小学科学课程标准中梳理属于生态文明教育的学习目标,在教材框架中进行综合考虑,通过实践活动、拓展与应用、内容渗透等形式加以落实。