Technology Integration into Pre-service Teacher Training

Introduction

The efforts to restructure America’s schools for the demands of a knowledge based economy and to deal with the impact of globalization on America’s workforce have been redefining the mission of K-12 education and their teacher preparation programs (Partnership for 21^st Century Skills, 2004). Many standards from professional organizations (e.g., INTASC, NCATE, NCTAF and NCLB) point to the importance of university faculty and quality teacher education programs in supporting the needs of pre-service teachers, particularly through pedagogies that better integrate technology into education. Within university teacher training programs, the term pre-service teacher is commonly used to distinguish university students preparing to be teachers from the K-12 students they will ultimately serve. The improvement of technology integration in K-12 instruction has become a “national imperative” in the United States (Brown & Warschauer, 2006). Unfortunately, current professional development involving technology is inadequate to address the needs of 21st century teachers (Ansell & Park, 2003; Lawless & Pellegrino, 2007). Even within university settings where more technology is provided than K-12 institutions, many university professors often prefer antiquated means of developing lessons (Cuban, 2001; Fabry & Higgs, 1997; West & Graham, 2007).

Within the last decade, approximately 2.2 million teachers entered the teaching profession (Riley, 1998). However, limited exposure to technology and inadequate pedagogical integration continue to be reported as obstacles by classroom teachers (Ansell & Park, 2003; Lawless & Pelligrino, 2007; Smith & Robinson, 2003). Since the goals of teacher preparation include increasing the comfort of pre-service teachers with pedagogical resources such as technology, instruction in technology is particularly important and needs to be included in higher education. Increased integration of technology in K-12 teaching is more likely to occur when prospective teachers are exposed to a variety of computer uses in the majority of their undergraduate courses (Wheatley, 2003) and integration of technology into their academic coursework (Dexter, Doering, & Riedel, 2006).

Unfortunately, the term “technology integration” has been used without a clear, standard definition (Bebell, Russell, & O’Dwyer, 2004; Belland, 2009; Hew & Brush, 2007). Many educators have used the term to differentiate between the uses of technology to make learning more effective and the use of technology to help students solve problems (Belland, 2009). Within this paper, the term is used to reference the use of technological tools in the classroom with an understanding of its relationship to pedagogy. That is, technology integration is part of the pedagogical process and instructional delivery of a set curriculum; technology does not cause learning, rather learning occurs due to effective teachers (Palloff & Pratt, 2000).