Search results

This paper aims to postulate an emerging unified cultural‐convergence framework to converge the delivery of instructional technology and intercultural education (ICE) that extends beyond web‐learning technologies to inculcate inclusive pedagogy in teacher education.

The paper explores the literature and a tech‐infused multicultural learning community to identify what a unified cultural‐convergence theory might consist of and how it could be shaped to align instructional technology and critical ICE in teacher education. Four questions are asked: What key learning do these two disciplines make available to teachers and educators that are essential for today's highly diverse, complex classrooms? What can we draw from a convergence of multiculturalism and global education that will help us derive a new theoretical understanding of a unified cultural‐convergence theory to connect IT and ICE education? What knowledge, skills and dispositions comprise three essential components of this literature synthesis? How can this new unified cultural‐convergence theory and relevant components be taught, practiced, and measured? The paper contains several tables, figures and over 50 sources in the research bibliography that were selected from a review and analysis of 100 documents.

The paper discovered instructional technology and intercultural educators employed web‐learning technologies in very similar ways to position critical ICE strategies into programs or courses in teacher education. The learning technologies models that were attempting to support multicultural education (MCE)/ICE and IT education included corporate, universities, research centers, schools, and government partners. Reportedly, according to the research, teacher educators in IT education do not employ instructional technology practices that differ from practices that are needed or valued by MCE educators to merge critical intercultural structures into teacher education through web‐learning technologies. This was good news as the researcher moves toward a recommendation for a research agenda that could be shared by educators from the two groups.

The paper is limited to literature reviews, reports, and evaluation documents.

The paper offers implications for curriculum development in educational technology and MCE using ICTs

The purpose of this paper is to explore a framework for considering moral K‐12 instructional technology. It seeks to examine the extent that development of technology policies consider and respect affected parties' interests.

Interpreting morality as an economic concept that involves a reconciliation of societal members' diverse needs and wants, the authors describe moral instruction technology use as a negotiation of administrative, teaching and learning needs along five continua defined by Mason, in 1986 and Peace and Hartzel in 2002: property, freedom of speech, privacy, accessibility, and accountability. The paper commences with observations concerning research into technology‐based empowerment and associated ethical issues. It then describes the five continua of ethical instructional technology challenges within the contexts of K‐12 settings.

The authors encourage research through observational and survey studies to clarify understandings of these continua. Although presented separately, they acknowledge that these dimensions overlap and interact to comprise a mesh of moral dilemmas. If morality represents a concept designed to balance societal powers, then implementation of moral instructional technology processes respects the views of all educators. The authors argue that how educators interpret technology's placements along these moral continua have important consequences for practice. They encourage research that interprets these relationships and how they may best support classroom processes.

The paper presents an exploratory framework, offering insights into ethical issues in instructional technology.

While there is significant existing literature on learner analysis in instructional design and separately in cultural issues in education, these two areas are rarely examined in tandem. This paper aims to bring these two areas together.

This research uses qualitative methods within the context of a case study. A dual role is played by the author as instructor‐researcher in gathering and analyzing the data.

One area of success in the course is that it served to increase the coverage of the area of instructional design in addition to expanding the literature base in this area of study that has only recently begun to receive attention.

One limitation of the course is that while it is designed to provide a blended mix of learning opportunities, the instructional design field is quite large and it is impossible to explore all relevant topics.

A challenge of the course is that socio‐cultural concepts are broad and it is recognized that a single course is not enough to effectively cover all relevant issues. Careful course design is therefore important.

Feedback from this study can serve as a resource for decision making about existing and additional courses, and specific content that could be incorporated into similar courses.

This chapter discusses a bottom-up design strategy to support the principles of Universal Design and Universal Design for Learning adapted for online course development. The concept of Universal Design demands a holistic, bottom-up instructional design model for online course development that integrates technology, accessibility, recent instructional and learning theories, and a participatory postmodern worldview. This study is intended for faculty, instructional designers, administrators, assistive technology staff, and Web multimedia software vendors associated with higher education. The research assists these target audiences to design and develop online courses that are accessible without special adaptation or modification. The components of Universal Design for online learning support newer emergent approaches to instructional design, various programming solutions used in the software engineering field for efficiency, Universal Design for Learning, and legal guidelines associated with accessibility.

The purpose of this study is to explore the current usage and acceptance of classroom technologies by secondary math/science education teachers in one community.

Forty‐seven secondary education math and science teachers in one American city responded to a survey about their use and perceptions of technology in their lives and classrooms.

Results indicate teachers use technology more for personal instructional reasons, such as class preparation, than for interactions with their students whether inside the classroom or outside the classroom. Primary factors inhibiting the use of technology relate to time, training, and preparation. Teachers can see the benefit of using technology to promote students’ learning experience. However, teachers are neutral about technology being advantageous for improving in‐class activities.

A significant connection between teachers’ technology acceptance and usage is presented.

E-learning programs exist in a wide variety of formats. Without a framework for distinguishing between different e-learning programs, it is a challenge for researchers to compare their effectiveness or identify characteristics of e-learning that contribute to learning effectiveness. Based on general theories of learning, we develop a typology that compares e-learning programs in terms of the nature of the learning interactions they provide for learners in three dimensions: degree of interaction, learner control of interactions, and informational value of interactions. The typology dimensions apply to learner–instructor, learner–learner, and learner–instructional material interactions. We also discuss important theoretical implications of the typology. First, we show the utility of the typology for comparing the effectiveness of different e-learning programs. Second, we apply the typology dimensions to develop a theoretical framework for e-learning research that provides a foundation for examining factors that influence learning effectiveness in an e-learning program. The framework identifies e-learning program characteristics, learner characteristics, and contextual factors that impact learning effectiveness in different e-learning environments. It also shows how the typology dimensions align with learning goals to influence learning effectiveness.

The authors tested the efficacy of a team-based instructional leadership intervention designed to increase middle school mathematics and science teachers' use of educational technologies for multiple representations of content to foster students' conceptual understandings. Each school's leadership team comprised an administrator, a technology instructional specialist role, and a mathematics and a science teacher leader.

The authors tested the intervention in a quasi-experimental design with five treatment and five matched comparison schools. Participants included 48 leadership team members and 100 grade 6–8 teachers and their students. The authors analyzed data using two-level, nested multiple regressions to determine the effect of treatment on leaders' practices; leaders' practices on teachers' learning and integration; and teachers' learning and integration on students' learning. Leaders and teachers completed monthly self-reports of practices; students completed pre- and post-tests of knowledge in science and math.

Significant treatment effects at the leader, teacher and student levels establish the efficacy of this team-based approach to school leadership of an educational technology integration innovation. Leaders at treatment schools participated in a significantly higher total frequency and a wider variety of leadership activities, with large effect sizes. Teachers participated in a significantly wider variety of learning modes focused on technology integration and integrated technology significantly more frequently, with a wider variety of technologies, all with moderate effect sizes. Students in treatment schools significantly outperformed students in comparison schools in terms of science achievement but not in mathematics.

The overall sample size is small and the approach to participant recruitment did not allow for randomized assignment to the treatment condition. The authors tested the influence of treatment on leader practices, on teacher practices, and on student achievement. Future work is needed to identify the core components of treatment that influence practice and investigate the causal relationships between specific leaders' practices, teacher practices and student achievement.

This study establishes the efficacy of a replicable approach to developing team-based instructional leaders addressing educational technology. It contributes to the knowledge base about how district leaders and leadership educators might foster school leaders' instructional leadership, and more specifically technology leadership capacity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceived challenges of attempting to integrate topics related to social and cultural issues into the coursework in graduate programs in Instructional Design and Technology (IDT).

An open‐ended online survey instrument was developed for this study for three reasons. First, the study aimed at investigating what is actually happening in IDT programs in terms of integration of social and cultural issues into coursework. Using an online questionnaire, data were collected from IDT instructors and instructional designers.

Findings of the study indicated that while there is a general agreement and interest in infusing content that addresses socio‐cultural perspectives challenges into courses, the challenges include the existence of a common framework for defining and prioritizing socio‐cultural issues, and difficulties in identifying the most important issues to address, and appropriate instructional approaches to address sensitive topics.

There were some limitations to this study. First, the data were collected primarily through a survey instrument as indicated above. Nonetheless, the qualitative data collected were rich and informative. Second, as noted earlier, a majority of the participants indicated they are based in the USA. Thus, study findings may be more specific to IDT programs in this context. Third, participation in the study was voluntary, hence demographics were not controlled for. However, this opened up opportunities for attaining multiple perspectives from the participants.

A recommendation that this study brings out is that while it is impossible practically to address all potential topics, a starting point may be to identify and address the most pertinent topics, such as those which may cause misunderstanding or reinforce the wrong ideas.

While instructional designers and instructors cannot be expected to be cultural experts in every single context or topic, there are certain content issues, such as authentic activities and design strategies that would warrant further attention. Of course this will vary by content and context and instructors and instructional designers should at least be prepared to recognize these unique issues.

The paper highlights some issues worth discussing: the complexity of directly incorporating socio‐cultural issues into IDT curricula; the broad elusive nature of the knowledge of socio‐cultural issues; and the difficulty in defining socio‐cultural content, including what to teach and how to teach it. These three issues address the role of coursework in professional preparation, and the structure of instructional design courses and curricula.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

The paper introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and audiovisual material examining library instruction and information literacy.

Information is provided about each source, and the paper discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

Purpose – The chapter provides the reader with an overview of the impact technology has on literacy education and makes a case for utilizing the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) framework for incorporating instructional technology in the reading clinic. The focus then shifts to how instructional technologies can be utilized to enhance literacy learning during a one-on-one tutoring program.

Methodology/approach – The author describes the changing nature of literacy instruction and the need for 21st century skills for teacher candidates and the students they serve. Pedagogical possibilities and instructional expectations are shared through discussion of the technology activities used by teaching candidates participating in school-based reading clinics.

Practical implications – In addition to descriptions of how teacher candidates utilized technology within their reading clinic instruction, the author notes affordances and challenges of integrating technology in one-on-one instructional settings. Instructional uses of eReaders, laptops, and iPads for literacy learning are noted in the chapter for possible replication in other reading clinic programs. Future directions for additional research are included.

Social implications – The chapter suggests how the university reading clinic can provide opportunities for teacher candidates to work collaboratively with students to incorporate technology into literacy learning activities. Working with technology in a tutoring environment serves as a foundation for incorporating digital literacy instruction in teacher candidates’ future classrooms and ensuring that students have the 21st century skills necessary for college and employment.