Notes from Mike Haney

While listening to the site visit reports, I began to take notes on what I needed to take back to NSF. The site visits to the schools and centers seemed to represent an excellent sampling of successes and impediments to success. Since ESIE is rewriting its guidelines (including Teacher Enhancement, Instructional Materials Development and Informal Science Education), and a new initiative on secondary science is under consideration, I thought there might be some valuable lessons that could be incorporated into those guidelines.

As a bit of background, the current ESIE guidelines (97-20) include a section entitled "Professional Support for the Teaching Workforce" that grew out of similar circumstances, as does much of the other language about technology in those guidelines.

And, as I said at the open forum, many of us fear that this window of euphoria about technology is short, and we better be able to show two things before it is shut. First, that technology rich projects have a measurable impact. Second, that these can be and have been, reasonably scaled to virtually all types of students and communities.

The conference was for the pioneers in the field, many of whom have pushed the boundaries of what we imagine for schools in new directions and to new limits. And through their projects and reporting, others, including NSF program officer, learn. So listening with a bureaucratic ear, here is what I heard.

  1. Teachers must feel the need for technology or they will come along reluctantly, if at all. Their current practice is seen, by them, as adequate to sufficient and they do not quickly embrace new things that appear experimental where children are involved. They are the settlers, and not the pioneers, as Chris stated, and maybe they are waiting for the educational amenities to be in place before they move in. That change could come when technology is integral to the curricula they teach. When the courses they teach rely on technology to accomplish learning that could not be done in any other way, then they just might embrace the changes. So we need to understand, within the context of the various standards (science, technology, and the revised math), where technology is integral, and we need to produce courses that use technology fully in these ways.

  2. Changes in the use of technology are far different from other innovations of the past thirty years, different in scope and support needed. Over-and-over again we heard how the entire community was integral to bringing technology to the school. The sense I got was that this need was deeper than political support or financial support. It was critical to get all parts of the educational community subscribing to the use of technology or it quickly becomes compartmentalized and associated with single courses, or teachers, or rooms, or activities. Professional development may be too myopic a concept for such a pervasive change in school culture. The parent community, the administrators, the business community, the informal community (libraries, museums), the higher education community, and many others had to be involved to make the changes work. So processional development needs a vision that includes all schools, all students, all educators, all stakeholders, etc. The traditional school community cannot do this alone, nor should they.

  3. There is almost a desperate need to show school or system-wide success in the use of technology. Schools need models, lighthouse projects that show what their investment will buy in terms of education. If the Pittsburgh school board were able to look at schools and see what investment would yield what results, the decision this week would be easier. Of course, first we need a way to recognize success, and this is tied to better or more useful assessment. If by some magic technology helped an urban district keep 20% more children in schools, would their test scores go up or down; maybe the 20% is the hallmark of success.

  4. This is a very, very big job. Currently teachers are both the problem and the key to success. Any technology project needs to include serious rethinking about what makes up the school culture. One hundred years of the current system had created inertia, but then it has also created a substantial history of success. The new school paradigm might include many of the following: teachers depending more on their colleagues, mentors, and coaches; more access for teachers to "just-in-time" learning and current information; teachers who accept change (updating practice and content) as part of their profession; incorporation of education research findings into practice; teachers becoming more active in contributing to their profession; teachers having more opportunities (maybe even the expectation) to participate in the discipline they teach.

In addition from the comments made Saturday morning, I wrote down a few questions for me to think about over the next twenty years.

Those are my notes. My ears are still open. I tried to list the points on which we would all agree and do not represent specific interests. Please feel free to send me comments or corrections.

4/11/97
Michael R. Haney
Program Director
NSF:EHR:ESIE
mhaney@nsf.gov