Best Practices in Teaching Digital Literacies

Evan Ortlieb, Earl H. Cheek Jr, Peggy Semingson, Evan Ortlieb, Earl H. Cheek Jr., Peggy Semingson

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787547209
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

The almost universal reliance upon digitaltools for social, academic, and career development will only become morepronounced in the years to come. Teacher education programs remain ill-equippedto adequately prepare educators with the pedagogies needed to foster digitalliteracies. What is needed is a set of best practices towards teaching digitalliteracies so that teachers can better meet the emerging needs of theirstudents in today's classrooms.

Where should teachers begin? What are theessentials of digital literacies within K-12 contexts? And how might wereimagine teacher education programs to optimally prepare teachers for workingwith technologically connected youth, whose literacies are more complex, interconnected, and diverse than ever?

This volume provides a practicalframework for teacher education programs to develop K-12 students' digitalliteracies. It offers a set of best practices in teaching digitalliteracies that promote access to research-based pedagogies for immediateimplementation in classrooms.

CHAPTER 1

DISRUPTIVE INNOVATIONS FOR TEACHER EDUCATION

Evan Ortlieb, Annalisa Susca, Jean Votypka, and Earl H. Cheek, Jr

ABSTRACT

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to understand how disruptive innovations related to digital literacy can improve traditional approaches of teacher education.

Approach – First, the evolution of teacher education from tradition to the digital era is discussed, highlighting the evolution of various traditions, theories and models of teacher education. The authors then ask the questions, “Why do teacher education programs continue to lag in the creation of a true alignment with the current needs of modern students?” and “How can this be done and where should we begin?”

Findings – The authors believe that professional growth is the key to teacher success. Reformed teacher education programs where digital literacy is grounded in relevant contexts, collaboration, and multimodal designs will promote collective collaboration among students and teachers. Digital literacies curriculum should draw on multimodalities and position students as producers of knowledge for a public audience. These disruptive forces function to improve traditional notions of teacher education, providing a catalyst to the democratization of knowledge for teacher development.

Practical Implications – Collaboration across digital platforms promotes learning through crowd-accelerated learning, rhizomatic learning, citizen inquiry, massive open social learning, maker cultures, and blockchain platforms. These approaches can foster genuine and relevant learning in teacher education programs, modernizing and matching instructional techniques with the teacher preparation demands of today and tomorrow.

Keywords: Digital literacy; teacher education; blockchain; crowd-accelerated learning; rhizomatic learning; citizen inquiry; social learning; maker culture

It has long been known that technology has the potential to revolutionize the field of teacher education through the connectedness of content. Coupled technologies will reinvent how we seek, find, evaluate, use, and create information. The ability to teach students how to utilize these digital literacies in digitally connected environments will largely determine a teacher’s effectiveness. These changes must begin in preparation programs and if teacher education programs do not begin to evolve accordingly, they will soon be obsolete.

The field of teacher education has experienced a myriad of changes over the last century much like most ways of life have evolved alongside the introduction of new technologies. The Internet, in particular, changed the world forever in the 1990s when it became widely accessible; however, it is predicted that blockchain technologies, or jointly managed databases of information, will dwarf the change experienced with the advent of the Internet (Edelman, 2017). The ways in which this technology will impact teacher education and in particular, the teaching of digital literacies, will be further discussed after a review of the traditional approaches to teacher education in an effort to situate historical, present, and future contexts.

THE EVOLUTION OF TEACHER EDUCATION: FROM TRADITION TO THE DIGITAL ERA

Historical approaches to teacher education and advances in industry/technology have contributed in varying degrees to prevailing pedagogies today. David Labaree of Stanford University (2008) purported that “teaching has existed long before teacher education,” noting that the phenomenon of formal teacher education programs only became a norm around the turn of the twentieth century. Prior to this time, a liberal arts education was thought to provide a sufficient knowledge base for educators to learn how to teach others, and most teachers earned their credentials via apprenticeships under the tutelage of more experienced professionals (it is worth noting here that for this reason, among countless others, that teaching is indeed a craft to be honed).

Onward from the days when the educational setting was the home or the church, the birth of the public school in the mid-seventeenth century marked the beginning of a very long period of transition in the standard protocol of teacher education. While Boston Latin School (founded in 1635) is still recognized to be the oldest public school in the United States of America, progressive reforms in education did not occur until the turn of the twentieth century, with John Dewey spearheading this movement.

Dewey’s theories of progressive education can be thought of as the turning point in the polemic between teacher-centered and learner-centered education, as Dewey’s pragmatism highlighted the importance of meaningful activity in the classroom, moving away from the tradition of social efficiency that pervaded the widespread pedagogical culture. According to theories of social efficiency, teacher selection was based upon an individual’s skill level in areas such as analyzing literature and/ or morality (Schalock, 1979); classroom instruction was a mirror of the teacher’s preparation in that it was focused on the imparting of these traits and skills so that students could one day fulfill the needs of society. Little attention was paid to the needs of the individual learner or the holistic educational needs of students in a classroom and thus, Dewey’s emphasis on self-direction and community in the classroom was a welcome response to the tenets of social efficiency.

The Developmentalist tradition was ushered in most notably by Jean Piaget and his theories on cognitive development, which have impacted both teacher education programs and their embedded pedagogies. With a focus on psychology and brain development, Piaget’s model contextualized a learner’s ability and focused on one’s needs, rather than the former teacher-centric focus on a generic skills set outlined by the needs of society. Furthermore, Piaget’s model emphasized the need to treat the developing brain appropriately as a clinical response to the commonly asked question of how can we speed up learning. Piagetian education models suggest that premature teaching of complex concepts results in a lack of true cognitive development (May & Kundert, 1997).

While both Dewey and Piaget’s theories modernized the crucial role of the individual in the educational process, other educational thinkers of the first half of the twentieth century expressed concern over the disconnect between learning in and outside the classroom. Dewey (1916) wrote that the true purpose of the classroom was “to shape the experiences of the young so that instead of reproducing current habits, better habits shall be formed, and thus the future adult society be an improvement on their own” (p. 92). This idea of social reconstruction is still present today, with contemporary reconstructionists calling for curriculum changes that lead to more democratic contexts in schools (Evans, 2015).

Spanning more than 300 years, the various traditions, theories, and models of teacher education have surely evolved for the purpose of educating students in a way that effectively enables them to learn, and to partake in a metacognitive awareness to function as contributing members of society once they are no longer in the classroom. However, while efforts have been made to reflect on the criteria needed to learn, or the approaches for learning content, teacher education programs continue to lag in the creation of a true alignment with the current needs of modern students nationwide. And so, as educators with centuries of history to look back on for insight, we must ask the question: Why? Despite upcoming improvements to standards, change needs to happen before educators are placed in their classrooms, while they are still learning how to teach. Research supports the idea that changes in pedagogical education are far more effective when they are included as part of teacher education programs.

And thus new questions arise: How can this be done and where should we begin? The first steps will always be linked to an understanding of history and tradition that sheds light on how we have gotten as far as we have, and reflection on how we can do better. For example, in past years, teacher education programs relied upon professors to lecture, while expecting that students read required texts, partake in classroom discussion, attend labs, reflect on practicum experience, evaluate their personal teaching effectiveness, plan for necessary interventions, and the like. In addition, teacher learning has so often been contingent upon factors such as observational analysis, preparation, participation, professor quality, and the inherent desire to learn. Without the perfect conditions of these factors “aligning like stars in the night,” the result could often be wasted time, unread chapters, and therefore a loss of valuable learning opportunities. Just as educators want to fully prepare their students for their success in the world beyond the classroom, teacher educators should aim for the same, with one difference being that teachers stay in the classroom. Therefore, professional growth is the key to teacher success.

DIGITALLY CONNECTED ERA

Digital literacies were originally defined as the ability to understand and use information inclusive of digital sources (Gilster, 1997). At the core of digital literacy was mastering ideas, not keystrokes, and requiring one to use and make sense of networks. Sparks, Katz, and Beile (2016) stated that to grow our capacity, we must build a reliable aggregate of information; possess retrieval skills and the ability to critical think and evaluate the information; read and understand non-sequential and dynamic materials; combine tradition tools in conjunction with networked media and people as sources of advice; filter incoming information; and publish and communicate information effectively (Lankshear & Knobel, 2014). Blockchain platforms through constant communication and information building provide truly an open-access technology for all learners. But these designs must be integrated within reformed teacher education programs.

According to Price-Dennis and Matthews (2017), there are four tenets for teacher education in the digital age:

(1) Digital literacies should be grounded in relevant contexts that incorporate students’ in-school and out-of-school identities (Castek & Beach, 2013); (2) digital literacies promote collective collaboration among students and teachers (Hagood, Provost, Skinner, & Egelson, 2008; Price-Dennis, Holmes, & Smith, 2015); (3) digital literacies curriculum design should draw on multimodalities (Price-Dennis, Fowler-Amato, & Weibe, 2014); and (4) digital literacies should position students as producers of knowledge for a public audience (Hagood et al. 2008; Price-Dennis et al., 2015).

These tenets of relevant contexts, collaboration, multimodal designs, and digital literacies can be facilitated by a number of approaches in teacher education programs including crowd-accelerated learning, rhizomatic learning, citizen inquiry, massive open social learning, and maker culture to set the stage for student empowerment in K-12 contexts.

Crowd-accelerated Learning

Crowd-accelerated learning facilitates learning settings in which students learn from the experience and expertise of others (Lund, Furberg, Bakken, & Engelien, 2014). Those with common interests come together to share and compete and improve. The bigger the crowd, the greater the c...