Preparing Preservice Teachers for 21st Century Classrooms: Transforming Attitudes and Behaviors About Innovative Technology
Source: Journal of Technology and Teacher Education. 17 (3), pp. 393-418. (July 2009).
Keeping-up with progressing technology tools has been a troublesome issue for educational technology instructors for over ten years as they endeavor to prepare beginning teachers to integrate technology in their future classrooms.
This article promotes instructors’ ideas about behaviors of 21st century teachers. It also explores their efforts to support their preservice teachers to join this rank. In this qualitative study, three instructors report the results of implementing a new project, the Innovations Mini-Teach, into their course.
Overall findings indicated that preservice teachers in this study
1) used a variety of strategies to learn new innovations well enough to teach or model their use to classmates,
2) expressed both a lack of confidence and lack of awareness of confidence-building experiences but indicated their confidence was strengthened by deeper understanding of the usefulness of tools and their abilities to collaborate with peers, and
3) felt they could use technology in their future classrooms, especially those who taught the innovation to others.
Based on these findings implications for future research are also addressed.