An Academic Technology Initiative for Teacher Preparation Candidates: Implications for Preservice Teacher Programs
Source: Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, Vol 23, n.3, Spring 2007
Publisher: Department of curriculum and Instruction Center for Technology in Learning and Teaching.
Schools of education (SOEs) are experiencing increased pressure to prepare teacher candidates for the effective and innovative integration of technologies.
Lack of both ubiquitous on-campus access and effective modeling by SOE faculty are two often-cited barriers to reaching this goal.
The Academic Technology Initiative (ATI) at a large Northeastern university provided laptops and support for all preservice teachers and faculty in an attempt to address these barriers.
Using a grounded theory, ethnographic approach, this study examines how the removal of access and infrastructure barriers affects technology integration and faculty technology modeling.
Our findings may help inform new technology strategies at both this and other universities designing such programs.
We expect to identify new barriers and limitations that hold important implications for the future of the ATI and teacher preparation programs in general.