Abstract
As technology's place in
the educational landscape continues to grow every year, increasing numbers
of teachers and students are affected by its presence and use. Those
in decision-making roles regarding the inclusion or exclusion of technology
in instruction are responsible for knowing how their decisions affect
all populations concerned. This paper provides a model for assisting
in the determination of whether technology use is appropriate in a given
context based upon the learning goals and objectives.
Introduction
As
students are exposed to greater quantities and more complex forms of
technology both inside and outside the classroom, the need for educators
to determine the most appropriate uses of those technologies becomes
evermore critical. Basic understandings of what defines effective teacher
practice in specific contexts and of the variability of cognitive development
among students discourages a blanket approach to the use of technology
for constructing scientific literacy. Furthermore, we acknowledge the
potential for technology to either improve or hinder understandings
of scientific concepts. As a consequence, this paper examines critical
considerations for the use of technology by middle grade students.
The Role of Technology
in Science Education Reform
Few
would disagree that, "technology has become an important instrument
in education" (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999, p. 217).
Agents of reform such as the National Research Council and individual
state agencies such as the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
incorporate technology into their documents, defining it in broad terms,
including discrete items, techniques, and processes (Bransford, Brown,
& Cocking, 1999; National Research Council, 1996;North Carolina
Department of Public Instruction, 1999).
The role that technology
does and should play in science education creates much dissention among
educators, particularly concerning computer technologies. Opinions range
from "computer-based technologies hold great promise both for increasing
access to knowledge and as a means of promoting learning" (Bransford,
Brown, & Cocking, 1999, p. 217) to a much less favorable view, one
where technologies "often undermine what we know about effective
teaching and learning" (Olson & Clough, 2001, p.8). Most educators,
including those sited above, will readily acknowledge that regardless
of whether they believe technologies primarily serve to improve or hinder
meaningful learning, appropriately applied technologies can and do work
in the classroom.
The use of the word "applied"
is both deliberate and significant because the implication is that the
teacher is responsible for correctly and effectively using the technology
in a given context. This is a crucial point, in that the current role
of technology is one of support, rather than functioning as the primary
instructor relieving the teacher of all responsibility. Teachers make
or break the program (Penick & Bonnstetter, 1993; Penick, Yager,
& Bonnstetter, 1986), not the tools and processes at their disposal.
Without "effective questioning, wait time, supportive non-verbals,
active listening, responding to students in ways that further their
thinking, and structuring activities to keep students mentally engaged"
(Olson & Clough, 2001, p.5), children end up playing with or fighting
a technology that, along with their teacher, failed them in constructing
meaningful learning of the content. A focus on the learning needs of
students promotes the inclusion of these and other essential teacher
behaviors. Greater attention is given to the teacher's role in making
effective use of technologies later in the article.
A wealth of literature documents
and speculates on both beneficial and detrimental aspects of technology
use in the classroom. Table 1 contains a representative list of some
of these aspects. The list is not meant as a comparative piece demonstrating
that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, but rather to provide
the reader with an overview of the possibilities inherent through the
inclusion of technology in classroom instruction.
Table 1
|
Advantages
|
Disadvantages
|
- Enhance
student achievement
(Bransford,
Brown, & Cocking, 1999; National Research Council, 1997)
|
- Extremely
poor job of playing off students/ prior ideas, engendering deep
reflection and promoting understanding of complex content
|
- Aid in visualization
of concepts
(Linn, Songer,
& Eylon, 1996)
|
(National
Research Council, 1997)
|
- Use of real-world
problems to facilitate learning
(Bransford,
Brown, & Cocking, 1999)
|
- Do not promote
and hinder deep conceptual understanding
|
- Provides
scaffolded experiences
(Bransford,
Brown, & Cocking, 1999)
|
- Inappropriate
uses can hinder learning
(Bransford,
Brown, & Cocking, 1999)
|
- Promotes
feedback, metacognition, and revisionary practices
(Bransford,
Brown, & Cocking, 1999)
|
|
(Bransford,
Brown, & Cocking, 1999)
|
- Diminishes
the need to utilize metacognitive strategies
|
(National
Research Council, 1997)
|
|
(National
Research Council, 1997)
|
|
Table 1 illustrates
the enormous potential technology holds for improving or degrading the
learning environment; however, without an adequate understanding of
and appropriate response to how students learn, any instructional tool
becomes impotent.
Concrete to Abstract:
What Are They Thinking?
One of the most important considerations a teacher makes when selecting
an instructional strategy or tool is first determining how the student
learns. Piaget's stages of development serve as a foundation upon which
many educators build their lessons, customizing construction as the
context necessitates. According to Piaget's theory, most middle school
students are deemed concrete operational, "reflecting the child's
ability to use operational logic on concrete objects" (Baker &
Piblurn, 1997, p. 232). The goal, of course, is to move students from
concrete to the cognitively superior, formal operational stage - a stage
generally characterized by "abstract thinking and coordination
of a number of variables" (Woolfolk, 1995, p. 39). A problem exists
however, as Baker and Pilburn (1997) articulate below:
"children cannot
move easily from the relatively concrete curriculum of the elementary
school to the quite abstract one of the secondary school. We think
that the transition from concrete to formal operational thought
occupies a much greater time span than envisioned by those who construct
curriculum" (p. 232).
"The period between
grades six and ten is critical, and educators could profitably devote
most of that period of time to the development of abstract logical
thought. The formal teaching of scientific disciplines should be
delayed until late in the high school years or in college. There
is no point in teaching formal science until students have developed
formal reasoning skills" (p. 232).
The difficulty students have navigating from concrete to formal operations
suggests a complexity in the individual stages. Aiding in the development
of "formal reasoning skills" (Baker & Pilburn, 1997, p.
232) requires a deep understanding of the different levels within the
concrete operational stage. Five major levels (Table 2) have been identified:
identity, compensation, reversibility, classification, and seriation.
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