A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Technology and Education Reform: Technical Research Report - August 1995

7. Leadership for Technology Implementations

There is no one road to either technology implementation or school reform. Depending on the local context and the nature of the leadership emerging within the school community, innovations can take many paths and evolve from many roots. In this chapter, we provide a summary of the characteristics of technology-supported education reform implementations at the nine case study sites. Although the relatively small number of sites and the way in which they were chosen precludes us from claiming that the frequency of any one feature among our case studies is indicative of national trends, the degree of variety among our case studies is instructive.

Incentive for Technology Use

In many locales, there is good support both within the education system and among the general public for introducing technology into schools. Electorates that have been reluctant to support education funding generally are sometimes more favorably disposed toward school bonds when they are designed to finance technology. Technology can play many different roles, however, and this generally favorable attitude toward technology use is not always connected to a clear set of objectives for the technology implementation. Since the particular choices of hardware and software and the way that they should be implemented and supported depend on the objectives, it is important to discuss and understand these as part of the initial planning and bid for public support.

Our case study sites represent a range of motivations for instituting technology. Most sites had multiple goals in mind, as shown in Figure 3. In general, the rationales described by our sites fall into six major reasons for bringing technology into classrooms. First was a belief that computer-based technologies could provide support for thinking processes. At the Maynard Computer Mini-School, for example, the use of instructional software designed to teach problem solving (e.g., Rocky's Boots ) was a primary reason for investing in technology. Technology innovators at another setting viewed their use of a multidistrict network as a means "to develop students' reasoning strategies so that students can better access, organize, and integrate diverse sources of information to solve intellectual challenges and accomplish complex tasks" (TeacherNet Guide). Throughout the case study sites, many respondents stressed the opportunities that technology provides for acquiring critical-thinking and problem-solving skills-both through the use of software specifically designed for this purpose (including open-ended exploratory software such as LOGO) and through the many requirements for solving problems that naturally emerge as one is using computer tools to accomplish a range of tasks (e.g., selecting appropriate software, figuring out what to do when the system doesn't behave as one expects it to). Several teachers described their goals for the use of technology in terms of the support that it could provide for acquiring complex concepts, for example, by graphically representing abstract concepts such as acceleration or by providing scaffolding for concept building, such as the cognitive prompts embedded in CSILE (Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments).

A second frequently cited rationale for introducing technology was to stimulate motivation and self-esteem . Through either personal experience or a review of the literature, many innovators perceived the dramatic effects that technology can have on students' interest in class activities and their sense of their own capabilities. Although these benefits are perceived as occurring across the board, our case study sites, most of which serve student bodies coming predominantly from low-income homes, felt that these benefits would be particularly important for their students. Thus, a related reason for using technology was the promotion of equity. In the case of the teacher network, the districts recognized the wide disparity in the resources available to them and felt that a unifying network could promote a more equitable use of those resources. In the case of several schools serving students from low-income homes, technology innovators stressed the importance of giving these students the technology tools that would equip them with a needed edge to compete with children coming from more affluent homes, where technology is commonplace.

As soon as I heard that [South Creek] was opening up and it was going to be a technology school with the majority of kids being minority kids and low SES kids, I wanted to come here...

--Middle school mathematics teacher
The concern for equity is related to a fourth major motivation for introducing technology-to prepare students for the future. Within each of our sites, respondents foresaw a future in which both higher education and the world of work would be infused with technology. These educators argue that schools have a responsibility to give students--and especially students from low-income homes--the confidence and skills in using technology that they will need after graduation.
I don't care what field they're in, be it factory worker, office worker, medicine or whatever. [There is no place where technology will not be used.] It's getting harder and harder to get jobs. You want your kids to get a leg up. It's becoming a necessary ingredient.

--Middle school principal
Researchers have argued that technology has the potential to dramatically change the way in which our schools are structured--serving as a catalyst for doing away with the division of instructional time into small blocks and discrete disciplines and to rethink the way we use physical classrooms and teaching resources (Collins, 1990; Newman, 1990). A number of our sites reported consciously deciding to use technology in order to advance their reform goals and to support changes in school structure. Many respondents shared the view that the use of technology would facilitate various aspects of their restructuring efforts, for example, by providing a context for increased collaboration among students or serving as a tool for project-based learning. Several district administrators expected technology to free up teacher time by taking over or supporting administrative and routine teaching tasks. The administrators setting up the teacher network, for example, expected it to lower boundaries between schools, districts, and even states.

For schools within TeacherNet and for the Maynard Computer Mini-School, the use of telecommunications to promote greater access to outside resources was a central underlying reason for the implementation of technology. Although this did not serve as an initial goal for technology use within other sites, the growth of the Internet and increased interest in its educational potential have made this a recently emerging goal for most of the schools in our study. At the time of our data collection, many sites were at various stages in planning for network installation and Internet access. Within these schools, educators spoke of telecommunications in terms of broadening students' information sources and bringing "the outside world" into the classroom.

Finally, in several cases, there were individuals who were simply intrigued by new technologies and wanted to explore what those technologies could do in an educational setting such as their own. Not surprisingly, the desire to explore technology capabilities was most likely to be a factor in cases where there was an external partner involved in the design, manufacture, or selling of technology products. Although we felt that technology push was one motivation for some implementations, in no case was it the sole motivation.

All sites began with an initial purpose or set of goals for the use of technology, but it comes as no surprise that these goals continued to evolve as participants became increasingly familiar with the capabilities of the technology once it was installed.

This section has addressed the issues that served as the original impetus for technology implementation within each of the nine sites. Chapter 8 of this report addresses the effects that teachers and administrators perceived their technology use to have--providing insights into the motivations that sustained and enhanced their involvement with technology.


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[Resources for Technology Implementations] [Table of Contents] [Leadership for Technology Implementations (part 2 of 3)]