Casey Wardynski knew his district had to make a change when he glanced at its crop of history textbooks and spotted one glaring omission.
鈥淭hey didn鈥檛 even have 9/11 in them,鈥� said Mr. Wardynski, the superintendent of the Huntsville city schools, an Alabama district of about 24,000 students.
Last summer, the district replaced its paper-based curriculum with digital content in a rapid-fire overhaul鈥攚ith 3rd graders and above receiving Hewlett-Packard laptops, while pre-K pupils to 2nd graders received iPads.
But going digital, said Mr. Wardynski, was the easy part. Getting the buy-in of his teaching staff has been the real challenge.
Most notably, he鈥檚 witnessed a gap in the skill set of many of his teachers who were never trained to teach in a digital world. As a consequence, many of Huntsville鈥檚 teachers are learning as they go, with administrators struggling to fill in the missing pieces.
鈥淲e鈥檙e working with the higher education institutions to let them know what we want to see when it comes to teaching with digital content,鈥� said Mr. Wardynski. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e moving in that direction, but it鈥檚 safe to say that a lot of us are moving a bit faster.鈥�
The challenge is hardly unique to Huntsville. As more districts make the digital shift, many education schools are grappling with how best to prepare the next generation of teachers. In recent years, some programs have struggled to adapt quickly enough to meet the changing needs of both districts and educators.
鈥淓ducation schools are in the process of trying to figure out what it all means, with everyone in the teacher-preparation front playing catch-up,鈥� said Pam Grossman, a professor of education at Stanford University鈥檚 graduate school of education and the director of the university鈥檚 Center to Support Excellence in Teaching.
James G. Cibulka, the president of the (NCATE), which currently accredits 670 colleges of education, sees a range of offerings when it comes to education schools keeping up with advancements in technology.
Mr. Cibulka cautioned that NCATE only accredits fewer than half of the national providers. The issue is further complicated by the fact that accreditation is a voluntary process, with some states requiring it for licensure while others can opt out. Based on NCATE鈥檚 subset, he described offerings as 鈥渁ll over the place,鈥� and called it 鈥渁 matter of great concern.鈥�
In future years, the organization is planning to put in place a new set of five accreditation standards, in which technology is woven throughout each requirement. The aim is to provide more symmetry and quality in preparing teachers to use digital curricula.
And with schools coming up for accreditation once every seven years, Mr. Cibulka didn鈥檛 mince words: 鈥淭here will be no way for schools to meet the new standards unless technology is infused throughout their program.鈥�
Slow to React
Digital devices, cautions Ms. Grossman, are merely one piece of an ongoing puzzle. 鈥淭echnology is not the thing,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 what it enables.鈥�
Ms. Grossman emphasizes the need to still train teachers across a wide array of contexts鈥攆rom 1-to-1 computing classrooms, in which each student has his or her own digital learning device, to a district that has yet to take the digital plunge.
鈥淚f we invest too much, too soon, and only teach digital, we鈥檙e also doing many teachers a disservice,鈥� she said.
Ellen B. Meier, a professor of computing and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and co-director of the Center for Technology and School Change, says that when it comes to making changes, education is a field that鈥檚 often reluctant to do so.
Too much emphasis in the world of teacher preparation is placed on the technology tools themselves, Ms. Meier believes, rather than on how they can help improve teaching and learning.
She sees, instead, a need for schools of education to harness the devices as a catalyst for moving into the 21st century鈥攏ot as silver bullets or quick fixes, but as tools to strengthen curriculum and enhance pedagogy by giving teachers and students access to better information and helping personalize learning in ways that bolster students鈥� strengths and shore up their weaknesses. For example, Teachers College started a program that prepares students to work in schools as technology specialists who can help educators facilitate these changes.
Ms. Meier also cited research that says beginning teachers need more exposure to technology. 鈥淪tudies show that when students are placed in classrooms, they鈥檙e often not placed with teachers who are demonstrating a fluent use of technology, or are often placed in schools that don鈥檛 even have the technology because of funding constraints,鈥� she said.
Relay Graduate School of Education, a New York City-based hybrid master鈥檚-degree program for teachers in New York and New Jersey, is similarly trying to figure out how best to meet the needs of its teachers who are working in more than 180 schools, each with vastly different resource configurations.
The school, which was chartered in 2011, now enrolls more than 600 full-time teachers, half of whom are current Teach For America corps members. Using a hybrid model, students take 60 percent of their coursework in-person and 40 percent online.
While the school has yet to offer specific classes or modules to train teachers in using digital curricula, Thackston Lundy, Relay鈥檚 chief of staff, says they are eager to head in that direction.
In future years, he sees education schools playing a vital role in reshaping the classroom and influencing the changing role of teachers.
鈥淲e鈥檙e standing on the precipice of the role of the teacher changing dramatically in the next several years,鈥� Mr. Lundy said. 鈥淣ew technology and better data will change how we structure the school day, what students learn, and how we organize K-12 classrooms. The role of a great teacher will be more important than ever.
鈥淏ut our most urgent priority right now is making sure our graduates are prepared with the basic pedagogical underpinnings and deep content knowledge needed to make an immediate impact in their classrooms today,鈥� he said.
Relevance at Risk
The problem is that even at well-established education school programs, reluctance to make changes is common.
Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, described his school as being 鈥渕ore forward-thinking鈥� than the vast majority of education schools.
鈥淓ven so, there hasn鈥檛 been the sea change towards technology-based methods throughout all teacher preparation courses that I and my technology-using colleagues would like to see,鈥� he said.
Mr. Dede considers one major culprit to be a lack of pressure on faculty members to change the content of their courses.
鈥淢ost teacher education faculty in the U.S. aren鈥檛 pressured to update what they鈥檙e teaching, not just in terms of technology, but in general,鈥� he said, noting that many instructors preparing teachers were out of touch with the trend to teach education students how to customize learning to fit the needs of individual students.
Of approximately 650 Master of Education students at Harvard, he estimated that around 8 percent had selected its 鈥渢echnology, innovation, and education鈥� program, one of 13 available degree programs. But in 2013-14, the program will enroll the largest cohort in its history.
Mr. Dede, who has taught at Harvard for more than a decade, considers the lack of change to be part of the reason for so many aspiring educators鈥� decisions to take alternative routes to teacher certification鈥攑athways that are often less time-consuming and less expensive.
鈥淓ventually, a lot of teacher preparation programs are going to go away,鈥� he predicted. 鈥淚t鈥檚 at their peril that they鈥檙e reluctant to use modern methods for educational innovation鈥攏ot only in technology鈥攂ut across the board.鈥�
