Module 3: Professional Standards and Technology Leadership by Michael Gallimore

Section 1: 

As professional standards are important to understanding the best practices and qualifications for the teaching profession, in what way can they inspire teaching leadership and technology integration?  As this question needs to be answered, there are many resources and standards in place that addresses this issue.

The International Society for Technology in Education, or ISTE, helps to promote the issue of teaching and technology leadership through their ISTE Standards for Teachers.  Although found throughout the Standards for Teachers, specifically the fourth and fifth standards help to directly focus their attention on leadership and technology.  The fourth standard is titled “Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility. This standard explains that teachers should understand global and societal issues, but they should also “promote and model digital etiquette and responsible social interactions related to the use of technology and information.”  For any leader in the digital field, modeling and teaching ethical uses of technology will not only help to show other teachers how to properly use technology, but the ethical uses of technology must be trickled down to the students.  The importance of students learning ethical uses of technology cannot be overstated.  Technology can be an extremely useful tool to assist our classrooms but special attention needs to placed not only on how to use the technology, but what not to do with the technology.  The fifth ISTE Standard for Teachers is “Engage in professional growth and leadership.”  This standard really helps to explain exactly what teachers need to do to become leaders in their field and help spread awareness of best practices in technology.  Section B. of the fifth standard explains: “Exhibit leadership by demonstrating a vision of technology infusion, participating in shared decision making and community building, and developing the leadership and technology skills of others.”  If taken to heart, this advice could be invaluable in our school systems.  Of all the teaching standards, I think this is the most important for teaching leadership.   

The International Society of Technology in Education does a fantastic job of explaining how teachers can be better leaders of technology.  However, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, or NBPTS, also provides guidelines on teaching leadership.  The NBPTS certificates are based on their Five Core Propositions.    After reading through the propositions, I noticed proposition two and five would be helpful for understanding how to become better teaching leaders.  The last line of proposition two explains, “They (teachers) are able to use diverse instructional strategies to teach for understanding.” This explains the need to go beyond the general teaching tools, but use, perhaps, technology in the classroom to promote a more lively learning environment.  There are thousands of technological tools to assist teachers and diverse ways.  As the proposition describes, knowing these technological tools can be quite helpful and the becoming more familiar with them could make a huge difference in the classroom.  Moreover, if proposition two is mastered, then you can make the transition to the fifth proposition described by the NBPTS.  Proposition 5 is “Teachers are Members of Learning Communities.”  This proposition contains the line “They are leaders and actively know how to seek and build partnership with community groups and businesses.”  Not only understanding the subject is important, but being able to relate with members in the community and teach them and other teachers about the use of technology is a goal of technological leadership. 

Finally, the West Virginia Department of Education has created the WV Professional Teaching Standards.  These standards are in place to help teachers become facilitators of education to fit the needs of the 21st century.  Because they are designed with this in mind, they often focus on the use of technology and teaching leadership.  These standards clearly define the many different expectations of teachers while they are working in WV.  After reading through these standards, the fifth standard, specifically function 5H, really help to explain the responsibility of the teacher in various leadership positions.  5H explains, “Teaching Leadership: The Teacher demonstrates leadership by implementing classroom and school initiatives that improve education as well as by making positive changes in policy and practice that affect student learning.”  From this function, it helps to explain to the teacher not only how to make the classroom better, but gives room for the teacher to contribute to the policies that teachers work under.  

Section 2:

As many different qualifications exist to ensure teachers are equipped with the many different teaching tools and abilities, the designation of a program to help teachers find the pathways to succeed in teaching leadership would also need a set of standards.  If I was going to design a program or professional development program intended to prepare teachers, I would start by defining clear goals and objectives.  However, these would not be open-ended, but exact measurable statistics to help teachers know exactly what they need to do to become better leaders and teachers.  These standards would be multidisciplinary, applicable to any subject, and would do everything possible to remove vague language.  For example: one parameter might be a number of students who have completed class projects of using new and innovative technology to explain the subject matter.  If the teacher has proof and documentation of a certain amount of students who have found new ways of explain their knowledge of the subject matter, that teacher could advance to the next stage of the standards.  

Although this seems harsh, I often find many teaching standards to be so vague that they are little more than words on a page.  The program would be flexible, with a board of peers examining their work.  As each new standard can get them to the next step, it would also give examples of how they could meet the new standard.  Overall, this program would strive to be understandable with clear objectives, and help explain what the teacher could do to achieve the next goal. 

Section 3:

For my class, I will create a plan of the different types of technology I hope my students will learn to use.  As I ask them to use technology to show their understanding of the material, I will create a rubric with a section that specially grades their use of the technology.  However, their ability to use the technology will be graded, but I will use it as my personal grade and that portion will not effect their overall grade.  For example: I will compile the grades in the class and based upon their grades in the uses of technology, I will know how much I need to adjust the instruction of the technology being used.  If the class has a 90% proficiency of the tools, I will know I’ve done a good job teaching how to use the technology, but still need to do a little better.  If the students get a 60% proficiency, I will know I need to do a much better job of teaching how to use the tools.  With the use of a rubric to grade myself, I will learn what I need to do better to help the class explain the subject while using new technology.  This rubric will also teach me which students need extra help in the future and where their knowledge needs to be improved. 

One resource I would encourage any other social studies or history teachers would be The Center for teaching History with Technology. This site provides many resources, like lesson plans presentation and media examples, discussions and writings, and features a tab with new resources and tools for teachers to use.  This is a very cool website and I encourage all to seek out information like this.

http://thwt.org/

Thanks,

Michael Gallimore