Search for: All records

From teaching with technology to teaching through technology: this is an important shift that educator preparation programs must embrace as we continue to develop teachers who can facilitate meaningful learning experiences across a variety of delivery modalities. Drawing on the data from our three-year mixed methods research, the authors describe a programmatic model for preparing teacher candidates to implement digital pedagogy while ensuring that learning opportunities are equitable, accessible, and inclusive of all learners. This paper first identifies the Essential Elements of our critical digital pedagogy model for facilitating learning in hybrid, hyflex, and online environments. Second, we describe how we have integrated these Essential elements across the three phases of our teacher preparation programs, with a particular focus on the two asynchronous online workshops we have integrated into students’ clinical experiences. Third, we identify a set of indicators used to provide feedback to preservice teachers as they demonstrate their critical digital pedagogy during their student teaching semester. We present the research findings that examine how this programmatic approach impacts teacher candidates’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions for transforming teaching and learning through technology. We conclude with a discussion of how the programmatic model and research findings may impact the broader field of teacher education. 

Prior to COVID-19 and the shift to fully online instruction, teacher preparation programs were teaching candidates to use technology in the classroom, but they were not focusing on how to teach in exclusively online or hybrid models. In the future, all preservice teachers will need to know how to teach online, whether due to necessity or by choice. Therefore, the purpose of our research is to first identify essential elements of critical digital pedagogy for facilitating online inquiry, and then to integrate these methods into our teacher preparation program to prepare preservice teachers to facilitate inquiry-based science, technology, and mathematics (STEM) effectively in online learning environments that are equitable and inclusive of all learners. We utilize a mixed-methods approach with quantitative and qualitative measures including literature reviews, individual interviews, focus groups, program documents, and efficacy surveys. Drawing on this data, this presentation shares the findings from the first part of this three-year research project by discussing essential elements of critical digital pedagogy for facilitating online STEM inquiry. We identify what tools and instructional approaches can be used to support STEM learning in online environments in ways that will support all students, including those who are traditionally marginalized in U.S. schools.