Chapter 1: Risk-Taking In Schools Of Education: Teaching New Tricks to Old Dogs

PT3, Preparing Tomorrow’s Teachers to Use Technology, was a U.S. Department of Education program designed to ensure that new teachers were prepared to use computers and other technologies when they reached the classroom. The strategic direction taken by this effort to prepare teachers was that education faculty needed to be induced to change the content and process of their preservice teacher programs and, consequently, the skills and knowledge of new teachers would include the management and use of classroom technology. It was a calculated risk, given the widespread belief that faculties are difficult to change, that education schools have few incentives to encourage risk taking, and that technology is a costly commodity. To make it even riskier, each project was required to conduct an evaluation of their efforts.