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                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              (A nod to Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove”)

“Which model do you believe is more useful for you in planning to incorporate technology in your position? Why is this model more useful for you? What, if anything, might you use from the other model?” (cited from Leslee Francis-Pelton, 2019)

The guiding questions about how to evaluate the classroom use of educational technology are inspiring an awareness of how I evaluate technology, other types of research articles, and all writing in general. Very early in my academic reading pursuits, I adopted a level of skepticism expressed in scribbling notes in the margins of whatever I read. I taught myself to think freely as I read other authors’ ideas and not to fall into the trap of regurgitating content for the sake of appeasing my professors. I found it necessary in order stave off becoming a follower of traditions that stifled new ideas. Although I aspire to be avant garde in some regard, I respect the appropriate application of scientific methods of investigation and the use of logic as necessity often dictates.

I am a Fly in the Ointment

It has been a fairly common practice among many professions that “necessity is the mother of invention” as William Horman, headmaster of Winchester and Eton stated in 1519. I recognize that there is a necessity to define a standard by which one can measure the validity, reliability, and utility of an academic research paper. Standards exist for almost the exclusive purpose to compare similar ventures against each other, in this case with two popularized models of assessing and incorporating educational technology. Technologies are “plugged into” these models and tested to whatever end the creator has defined. This, however, presents a problem. If I am to use a standardized evaluation method created by someone else, then my own learning/teaching experience and expertise of theoretical knowledge and practical training is put to the side and I am essentially being asked to adopt someone else’s schema in approaching the evaluation of an educational technology. Models of assessment frame and establish the process and end product in much the same way that a scientific experiment is designed with inherent bias to prove a hypothesis. I do not believe this is a problem that is unique to me. Furthermore, it presents a possible explanation of why, with the advent of online communication, academic research has expanded into new areas as well as being commodified more rapidly than ever before. Previous to anyone accessing deep knowledge online there has been overall little development of new ideas and new ways of thinking in academic circles. Educational institutions, like most bureaucracies, have reacted to change as a result of outside influences (e.g. specified research grants by private interests) and have been largely forced to react to and to adapt to the new technologies developed in their own research facilities. Companies apply new technologies to meet business models that will ensure sustainable profitability and that will fill or create a market need. This where the use of technology in education becomes complex.

The Conflicting Dualism of Developing Educational Technology

The design, development, and purpose of educational technology is split into two basic streams that not only overlap but also are likely to conflict in their influence and importance in the design and development stages. These two streams may be defined as pedagogical and market-interest foci. As much as learning institutions impress their influence to have the development of educational technology grounded in sound pedagogical practice, market forces necessitate design elements like a familiar or popular user interface design elements and ease of functionality as well as mass appeal, easy integration into existing technologies, coding within established frameworks, production cost, price-point affordability, etc. to gain market share. This dichotomous relationship creates unintended complexities in the development of technologies that many times create contentious issues for the teachers that use them, the largest issue of which may be a lack of being able to personalize or adapt the technology to the teaching style and individualistic set of specialized knowledge and skills of a teacher. In my own 20+ years of teaching experience, more often than not teachers are at the other end of introduced educational technologies and have to adapt their teaching in order to use the technology effectively. So how does evaluating educational technology mirror this sometimes dichotomy?

TPACK vs. SAMR: Missing the Point on Both Counts

An example of this conflict of interests is illustrated in the development of two models of evaluation, Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) and Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition (SAMR).

A salient point that the TPACK authors Koehler and Mishra (2009) cite from Ertmer (2005) illustrates the predesigned marketable purpose of modern technologies and the specific training required by teachers to use them, teachers who have little time and are not given adequate in-service training to learn the full functionality of technologies introduced to their teaching. Ertmer stresses that teachers are less likely to use technologies that do not align with their existing pedagogical beliefs. I would venture a step further to suggest that technologies are often developed using insulated test marketing strategies and product-oriented development that, in turn, try to allow for a wide acceptance into existing pedagogical practices, but make little to no accommodation for the learning effort and time required to use the technology for its intended purpose. The TPACK (Koehler and Mishra, 2008) authors identify three core components of teaching with technology, but they leave out one very important component which is the existing skill set and specialized training that the teacher brings to their students. I want to stress that this is not to be confused with the content knowledge which appears to focus attention on the lesson and what the students will learn and it certainly is not to be confused with pedagogical knowledge which can be described as how the students will learn.  It is the overarching and underlying context that the technology inadvertently attempts to supercede. An unconscious design factor is made then by the authors that their model applies to generalist educators who have some formal training in how to teach, but the professional level of experience, mastery of craft, and practice they bring to their students seems to carry little weight or importance in this assessment model. Koehler and Mishra design their TPACK model after a Venn diagram to show overlapping considerations of pedagogical, content, and technological knowledge in the process of determining the framework for technological pedagogical content knowledge required to evaluate educational technologies. Perhaps a forth contextual-based intersecting circle might help to include the expertise and specific skill set the teacher carries as a mitigating factor in assessing a technology’s usefulness.

Hamilton et al. (2016) review a different evaluation model that is centred on four predefined uses of technology in the classroom rather than the more generalized descriptive evaluation of the TPACK model. Substitution, augmentation, modification and redefinition (SAMR) are progressive steps in the ways that a technology adopted for classroom use eventually becomes the central driving vehicle of the learning. Described as a ladder that teachers are encouraged to ““move up” from lower to higher levels of teaching with technology, which according to Puentedura, leads to higher (i.e., enhanced) levels of teaching and learning” (Hamilton et al., 2016), this model also generalizes in an almost surreptitious way by unconsciously yet progressively removing the specialized expertise and practical content training that the teacher inherently brings to the classroom and dissolves it into allowing the technology to create new tasks that may have been previously inconceivable, as the model itself states.  If reversing one’s perspective on this model, at this highest level of “enhanced” teaching, there is an inference that, without the technology, the teacher lacks the physical capability to make their students’ learning technologically relevant. Hamilton et al. questions the lack of context, the rigid hierarchical structure, and the tendency of the model to emphasize creating a product over learning a process. However, both TPACK and SAMR are open to interpretation most likely due to the creators’ intentions to include as many and varied teaching disciplines as possible in the hopes that their models would be widely adopted. Perhaps the omission of teacher and student contexts in these models is deliberate, but neither model is overtly designed to include such pivotal contexts.

A Personalized Model that Matches Teacher-Expertise with Individuated Students’ Learning Needs

Neither model appeals to the practical, hands-on knowledge that I bring to my heavily resourced classrooms. Technology is at the core of many of the classes I teach. I have allowed technology to continue to assist my students in their learning of both the specific subject matter that I teach and also the pursuit of self-awareness and self-actualization. My approach to adopting new technology to my classes is in considering first how the technology used in the classroom reflects how it is used in real-world applications, and second how the technology makes the students’ learning more streamlined, direct, efficient, and relevant to the discipline being learned and to the level and area of interest that each student demonstrates. Making assumptions about how technology enhances classroom learning has been a dominant sales pressure tactic. In the practical art courses that I teach, interacting with technology is a daily exercise. In order to teach students to have full and flexible power over the technologies that I teach, it is paramount in my mind to have intimate working knowledge of the technologies (i.e. how they are made, what technologies came before them, what intended and possible unintended functions they have, their original characteristics, their unique abilities, etc.), so that students can build their learning on a foundation made stable well beyond pedagogical reasoning or the application of a generic assessment model.

The mobile Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition (mSAMR) model proposed by Romrell et al. (2014) also does little to account for the context of teacher experience, expertise, and student learning needs. The model, like the others, tends to turn the pedagogical focus onto rationalizing the use of educational technology in generalized terms.

Conclusion

As much as there is a concerted effort to establish a body of academic research on this topic, in the face of the practical realities of the classroom, the models tend to describe what has been for teachers a simple, common-sense application of technologies from using the pencil to the protractor in math or from using the 35mm film camera to the HD video camera in visual story-telling, rather than a better way to assess the incorporation of technology into an educational setting. Assessment of educational technologies is most important as one trains to teach or learn a new skill, but when teaching is already happening, the assessment becomes an academic exercise with little basis in the reality of a classroom filled with the priorities of varying contexts that need to be met with individuated teaching. Technology is put to good educational use by those teachers who fully understand its capabilities to create new learning and bring purpose to the students who use it. The starting point for incorporating technology in my classes is when I look to new technologies that reflect real-world application more than to simply enhance the entertainment value of a pedagogical construct. Technology is fully embraced in my classes, but without a clear, relevant, learning purpose that reflects a real-world application, it cannot be imposed upon me and nor should any teachers be made to have such technology redefine their lessons.

References

Hamilton, E.R., Rosenberg, J.M. & Akcaoglu, M. (2016). The Substitution Augmentation Modification Redefinition (SAMR) Model: a Critical Review and Suggestions for its Use.

Koehler, M. & Mishra, P. (2009). What is Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK)?. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1), 60-70. Waynesville, NC USA: Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education.  https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/29544/.

Romrell, D., Kidder, L.C., Wood, E. (2014). The SAMR model as a framework for evaluating mLearning. Online Learning Journal, 18(2).https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1036281.pdf

Voogt, J., Knezak, G., Christensen, R., & Lai, K-W. (2018). Developing an Understanding of the Impact of Digital Technologies on Teaching and Learning in an Ever-Changing Landscape. In J. Voogt, G. Knezak, R. Christensen, & K-W, Lai (Eds.) Second Handbook of Information