Preventing a Participation Gap With Teachers

• In Event: Plugged In: The Potential of Technological Innovations to Improve College Readiness, Access, and Success

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the importance of faculty development as a necessary first-step toward integrating technology into the K-16 curriculum. Emerging participatory practices have given rise to a new model of knowledge distribution. Increasingly, information and expertise are spread across a broad network of people and tools. Widespread access to networked technologies means that, in theory, the same information is available to everybody. In such a world, knowing how to find, process, and exchange already-known knowledge is as important as knowing how to work together, deliberate, debate, argue, and create knowledge (Jenkins et al., 2009).

Participatory learning entails a major shift in the nature and conduct of schooling. The tension between participatory learning and schooling is not a consequence of incompetent school personnel. The tension stems from incompatibility between the nature of participatory learning and institutionalized schooling, especially as related to accepted conceptions of the roles of teacher and students (Bosco, 2010). A model of “distributed expertise” is intended to contrast with the traditional “expert” model. The expert paradigm assumes a static, bounded body of knowledge (Clark, 2003). In this model, expertise is hierarchical and generally brokered by credentialed authorities. In contrast, the notion of distributed expertise assumes that knowledge is distributed across a diffuse network of people and tools.

For the past year, NML has worked with a group of New Hampshire teachers to foster the first Early Adopters (EA) Working Group in the state. This Group has used the distributed expertise model as a faculty development strategy to promote technology use in service of classroom instruction. NML introduced the Learning Library, a multimedia activity center where EAs learned about and practiced the new media literacies by completing and creating challenges and sharing their own media content with other members. As a result, the group “became designers and not just executors of Web 2.0 oriented tasks” (Lund & Rasmussen, 2010, p. 4060). EAs stated that the challenges provided an easy entry point into better understanding how technology can be applied toward learning and instruction, while learning how to adapt and integrate new media challenges into a core curriculum.

NML’s study with the EAs shows the importance of the teacher-as-researcher role as a necessary first-step toward developing expertise and sharing practical experience with other educators. One of the participants noted, “NML skills are seeping through my skin and reflecting in practice. The environment of my classroom is so exciting, I'm letting go of control and truly learning how to facilitate.”

At the 2010 New Media Consortium conference, John Seely Brown said, "When thinking about 21st century learning, perhaps it's not [teaching] a skill that matters but a disposition." Through this project, EAs have taken steps to enhance the work they do with low-income students by moving beyond a focus on technology to working with like-minded teachers to deepen their own understandings of new media literacies through practice and reflection.

Authors

• Erin Reilly, University of Southern California

• Vanessa Vartabedian, University of Southern California

• Henry Jenkins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology