Copyright 1999 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc.
Federal Document Clearing House Congressional Testimony
May 11, 1999
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 1204 words
HEADLINE:
TESTIMONY May 11, 1999 ROBERT F. MCNERGNEY HOUSE EDUCATION AND
THE WORKFORCE EARLY CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND FAMILIES EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY AND
ESEA REAUTHORIZATION
BODY:
Robert
F. McNergney University of Virginia 276 Ruffner Hall Charlottesville, VA 22903
804-924-0749 Tuesday, May 11, 1999, 1:30 p.m. Subcommittee on Early Childhood,
Youth and Families Room 2175 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C.
Technology reminds me of baseball. Casey Stengel managed the New York Yankees
for about a dozen years. He finished his career managing the Mets in 1965.
Stengel's eye for talent was as sharp as his wit. Once when he was with the Mets
a reporter asked him about the future prospects for two of this twenty-year-old
players. Stengel replied, "In ten years, Ed Kranepool has a chance to be a star.
In ten years the other guy has a chance to be thirty.91i To make sure the
Nation's teachers and students do more than just grow older imagining what it
must be like to be good with technology, we to need to concentrate on three
factors: talent, opportunity, and support. 1.Talent People from all sorts of
neighborhoods and communities have the talent to learn about and with
technology. Literature on the use of technology to help people learn is massive
and growing. I draw your attention to an excellent review of the research by
Andrew Dillon and Ralph Gabbard of Indiana University published in 1998.'@ In
brief, they conclude that the benefits of emerging technologies are limited to
the kind of learning that depends on repeated manipulation and searching of
information. Moreover, these benefits differ according to learners' abilities
and to their preferred learning styles. Clearly, the research is only beginning
to provide solid leads for practice. In short, we know that technology can have
positive effects on learning, but it is not a panacea. Increasingly, however,
"talent" means being able to integrate technology into teaching and learning?"
The new phrase beginning to supplant "computer literacy" is computer fluency.""
Teachers need to integrate technology into life in classrooms--they need to
become fluent in technology use--if they are to help their students do the same.
The Computer Science and Telecommunications Board makes evident the challenge.
"Literacy is too modest a goal in the presence of rapid change, because it lacks
the necessary 'staying power.'... People fluent with information technology...
are able to express themselves creatively, to reformulate knowledge, and to
synthesize new information. Fluency with information technology... entails a
process of lifelong learning in which individuals continually apply what they
know to adapt to change and acquire more knowledge to be more effective at
applying information technology to their work and personal lives.""
2.Opportunity. There are approximately 1300 colleges of education that prepare
preservice teachers. About 200,000 teachers enter the profession each year."'
With the turnover rate of teachers in their first five years on the job, and
with the impending retirement of about 1,000,000 more, the challenge of
educating preservice teachers to use technology effectively is considerable.
When we contemplate the challenge of providing professional development in
technology to about 2.2 million inservice teachers, the adjective "daunting"
springs immediately to mind. As chair of the Technology Committee for the
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education I have met and worked
with many people from colleges and universities across the Nation. My informal
observations suggest that few institutions, programs, and people are doing any
more than training teachers in basic technology skills. These conditions exist
not for lack of interest, but because teachers and teacher educators already
have too much to do. Opportunities to learn with and about technology compete
with scores of other demands. When colleges, universities, and public school
systems have the funds to create opportunities for preservice and inservice
teachers to work with the latest technologies and the best teacher educators, we
will have greater numbers of technologically proficient teachers and students.
The Education Department's initiative entitled "Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to
Use Technology" seems like a step in the right direction, but it is relatively
small and limited to preservice teachers. 3.Support. Standards for technical
competence, both for teachers and their students, abound. We have them in
Virginia. School districts from Fairfax to Danville are ramping up to meet the
Virginia standards and doing so admirably. But standards do not automatically
ensure that either teachers or young people will use technology often or well.
People need material and human support to become fluent in the use of
technology. At the University of Virginia, our preservice teachers work with
technology every semester they are in our five-year teacher education program.
They use technology to enhance teaching and learning in many different ways. We
also prepare inservice teachers and school administrators to teach and learn
with us online."" Inservice educators learn how to learn using case methods,
much as professionals are prepared in law, business, and medicine. These
professional educators use technology to solve real problems presented in the
form of cases, and they communicate with one another about the cases using the
latest Web technologies. Teachers take advantage of these opportunities, because
they have the human and material support to do so. When the reporter asked Casey
Stengel about managing, Stengel replied: "Managing is getting paid for home runs
someone else hits." Leaders today who recognize technical talent, who create
opportunities for that talent to blossom, and who support its continued
development may not be as famous as a baseball legend, but they will surely be
doing good work. I respectfully urge you to demonstrate such leadership by
providing funds for professional development for teachers. Encourage teachers to
work together and with others outside their systems to learn how to model
intelligent technology use for their students. Robert F. McNergney, professor in
the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, has also been a
faculty member at State University of New York, Potsdam and University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis. He has taught and coached in public schools in Iowa and
Vermont. Co-author of three books and editor of four, his writing has appeared
in the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education, Educational Researcher,
Journal of Teacher Education, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.
McNergney co- authored the Research Clues column for NEA Today for three years.
He chairs the Technology Committee, for the American Association of Colleges for
Teacher Education and writes the technology column for AA.CTE Briefs. He has
served as secretary of Division K in the American Educational Research
Association and as editor of the Division K Newsletter. He has chaired the
Commission on Case- Method Teaching and Learning for the Association of Teacher
Educators. McNergney teaches courses in foundations, evaluation, writing for
publication, and research on teaching. He also teaches a set of Internet-based
courses with colleagues in the United States, Canada, and Scandinavia.
LOAD-DATE: May 12, 1999 
