Contents

Introduction

 

Interactive Learning Environments

 

Professional Teaching

 

Conclusion

 

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Introduction

Technology is not the solution to the complex problems that face our schools but it can dramatically increase the community of participants designing solutions.

Fundamental change in the next decades will result from participation in education by a larger community of people who the Internet brings together, rather then from access to technology. This is because education is a human enterprise. It is dependent on the relationship between teachers and learners in a specific social, political, and historical context. My paper focuses on this context and way in which changes to the learning environment alters the relationships between teachers and learners, and between school and society.

The paper is divided into two parts. The first section examines current theories on learning and their relationship to the educational context of school. I frame my ideas on learning by using four dimensions of the learning environment identified in a book entitled How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School,edited by John Bransford, Ann Brown and Rodney Cocking (NRC, 1999).

They describe the learning environments as:

Learner-Centered	Knowledge-Centered
Community-Centered	Assessment-Centered

 

I describe the intersection of these dimensions of effective learning contexts with the opportunities made possible by access to communication technology. Where there is a lag between innovative practices and research evidence, I describe examples of how the Web is affecting student learning in specific settings.

These factors define the context of learning for teachers as well as students. The role of teachers change when there are significant shifts in the organization of the learning environments, the orientation of learners, and availability of instructional tools and technology. These changes call for new roles for teachers.

In this second section, I focus on the relationship of teaching and research, historically and in the present time, relying on Lagemann new book, An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research and Berieter's online book: Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age. I also use data from the recent Teaching, Learning And Computing: 1998 A National Survey of Teachers and Schools to describe levels of professional engagement of teachers and its relationship to teacher philosophy and practice. This data suggests that professionally engaged teachers differ significantly from classroom teachers who are isolated in a "private" practice in their classrooms. This data, I argue, should open some serious concerns over a structure that encourages closed classroom doors. We need plans to make teaching a much more collaborative community activity.

I close with some new ideas for how to create learning environments for students and teachers that balance the four dimensions of learning. These ideas are offered in the spirit of a collective rethinking of schooling in the context of evolving understandings of learning and our rapid advances in the development of tools that mediate minds.