Editorial: Preparing Teachers for the 21st Century Classroom

AS COLLEGE EDUCATORS we often complain about how unprepared our students are. They often have not mastered the basics, thus presenting additional challenges for us. How difficult is it to teach business communication when our sophomores and juniors still do not know how to construct grammatically accurate sentences and cohesive paragraphs. In our frustration we sometimes want to blame the public school teachers. Clearly they are not doing a good enough job. I was recently engaged in just that type of discussion when it struck me that we, as teacher educators, are largely responsible for what is happening in public education. After all, we train the teachers, we write the standards, we serve on the state curriculum committees, and we help to design the assessments. As teacher educators, we are perceived by many, including state and local government, businesses, and the community, to be responsible for teacher quality. It is widely believed that teacher quality is the most important variable in producing student achievement gains (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Miner, 2005/2006; The Center for Public Education, 2005). In essence, the burden of improving K-12 education is being placed squarely on the shoulders of teacher educators, including business teacher educators. So, what should be our response? We first need to acknowledge that we are preparing teachers for a new type of classroom, one that is quite different from the one in which we were educated. We are educating in a new era, characterized by many things "e"-many things electronic: e-mail, e-pals, e-tutors, e-books, e-shops, e-commerce, e-subscriptions, e-classifieds, e-files, e-cards, e-journals, e-payments, e-entertainment, e-museums, e-zoos, e-papers, e-spaces, e-travel, e-delivery, e-notebooks, e-banking, e-libraries, e-photos, e-courses and e-learning. Our teacher candidates and those they will teach are surrounded by all things electronic. And, as difficult as it might sometimes be, we must prepare our teacher candidates to use these technologies to reach and stimulate those whom they teach. The teachers we are preparing must not only be ready to teach K-12 students how to use technology, but more importantly we need to teach our teacher candidates how to use technology as effective educational tools (Cradler, Freeman, Cradler, and McNabb, 2002). How many of us teach our prospective teachers how to design and maintain Web sites that will support the courses they will teach and how to use presentation software and other multimedia products effectively, or some of the many hand-held devices? Do they even know how to do voice-over PowerPoint or merely how to set up long series of slides of teaching notes? Can our teacher candidates build or even select a good branching simulation that will help their students hone their critical thinking and problem solving skills? The more senses we can stimulate in the learning environment, the more likely we can truly engage our students (Performance Learning Systems, Inc., 2007). Have we been introducing our teachers to some of the newer technology tools such as speech recognition, hand-held computers and PDAs, and writing tablets as alternate devices for inputting data and improving written and oral communication skills? Most students already know how to use the computer, e-mail, the Internet, cell phones, and instant messaging to socialize and even cheat, but do our teacher candidates know how to use these same technologies to share information, to manage virtual teams, and to collaborate electronically in virtual space so they can better prepare their students for college and the work environment which will include these applications? Do our teacher candidates know how to use these tools to obtain and maintain student interest in the classroom? We need to help our teachers see that these technologies are more than neat toys. They can do tremendously more than enhance the social lives of youngsters. …