Subjects: Group B
Group B, the Aspirers, consisted of five tenured and five tenure-tracked professors, and represented education, science/technology/mathematics, the health and medicine fields, and the humanities. There were five men and five women in Group B. These faculty were participants in a two-week pedagogy-based technology workshop and were therefore also selected non-randomly. Each member of this group either had been using technology somewhat and wanted to incorporate more technology into his/her teaching, or currently does not use technology but wants to begin to incorporate it into teaching.
Maria
A tenure-tracked assistant professor of education, Maria self-identified as a Facilitator, but scored as a Formal Authority. Maria did not plan to become a professor. Instead, she began her teaching career in the public school system. Later, after pursuing advanced degrees, she began to teach on the tertiary level and continued as a professor of higher education. She sees her primary responsibility, and what she enjoys most about her job as helping people. She became a professor because "this was a way of actually bringing [discipline name omitted for anonymity], and seeing that there was a great need, so I could actually do something, so I always see my job as helping people." She models her teaching on whom she is teaching, not what she is teaching.
I think that anything that I do in my teaching has to respond to who am I teaching to, who are these teachers, so the things that I do with pre-service teachers are in a way different from what I do with, when I'm working with in-service teachers. But my main points of who to respond to who am I working with, and have the students as my main concern. That's what guides what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it.
Maria views technology as a means to achieve a goal, not as an end in itself. For her, instructional technology is simply a methodology or tool, one of many tools in the learning process.
I think in some cases the technology is the only tool that you can use to get to some specific contents, [sic] specific kinds of activities and experiences. That is the main reason I decided to use or not to use a specific technology, or for that matter anything that I use in my classes, because I think this is the appropriate way to do it, not just because it is cool to have these projections so lets bring it now. It is bringing something because it is important and because it is the best way of doing it, then I'll use it.
Karen
Karen, a tenure-tracked assistant professor in education, identified as a Personal Model, but scored equally as an Expert and Formal Authority. She felt from the time she finished her undergraduate work that she wanted to teach, but was unsure about how she would function and excel at a research university, especially when the favorite aspect of her job is teaching. She hopes to be able to give her students practical knowledge and abilities in her discipline that they can apply later.
I just hope that my students can come through my classroom with the pretty good idea of how to do research . . . [and to] be able to appreciate [discipline] as a science to be able to have to see the value in it.
Karen began using technology because of the convenience it offered her and her students for teaching and learning in her particular discipline. Her view of technology, like her philosophy of teaching, is a very concrete one. When asked about what she saw as the benefits of using instructional technology, she discussed very particular technologies and how those technologies help her own students.
Mark
Mark is a tenure-tracked assistant professor in education, and self-identified as a Facilitator, and scored as a Facilitator. He, like many of the other study participants in the field of education, began his career as a public school teacher. After receiving a higher degree, he realized that he wanted to know more, and so continued with doctoral-level studies. He realized during his first year of doctoral studies that he could help more people and further the field by becoming a professor. Additionally, as a professor, he could help himself continually learn, and this is the aspect of his job he likes the most. "I can learn through the students. I learn through my research. I learn through my own teaching and I'm learning to become an expertise [sic]." Mark believes that knowledge is the way to good choices, and hopes that he can provide the opportunity for that knowledge.
I'm getting to the point where I'm not real concerned what they think of me but I'm more concerned can I provide truly provide a very risk free opportunity for students to explore what they believe and to see if they can build on what they believe—not to try to change anything but just to add to their knowledge so that they can make the choices.
Mark was initially introduced to instructional technology because of a top-down mandate at his previous institution. He then decided to make the most of this mandate and try to make the use of the technology more meaningful. For him, knowledge provides meaning, and meaning is the basis for choice. To that end, he believes technology provides information, the basis of knowledge.
I think it [technology] opens up, it opens up this wealth of information of knowledge that we didn't have before available to a lot of people. And, I think that is something that has provided, that we can't just teach facts anymore cause it they are in print. They are all over. We don't have to memorize facts anymore but we need to know how to find them.
Mark's ideas about the drawbacks of technology are related to what he sees as the benefits, and both involve information. Mark thinks that without critical thinking, information is just about facts, and technology has enabled fact-gathering on a greater scale.
So they learn only to see what is in print and believe that that is the correct answer. And we are teaching them that way because we are telling them just to look for facts. We are saying that when you read an article you read anything just look for facts and that is the truth.