Considerations for Implementing Emerging Technologies and Innovative Pedagogies in Twenty-First-Century Classrooms

Abstract

How can we understand the role of new emerging technology (i.e. robotics kits, interactive whiteboards, iPads) in facilitating student engagement in today’s twenty-first-century classrooms? What considerations must educators, policymakers, and researchers alike make regarding how to best implement technology today? While technology integration is growing to become a mainstay in many classrooms worldwide, it is imperative that research highlight some of the concerns and challenges to using technology in today’s classrooms. This chapter is based on research exploring technology use and integration in elementary classrooms (K-8) across ten school boards in Ontario, Canada. Interviews and observations with educators and students utilizing various technologies highlighted four major considerations for implementing new technologies today in a way that may enable long-term engagement with materials: (1) teacher pedagogy; (2) teacher training; (3) collaborative learning environments; and (4) greater access of digital tools across schools. As this chapter suggests, the how and why of technology can be thought of as the real markers of whether digital tools alone can transform student engagement in twenty-first-century classrooms. Such contingencies highlighted can be seen as a way to ensure that teachers avoid failed digital rituals (Collins 2004) and ensure that they are able to align rituals utilizing technology and digital cultural capital with school goals (Bourdieu 1973). This research provides new efforts to understand where educational practices and processes may be reconfigured by new technological practices, along perhaps, more empowering lines, if they are properly implemented.