Technologizing Teachers’ Professional Development?

Abstract

Teachers and technology are always “intermingled” nowadays. The Chinese Ministry of Education (MoE) recently launched another ambitious nationwide project—the National Project of lmproving School Teachers’ ICT Competence (October 2013)—to “comprehensively improve” schoolteachers’ ability to apply information technology. Accordingly the MoE issued a new “standard”—the Standard of School Teachers’ ICT Competence (Trail) (May 2014)—in order to standardize such ability, so as to “promote the informationalization of education, deepen curriculum reform,” and to “lay a solid foundation for teachers’ professional autonomous development” (MoE, May 2014, p. 5). The application of educational technology is not only an educational practice, but also a cultural belief, and from the current “Project” and “Standard” statements, we see it is also a government behavior, which has stipulated how students are to learn, and how teachers are to teach.