The Potential of Directed Instruction to Teach Effectively Technology Usage

Abstract

Currently, teacher educational systems tend to develop their teacher’s knowledge to effectively integrate technology in teaching. Consequently, numerous studies have attempted to describe strategies, models and approaches to develop teachers’ knowledge for teaching with technology. However, most teachers are still following their traditional teaching methods regarding their cultural, individual and situational conditions. While teaching technology in traditional form and separated from pedagogy and content has already shown its failure in many studies, this study suggests an advanced directed instruction teaching model for preparing teachers for teaching with technology. In this study, directed instruction teaching model offers a step-by-step process to individually guide pre-service teachers how to infuse the appropriate technology for teaching the selected content. Subsequently, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is selected to define and measure technology integration. The result of this study demonstrated that participating teachers learned technology integration in the new directed setting as well as a constructivist setting. In particular, this study pointed out how the suggested directed instructional teaching model could be easily situated in the traditional setting and helped non-constructivist teacher educators in collaborative or individual learning. Keywords: Teacher education, instructional technology, directed instruction , TPACK, technology integration