"The"StepsStages to Teacher-Training
The first step is to realize there really isn't a set of steps to go by. There are as many viable cultivating strategies to urge an epiphany along as there are blinking lights on our imaginary map. Still, and no doubt this is well-documented in thousands of articles elsewhere, the following stages are helpful in ever-changing contexts:
- Consider students' needs. This first stage repeats in every other stage, numerous times. This is the phrase that should always be on the tip of your tongue in committee meetings, at the forefront of what you highlight in grant applications, and italicized in all departmental memos. In body and soul. We teach writing by examining audience. So too must we consider how to create teaching and learning environments for our teachers by examining students' needs.
- Investigate teacher praxis. The second stage, really, is one that planners often forget to pay close attention to. As the field of computers and writing continues to develop, and an increasing number of teachers have more substantial experiences teaching with computers, the faculty in our institutions will logically have a greater base of techno-fluency. That would be logical, right? But you know about teachers who have had success with a reader or rhetoric way back when and then stood by it past its natural life expectancy? Similarly, like many paradoxes in the information age, many teachers learn one tool yet do not apply the good teaching strategies they develop and practice using it when working with other tools. Spend time observing, interviewing, and reflecting on how teachers teach--both with and without various technologies--in your institution as well as in schools nearby.
- Determine available resources. The third basic stage is also a practical one. Take a look at the available human and technological resources available to both students and teachers. It's possible that the students' learning needs and the teachers' instructing styles can best capitalize on already existing resources. It's likely that by first considering student needs and then teacher praxis, some understanding of specific resource and training needs will become evident.
Trent Batson and Judy Williamson created a similar rubric called STEPS: A Strategy for Technologically Enlightened Pedagogies through The Epiphany Project.
Wait just a minute here. Isn't this the rhetorical triangle?
Why yes, in a way we have a "reader," a "writer," and a "text"; that is, if you force student, teacher, and resources into the metaphor. But by examining student needs, reflecting on teachers' current and desired established practices, and listing the resources we have, we lay the way for an epiphany project, Pedagogy, Practice, and the Technology of Writing. In this project, for instance, we shaped the needs of our students and our future students, investigated how our teachers and teachers of our future students sequence technology and pedagogy, and then looked out available administrative and technological resources we had at Ball State University. We in fact didn't have all the human resources we needed to meet the needs of our teachers and students, so we invited guest speakers.