Among the critical issues that teachers and teacher educators face is the issue of effective and appropriate uses of technology. Although much attention has been given to practical and ethical questions related to students using computers, less attention has been paid to the use of computers in teacher education, specifically in the professionalization of new teachers.

Using data from several electronic discussion groups for new teaching assistants and preservice secondary teachers, we discuss how the electronic discussion groups have provided new teachers a supportive rhetorical space in which to engage in professional, critical discourse about pracitcal, ethical, and professional issues in ways they often do not in classrooms. Also, we discuss how new teachers need to be aware of the political and politicizing effects of technology. The students who participated in our LISTSERVs politicized many threads and discussions, sometimes by introducing explicitly political aspects of the issues they were discussing, such as religion and prayer in school or the teaching of literature by and about homosexuals. At other times, it was their attempts to exercise power and authority in a certain discourse thread that constituted the political issue, provoking rhetorical resistance and counter-moves. The effects of this political discussion enabled some students to reflect critically on the inevitability of political content in the teaching of writing, the political and politicizing nature of professional discourse, and the political opportunities and pitfalls of the rhetoric of email.