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Technology choices for leadership classrooms.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

This paper demonstrates the potential for technology to improve performance-based assessment and achieve reflective practice in educational leadership classrooms. Videotaping performances is relatively easy, but distribution logistics required by reflective practice are difficult to resolve. Technology adoption literature helps to explain how potential benefits are weighed against implementation problems to determine the likelihood of technology adoption in graduate classrooms. Recording and distribution technology will be adopted to improve performance-based assessment and achieve reflective practice only if instructors perceive it as useful and easy to use.

Introduction

Preparing teachers and other educators for leadership positions in schools and school districts is a daunting task. Although conveying technical information such as budget and teacher evaluation rules and regulations is relatively simple, teaching people how to lead is not. Bridges (1992) and Copland (2001) suggest that prospective school leaders should be confronted with open-ended problems to solve as a means to learning how to lead. Therefore, effective leadership programs should be structured to take future administrators beyond discussion and presentation and into the realm of engaging in authentic leadership tasks. Yet, experience alone is insufficient without collaborative reflection (Osterman & Kottkamp, 2004). A major challenge in preparing educational leaders is to provide the right balance among classroom experiences, assessments and reflection. Performance-based assessment (PBA) is the deliberate evaluation of classroom experiences that require students to engage in authentic professional work. Activities upon which PBA is based, commonly referred to as performances, help prospective leaders learn how to lead. But giving students consequential feedback on their attempts to practice leadership is challenging, particularly when the performance is a fleeting experience such as role playing. Despite the problems involved in PBA, it is an effective way of linking experiences to reflection to maximize learning, and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) requires it. Reflective practice uses group input to move beyond changing students' views through instructor and self-assessments to changing their actions (Osterman & Kottkamp, 2004), thus expanding the benefits of PBA.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the potential for technology to improve both PBA and reflective practice. Video technology can help achieve a combination of the two, but technology integration is not simple and occurs inconsistently across classrooms. To explain this inconsistency, we reflect on past classroom practice and turn to theoretical and empirical literature to analyze the implementation barriers and problems associated with using video technology. User-friendly technology provides the means to achieve both better PBA and reflective practice. We begin with a brief scenario that demonstrates a need for better ways of capturing authentic classroom experiences. Following the scenario is a description of the promise and problems associated with applying digital...

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