In 2013–14, a remarkable 20.5% (154,636) of all Master’s degrees were earned by students in the field of education. Only the field of business boasts a higher percentage of total Master’s degrees (25.5%). It is a fair assumption that most individuals with a Master’s degree in education do not plan to teach in higher education, but rather choose graduate school for (re)certification, career advancement, and/or economic incentives. The percentage drop in the proportion of doctoral degrees earned in education adds credence to the above claim. Doctorates in education trail such fields as social and behavioral science, natural science and mathematics, and computer sciences and engineering.
Given that many individuals that have a Master’s degree in education teach, or will teach, in K-12 classrooms, I feel it is imperative to think about the ideas of digital pedagogy that run rampant in schools of education and teacher preparation programs. How do we prepare classroom teachers to use digital tools and pedagogies? What implicit or explicit assumptions do graduate education programs make about digital learning and pedagogy? How does this affect elementary and primary school students? While it is extremely important to think about how we prepare graduate teachers, I think it is equally important to think about how and what those graduate classes teach K-12 teachers. Graduate schools of education provide a pivotal opportunity for instruction with critical digital pedagogy. If graduate teachers are not trained in, or with, critical digital pedagogy, then classroom teachers may also find this skill set lacking. As a result, young students will remain unexposed to critical digital pedagogy within our schools.
One of the fundamental theses of critical pedagogy rests in the assertion that education is not an ideologically neutral task. A critical digital pedagogy extends this line of thought to include the intrinsic non neutrality of digital tools, practices, and pedagogies. Jesse Stommel writes, “education (and, to an even greater extent, edtech) has misrepresented itself as objective, quantifiable, apolitical.” The misrepresentation Stommel highlights is evident in the pedestrian and positivist digital pedagogy common in graduate schools of education.
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Kim Flintoff
onto Digital Learning - beyond eLearning and Blended Learning |
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