The CTELL Project: New Ways Technology Can Help Educate Tomorrow’s Reading Teachers

William H. Teale
Donald J. Leu, Jr.
Linda D. Labbo
Chuck Kinzer

Technology profoundly affects the learning and teaching of literacy, as well as the nature of literacy itself. It always has. The development of book technologies in the early 1500s set in motion the need for book literacies and many of the abilities we currently teach in our classrooms. Today, new literacies emerge as new technologies for information and communication demand new skills for their effective use (Leu & Kinzer, 2000; Leu, Mallette, & Karchmer, 2001; Luke, 2000; Reinking, McKenna, Labbo, & Kieffer, 1998). These include the literacies of word processors (e.g., using a spell checker or knowing how to format a paper), the literacies of e-mail (e.g., managing a digital address book or effectively using an electronic mailing list or listserv), and the literacies of the Web (e.g., using search engines to locate information on the Internet or knowing effective strategies to critically evaluate website information). As a community of literacy educators, we are responding to the emergence of these new literacies in many ways; from this column, to this themed issue of The Reading Teacher, and to the recently adopted International Reading Association (2001) position statement on literacy and technology. It is clear that to be fully literate our students need to be prepared for these new literacies.

Schools across the United States have developed various programs and strategies both to add technology to the tools children use routinely for obtaining information and to instruct children in the new literacies. The effects of such initiatives are felt variously in individual schools or districts, depending on factors such as the ability to purchase hardware and software, Internet access, and the technological know-how of teachers and curriculum personnel. In some situations, children rather than teachers provide the impetus to add technology to the instructional program. Whatever the case, the impact of technology cannot be denied.

Gradually, the focus of many conversations among professionals in education is turning to issues of literacy and technology. Such a focus is extremely important. In this month’s column, however, we draw attention to another aspect of literacy and technology that has been far less examined—how people entering K–8 teaching receive their education about teaching reading and language arts as part of their initial certification programs. We know the statistics about the need to hire more than 2 million teachers over the next 10 years and about the shortage of teachers projected to occur in the same time frame. We also know that the U.S. government officials at national and state levels have emphasized the importance of teaching reading in their educational platforms. From research in our own field (e.g., Bond & Dykstra, 1997; Duffy & Hoffman, 1999), as well as in education more generally, we see clearly that the teacher quality is the most important factor in student achievement. As the report Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998) indicates from its synthesis of relevant research: Young children of diverse abilities, ethnicities, and socioeconomic levels learn best in classrooms where teachers are expert decision makers, able to make the best use of available curriculum materials and resources to design productive instructional activities that meet their students’ literacy needs. These factors suggested to us that this is a good time to examine the current state of preservice teacher education and to explore how technology can help prepare new teachers to deal with the realities of teaching reading and writing in classrooms.

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Preservice teacher preparation

Interest in teacher education has heated up in the United States following a number of national reports such as the one in 1996 from the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future and the Teacher Survey on Professional Development and Training (Lewis, Parsad, Carey, Bartfai, Farris, & Smerdon, 1999). The latter indicated that less than half of new teachers feel well prepared to meet the challenges of school classrooms. On the national level, the Carnegie Corporation has launched “Teachers for a New Era,” a substantial initiative designed to stimulate development of excellent teacher education programs (http://www.carnegie.org/sub/program/teachers_execsum.html). In addition, the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) has recently announced new standards for accrediting teacher education programs (http://ncate.org/).

With respect specifically to the preparation of teachers to provide reading and writing instruction, the International Reading Association has been conducting a 3-year study of excellence in 4-year undergraduate teacher preparation programs. This effort, the “National Commission on Excellence in Elementary Teacher Preparation for Reading Instruction,” is examining relationships among teacher preparation programs, beginning teachers’ reading instruction, and children’s reading achievement. Working with high-quality teacher preparation programs across the U.S., the Commission was able to identify eight features that led to excellence. The final one, a useful starting point for our considerations of technology and reading teacher preparation, was that the programs all had this in common:

A discriminating…continuum of procedures for maintaining standards and academic accountability…[which] insured that teachers [graduating from the programs] are knowledgeable, have the necessary skills, and are able to teach reading effectively. (http://www.reading.org/advocacy/commission.html; see National Commission, 2000)

This is a lofty accomplishment indeed, because as recent surveys and our conversations with school administrators and first- and second-year teachers have shown, many beginning teachers feel less than well prepared to teach reading. What is missing, according to most of these teachers? They say it’s enough opportunities (a) to be in classrooms of capable literacy teachers (to see what the children and teachers do and understand how they do it) and (b) to then try out the effective strategies they see there.

A number of factors impede such opportunities. Among the commonly cited ones are the lack of time in current certification programs (most have few education courses and sometimes only one or two reading methods courses) and the lack of good mentor teachers who are strong in literacy instruction. As is often the case, the teachers who provide outstanding literacy instruction are usually in such demand to assist with staff development and mentoring first- or second-year teachers in their buildings that they rarely have time to supervise preservice field work or student teaching.

Another issue related to preparing effective reading teachers for the primary-grade years was raised in the report of the National Academy of Education Commission on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties (Snow et al., 1998). This influential policy document pointed out that even though preservice teacher education courses aim to prepare educators to implement exemplary literacy instructional practices, developing the ability to engage in the complex problem solving required to effectively teach reading and writing is extremely difficult to realize.

There are no easy solutions to the challenges of (a) increasing the time preservice teachers get to spend in the company of good reading teachers and (b) educating prospective teachers in how to make principled instructional decisions and orchestrate effective literacy instruction for a classroom of children. However, one possible solution currently receiving attention is the use of case approaches, which let prospective teachers visit and study classrooms with strong literacy instruction.

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Using case approaches with technology in literacy teacher education

Many professions, faced with preparing skilled practitioners to work in complex environments that require rapid and thoughtful decision making, have found important advantages in using case approaches. Professional educators in law, medicine, and social work, for example, often use a case approach. Although there are many different types of case-based instruction, most include a rich, authentic context and allow students to observe the actions of experts as they analyze and critique the most appropriate responses. Sometimes, these decisions are critiqued in turn as students develop analytic and decision making skills so essential to their profession. Often, these cases are presented in a text-based narrative.

The predominant notion behind a case approach is learning to think like an expert. Experts differ from novices in that they have a richer base of knowledge, are able to recognize and analyze patterns, and are fluent in applying knowledge and solving problems in practical situations (Alvermann & Rubin, 1990). Through interactions with professionals in the field, opportunities to discuss issues with classmates, reflective thinking, and scaffolded guidance from their instructors, novices learn to think like their more knowledgeable professional guides. Preservice candidates learn to go beyond procedural knowledge (e.g., the ability to carry out the steps in a strategy) and declarative knowledge (e.g., the ability to define a strategy) to develop conditional knowledge—the ability to analyze effectively and creatively, which Reinking, Mealey, and Ridgeway (1993) noted should be at the center of professional development in literacy education. Case instruction focuses not on mere repetition of descriptions or definitions of the steps in an effective literacy practice but on providing organized occasions for accessing a knowledge base that informs effective instructional decisions. Teacher candidates have opportunities to move into expert realms of decision making when they engage in case-based educational experiences such as readings, problem solving, and discussions.

Recently, a number of projects have begun to employ case methodologies in educating literacy professionals. This is the approach recently taken in work completed at Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee) by Kinzer, Risko, and their colleagues (Kinzer & Risko, 1998; Kinzer, Singer Gabella, & Rieth, 1994) using multimedia, case-based instruction for preservice teachers. Another project by Greenleaf and her colleagues (Greenleaf & Schoenbach, 2001) developed student literacy learning cases and case-inquiry protocols that are used in conjunction with professional development of inservice middle and high school teachers. The cases consist of print and video excerpts from interviews and reading performances of secondary school students. Teachers are led through protocols designed to develop their knowledge of how meaning is constructed in teachers’ and students’ interactions with particular texts. Greenleaf investigated how analyses of interviews, teacher-written reflections, classroom work samples, and teacher participation in case discussions help reveal how case inquiry contributes to teachers’ professional development.

The Internet provides new and increasingly powerful potentials for case approaches. One powerful feature of Internet and computer technology is that it can give thousands of preservice teachers virtual access to real classroom settings in ways unheard of a few years ago. Think beyond “reality” television shows to technologies that put the viewers in charge, allowing them to explore a classroom by accessing a variety of instructional scenes; samples of children’s work; assessment data; or ancillary information about the teacher, students, specialists, parents, and the school principal.

Digital video cases add an extra dimension to case-based instruction, enabling teacher candidates to see as well as deeply study a range of identified literacy instructional practices used in context-rich, complex situations. The teacher candidates have the opportunity to engage in analysis, reflection, and decision making that encourages them to think like an expert. This activity modifies what many beginning teachers conceptualize as procedural steps in various literacy “methods” in order to meet differing instructional needs in the “real world” they encounter in elementary classrooms.

Although they do not represent what most would consider a case, some videos of instructional segments in literacy education are on the Internet. These videos of specific instruction routines include the Language Arts Video Series developed at the California Learning Exchange at the University of California, Irvine (http://www.gse.uci.edu/cli/languagevideos.html), and the Reading Classroom Explorer project developed at Michigan State University, East Lansing (http://reading.educ.msu.edu/rce/index.asp). Using video and Internet technologies to present more complex and authentic cases of literacy instruction holds great promise for everyone concerned with preparing new teachers.

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Case Technologies for Early Literacy Learning, (CTELL)

Funded through the Interagency Educational Research Initiative under the auspices of the National Science Foundation, the CTELL project (http://ctell.uconn.edu) is an ambitious effort to determine if the use of anchored video cases of effective K–3 literacy teachers in preservice reading methods courses can (a) enhance preservice teacher candidates’ knowledge of best practices for teaching reading, (b) result in the implementation of these practices in the candidates’ classrooms when they become teachers, and (c) foster teachers who teach in ways that positively and significantly affect children’s reading achievement. This 5-year project brings together an interdisciplinary team from many areas including preservice teacher education, early childhood literacy development, instructional technology, cognitive psychology, survey research, quantitative and qualitative methodologies, computer-related early literacy instruction, and Web design.

The home page for CTELL (http://ctell.uconn.edu)

At CTELL, we have focused on developing a specific approach to the use of cases in literacy teacher education around a central construct—anchored video cases. Anchor cases (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt, 1990; Lundeberg et al., 1999) involve sustained, repeated explorations of classroom instructional scenarios that allow preservice teachers to understand the kinds of problems teachers encounter and the knowledge they use in their decision making. That is, video cases become a common anchor for instructors and students to construct knowledge through discussions of theory, research, and practice. Cases contain videos of classroom lessons and related materials that serve as a springboard for discussion, as a model, and as a practice tool. The random access capabilities of the Internet and CD technologies let teachers and students retrieve clips of interactions for review and study, a powerful capability not possible in the real world and difficult to accomplish with videotapes. In addition, video cases can provide students with (a) Internet extension assignments as well as class and course readings, (b) an interactive online discussion forum, (c) links to other relevant sites (e.g., experts in the field), and (d) access to supplemental information (e.g., running record sessions, hard copies of testing instruments, lesson plans, and summaries of information about students).

A cognitive apprenticeship model undergirds these digital anchor cases because teachers and students share visual images, sustained and malleable video clips of practice, related readings, and a social context that provides for exploration of in-depth, effective decision making and classroom interventions. This theoretical insight is at the center of the use of such cases. Preliminary findings from previous research on digital anchor cases (Kinzer & Risko, 1998; Labbo & Field, 1997; Labbo, Stahl, & Stahl, 2000; Risko, 1995) indicated that preservice students engage in high levels of problem solving, and they gain expertise, confidence, and the ability to implement literacy instructional strategies in the field. Sustained, repeated explorations of classroom instructional scenarios and best practices appear to enable students to understand the levels of complex decision making involved in real classroom situations. We are employing this approach in CTELL. There are a number of different facets to CTELL, but most important, and the focus in this column, is the development and use of anchored video cases in preservice literacy methods courses.

Over the 5 years of the project, we are developing 12 cases—4 at each grade level, K–3. One case at each grade level focuses on a classroom with rich and innovative uses of technology in conjunction with literacy instruction. The cases will be implemented in preservice literacy methods courses throughout the U.S. and tested for their effects. Each classroom case consists of the following major components:

From this description, you can see the complex nature of each case. We believe this comprehensive approach to case development is essential for new teachers to develop the critical insights so important to classroom reading instruction. It is not sufficient, we believe, simply to present isolated instructional segments and expect new teachers to develop the complex insights they require to respond to the many individual needs within a classroom.

One challenge we face is designing an interface that makes navigation within each case as intuitive and as easy to learn as possible. We have a specially designed interface for accessing the cases. This interface permits the university instructor and students to quickly locate information. A special feature allows students and instructors to bookmark any segment of a video for later retrieval and analysis. These bookmarks may also be exchanged via e-mail so that a student or an instructor can invite others to access a particular video segment with their message. We refer to these video bookmarks as the “currency” within the system we are developing. As students from around the United States participate in an electronic mailing list discussion group about the cases they are using, they can exchange with one another links to any specific video segment they reference in their messages.

The philosophy behind the construction of the cases—and the overall project—has been guided by a set of 12 research-based principles, identified as being effective in beginning reading instruction. These principles—relating to everything from phonemic awareness and phonics to computer technologies, students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and the teacher’s ability to make principled instructional decisions while they orchestrate effective classroom instruction—emerged from a comprehensive review of research on early literacy instruction that we did the first year of the project. Details on these principles are in the booklet Beginning Reading Instruction (Teale, Kinzer, Labbo, & Leu, 2002).

The cases function as a flexible tool for use in preservice literacy teacher education courses. There is no blueprint or set of directions for how the cases are to be employed. Rather, the intent is that they can serve in a variety of ways, depending on the instructors’ students, teaching style, and course content. At this time, the cases are restricted to those participating in the research project, so that data can be gathered systematically on their use and the best possible end product can be refined. However, we have made one anchor video available at http://ctell.uconn.edu/sample.html to provide an indication of what is available through the CTELL project. This site does not contain the operational interface for the project, so it is not possible to sample the various instructional tools and resources that the CTELL case website offers. It does contain the anchor video segment (about 15 minutes long) for one of our cases.

We are excited about the prospects of this resource for reading-teacher education. Our future research will explore how best to use these rich cases of effective practice to support new teachers in early literacy classrooms. It will also evaluate the extent to which a video case approach such as this helps new teachers develop the insights so critical to effective reading instruction.

For more on Case Technologies for Early Literacy Learning in general, please visit http://ctell.uconn.edu/. For information on becoming involved as a methods course instructor in the CTELL research project, please go to the Become Involved section of the CTELL website at the same address. Our intent is that CTELL serve as a resource for the literacy education community across the U.S. and in other countries.

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References

Alvermann, D., & Rubin, D. (1990). Teacher assessment and teacher change in classroom communication behaviors. Reading Research & Instruction, 29, 18–25.
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Bond, G.L., & Dykstra, R. (1997). The cooperative research program in first-grade reading instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 32, 348–428.
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Kinzer, C., & Risko, V. (1998). Multimedia and enhanced learning: Transforming preservice education. In D. Reinking, M. McKenna, L. Labbo, & R. Kieffer (Eds.), Handbook of technology and literacy: Transformations in a post-typographic world (pp. 185–202). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
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Kinzer, C.K., Singer Gabella, M., & Rieth, H. (1994). An argument for using multimedia and anchored instruction to facilitate mildly disabled students’ learning of literacy and social studies. Technology and Disability Quarterly, 3(2), 117–128.
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Labbo, L.D., & Field, S.L. (1997). Windows into two classrooms of diversity (A Project Report to the College of Education Multicultural Task Force). Athens, GA: The University of Georgia.
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Risko, V. (1995). Using videodisc-based cases to promote preservice teachers’ problem solving and mental model building. In W.M. Linek & E.G. Sturtevant (Eds.), Growing literacy (pp. 173–187). Pittsburgh, PA: College Reading Association.
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Snow, C.E., Burns, M.S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1998). Preventing reading difficulties in young children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
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About the Authors

Teale teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago (1040 West Harrison, Chicago, IL 60607-7133, USA). Labbo teaches in the Department of Reading Education at the University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA. Kinzer teaches at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

The editor welcomes reader comments on this department. E-mail: djleu@uconn.edu. Mail: Donald J. Leu, Jr., Neag School of Education, University of Connecticut, 249 Glenbrook Road, U-33, Storrs, CT 06269-2033, USA.


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Citation: Teale, W.H., Leu, D.J., Jr., Labbo, L.D., Kinzer, C. (2002, April). The CTELL project: New ways technology can help educate tomorrow’s reading teachers [Exploring Literacy on the Internet department]. The Reading Teacher, 55(7). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/elec_index.asp?HREF=/electronic/RT/4-02_Column/index.html

Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Published April 2002 in The Reading Teacher
Posted simultaneously in Reading Online
© 2002 International Reading Association, Inc.   ISSN 1096-1232