Twenty-first-century digital devices are packaged with the promise of revolutionizing student learning through access to more knowledge, increased organization, wider connectivity to the world, and more. With such powerful tools at the fingertips of students, what role is left for teachers? One high schooler we interviewed said that students have “an all-knowing box of genius at arm’s reach everywhere you go.” If so, does this undermine teachers’ responsibilities? What our team saw and heard over several years of research at Modern Christian Schools suggested that teachers still have a crucial role to play. This research reminded us that even though a world of informational possibilities may be a click away, digital devices do not deliver wisdom or discernment. They do not constructively shape students’ Christian commitments, offer cohesive delivery of curricular concepts, or link academic content to student formation. These tasks are the purview of teachers. Teachers bring experience and professional training to bear as they design teaching and learning.
Technology does not diminish these tasks (Philip and Garcia). In fact, our research suggests that the integration of digital technologies increases the need for intentional and effective pedagogical design. Teachers in our study found that the infusion of new digital tools, paired with intentional and sustained professional development, promoted a rekindled focus on their teaching. Nearly 80 percent of teachers at Modern Christian Schools agreed that the use of technology at the school forced them to “think more critically about [their] own pedagogy.” From among these teachers, we sought out exemplary educators—those who demonstrated the most thoughtful and effective technology integration, according to their peers. What made them stand out? Here I’ll share the insights we gained about what distinguishes these teachers and how schools might best support them as they strive to teach well with technology.
Educators who excelled at technology integration were distinguished, in part, by a commitment to continually redesign and refine their teaching.
A Willingness to Adapt and the Capacity for Connectedness
Educators who excelled at technology integration were distinguished, in part, by a commitment to continually redesign and refine their teaching. Change and innovation were a hallmark of their practice. One teacher reflected,
I think that’s what makes me a better teacher. . . . I keep learning new things. . . . I think a teacher has always got to continually work at getting better at what they do. If you ever stop and think, “Yeah, I got my canned lesson plan” and just go with it, it’s time to get a different job. I really believe that.
This teacher’s openness to learning new things made him a respected leader within the school when it came to teaching with technology. We watched his skill in action as he turned a powerful encounter with an online news article into an opportunity to reimagine an existing math unit, extending it to help students explore Christian responses to injustice. After reading about the impact of the global water crisis on women and children in developing nations, he considered ways to invite students to respond. He redesigned lessons on scaling, percentage, ratios, and fractions, asking students to use the internet to investigate real-world facts about the effect of the water crisis in underdeveloped nations. They then used scaling and percentages to compare statistics between populations in the countries researched and their own school population. To conclude the unit, students reflected on what God calls them to do in response to the inequalities and injustices surrounding the global water crisis. The teacher leveraged the readily available internet resources as the foundation for a unit that promoted academic content within a broader formational concern with Christian responses to injustice.
This example highlights technological imagination and innovation and also shows a teacher bridging his passions and the curriculum. His teaching was infused by what broke his heart, inspired him, and sparked his Christian convictions. His identity permeated the curriculum in ways that were authentic and infectious, inviting students into learning. What he brought to the classroom can best be described as a “capacity for connectedness,” something that emerges when teachers “weave a complex web of connections among themselves, their subjects, and their students so that students can learn to weave a world for themselves” (Palmer 11). We found that teachers who were recognized and respected by their colleagues for their thoughtful use of technology often embodied both a willingness to adapt and a capacity for connectedness. These two qualities are also seen more broadly in the practice of exceptional teachers known for their creative and innovative teaching (Henriksen and Mishra; Vannatta and Fordham).
Pedagogical Play
Another trait distinguishing teachers who successfully moved from inspiration to innovation was a sense of pedagogical play. These teachers delighted in experimenting with digital tools and their curriculum. Consider, for instance, a Bible teacher who found the resources already available on the internet lacking, so instead turned to technology to enhance how he delivered content. He says, “For the most part, the tools I use are not tools I’m giving to the students. I’m playing with them myself. . . . The technology that I use has been more playful . . . as a way of inviting them into doing the same thing.”
Playing with the technology as he worked to address curricular goals, this teacher developed an engaging, highly informative, and inventive FaceTime call to first-century Corinth. Interacting with a prerecorded video of dialogue partners, the teacher appeared to his students to be carrying on a back-and-forth conversation with the first-century Corinthians on the screen. The technology-supported delivery of background knowledge about Corinth invited students into the unit in innovative and exciting ways. As the teacher reminded us, it also invited students into an openness to experimenting with technology.
Teachers’ playful approaches to designing units and lessons should not be confused with a haphazard approach to planning. Experimentation with technology happened within clear and intentional curricular and pedagogical goals. The choice about how or whether to use digital devices was always framed within the context of the overarching goals. Situated within the professional expertise that teachers brought to curricular design, pedagogical play was critical for learning to teach in a digital classroom. This is unsurprising when we consider the fact that intentional play and creativity fuel one another, and these are distinguishing qualities of exemplary teachers (Henriksen et al.). Play also provides rich opportunities for teachers to develop discernment and wisdom (Blomberg 179–208), both of which are necessary for teaching well with technology.
The potential for failure when trying to integrate technology into teaching and learning is real.
Failing Forward
Teachers who embraced play and experimentation also warned that teaching in a digital classroom is at times a risky venture. New approaches to engaging students in the curriculum don’t always go as planned, digital devices inevitably fail at critical moments, and internet intrusions create distractions for all.
The potential for failure when trying to integrate technology into teaching and learning is real. Teachers who succeeded in harnessing the power of pedagogical play were aware of this reality and embraced an openness to failure. They were not deflected by unforeseen obstacles; instead they embraced setbacks and then moved forward, sharing their own technological vulnerability and failures with their students. We saw this failing forward mindset in a second-grade classroom as a teacher, stumped by a problem in a digital presentation template that was frustrating all students, turned to her students for help. We saw it as a math teacher invited students into a conversation about why the technological choices he made the previous day hindered their accurate understanding of a concept. Such teachers understood that sharing setbacks and revealing vulnerability conveyed important lessons for students. A teacher co-teaching in a middle school classroom described the impact of this mindset:
But I can see it coming through in the way he teaches and the whole mindset . . . is that you sometimes just need to let up some control and be OK with kids taking risks and recognize we learn by doing and failing, and that’s OK for all of us, and that we are all in that same [boat]. . . . We’re all learners that way.
Teachers willing to share their own failures give students a glimpse into the imperfections we all share. Failure in the classroom creates space to model grace-filled responses. Failure, experienced as an opportunity for grace and growth, can be understood in light of God’s plan for shaping us into who we are becoming.
Supporting Teaching with Technology
Successful technological innovation in the classroom is built on a school culture that embraces adaptation and innovation while intentionally grounding it in the central academic, formational, and missional concerns of the school. Teachers flourish or fade within the frame of the larger school culture. So what can we learn from Modern Christian Schools’ teachers and administrators about how to create this supportive culture?
First, teachers felt most effective when the school provided a variety of collaborative learning opportunities (e.g., school-wide professional development, grade-/subject-level planning time devoted to technology, one-on-one meetings with technology coaches). In our surveys, teachers reported that learning from their own colleagues was the most helpful factor in preparing them for teaching with technology. Learning with and from one another promoted technological considerations in light of their own subjects and students and also in the context of the school’s Christian commitments.
Second, teachers noted that they need ongoing support in learning how to teach with technology. Nearly a decade into their technology program, teachers knew there was work yet to be done. An administrator reminded us that teaching with technology is “a race, and the finish line just keeps moving forward all the time. You never get to cross it.” Schools that are invested in technology, no matter how large or small, must commit the time and resources necessary for supporting thoughtful and effective technology use.
Third, teachers felt supported as expectations from administrators shifted from focusing on how often technology was used to how well it was used in the classroom. There is an understandable temptation when investing in expensive devices to encourage teachers to use technology often. But such pressures lead to misuse. An administrator reminded us that “it takes as much discipline and boundary to not use it, and we have to permit that [and] expect that there are times that it needs to be closed and gone.” Learning to teach with new technologies involves both knowing how and when to use the technology and knowing when to put the devices away.
In a digital landscape where the only constant is constant change, teachers will need to be well equipped to effectively design teaching and learning while considering digital technologies.
Our research suggests that an openness toward change, a capacity for connectedness, a playful approach to pedagogical design, and a posture toward failing forward all contribute to exemplary teaching with technology. Schools adopting new technologies also have a central role to play by establishing a culture that promotes ongoing, collaborative development opportunities focused on teaching well with technology. Such findings offer a glimpse of a complex web of factors that influence digitally infused teaching and learning. These and other findings are pursued in more detail in the book , forthcoming May 2020, written to promote reflection and action for Christian educators inspired to teach well with technology.
Works Cited
Blomberg, Doug. (Dordt College Press, 2007).
Henriksen, Danah, et al. “Play as a Foundational Thinking Skill and Transdisciplinary Habit of Mind.” 59, no. 3 (2015): 5–9.
Henriksen, Danah, and Punya Mishra. “We Teach Who We Are.” 117, no. 7 (2015): 1–46
Palmer, Parker J. (Jossey-Bass, 1997).
Philip, Thomas, and Antero Garcia. “The Importance of Still Teaching the iGeneration: New Technologies and the Centrality of Pedagogy.” 83, no. 2 (2013): 300–319.
Vannatta, Rachel A., and Nancy Fordham. “Teacher Dispositions as Predictors of Classroom Technology Use.” 36, no. 3 (2004): 253–71.
Kara Sevensma has taught in the undergraduate and graduate education programs at Calvin University (Grand Rapids, MI) and is currently supervising students in the College of Education and Human Services at Lenoir-Rhyne University (Hickory, NC). Her research has focused on faith and technology, digital literacies, and supporting the literacy practices of students with disabilities.
