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Educational Leadership Paper
The educational leadership paper talks about how the educator will respond to the growing needs of education to engage and provide learning opportunities for today’s students. The paper will contain the educator’s thoughtful analysis of technology utilization (instructional uses of technology), student needs, which include unique needs and abilities, the educator roles (students as a learner, teacher’s role in 21st-century), and the connections between learning vs. teaching. In today’s learning, educational leaders were easily become overwhelmed by the changing landscape of the field of academia. In the past, learning was more on the traditional learning environment, and technology was not introduce. However, getting an excellent education does not necessarily require high-tech gadgets (technology), but modern technology can and does enhance the educator’s ability to be more productive, efficient, and to reach students with diverse learning styles.
The technology was useful in digital natives societies because most of our students were born in 21st-century culture. However, there are some negative effects when technology was used in the classroom, but the teachers can avoid the negative effects of using technology, and they can use the technology wisely. Using the technology in the classroom can benefit the school district, and it is also a tool that can use to empower and engage the students that were born in the digital natives’ societies. The students have needs when they start school, so the teachers need to find ways to understand their student’s needs. Every student in our classroom had special needs when it comes to learning because every student has a different style of learning and the ability to learn. After understanding the students need, it is the educator responsibility or role to help their students achieve their educational goals. Teachers need to know their students as a learner so that they can understand how they can teach their students. The teachers in the 21st century are looking forward to the future, and they are aware of the ever-changing trends in technology and are in tune with what the future may bring to education. Finally, connecting the learning vs. teaching, and they are some concept included so that the teacher can further understand the difference between the two of them. In the 21st-century, technology was beneficial in the classroom because we can reach every student in our classroom.
Technology Utilization
The traditional learning was always part of our educational system, but in our current society, technology was always blooming, and it became more accessible for all of us to access. Technology is everywhere around us and it almost every part of our culture, and it does affect how we live, work, play, and most importantly learn (Mareco, 2017). Technology can help teachers and students in the class because the teacher can provide visual effect for those students that can only learn through visual. However, the educator would like to share some information about the effects of technology in the class. Rhonda Christensen (2002) author of Effects of Technology Integration Education of the Attitudes of Teachers and Students comes to two different conclusions from the collected data. First, Christensen (2002) concludes that technology has a positive effect on teachers, which encourages students to enjoy learning from technology. The second conclusion is that teachers who use technology have a higher anxiety rate, due to complications with technology and student aggression to the lesson. What is most surprising is that teacher motivation is directly aligned to student achievement with technology.
It is understandable that teacher experience anxiety because they are learning new technology that they are not familiar with and it will be another new training program for them to be involved. However, the teacher can reduce their anxiety, and to reduce anxiety, consider the cost/benefit of the purchasing support so that the teachers can call the support personnel to fix the computer issues.
Garcia and Romero (2009) provide a study record, and it shows that 68% of the students enjoyed using the new technology. 83% of the students said they had more respect for math because they understood it better. 79% of the students started to respect their class work more because of using technology in the classroom. Finally, 94% of the students enjoyed working collaboratively with their classmates. The use of technology was helpful in the school, but there were positive and negative effects when technology was not used appropriately. According to John Schacter (1999), several positive and negative effects of technology must be noted before its implementation in the classroom. Schacter (1999) accumulated the data of five studies and noted the results of all test and research complied.
The positive effects of technology are for students to learn more content in less time and remain engaged longer in the lesson. The students in technology can rich the environments experienced positive effects of achievement in all major subject areas. The students can use the technology in the classroom, and they were able to use higher level thinking to solve harder problems. Using technology in the classroom is cost-efficient, and the students whose teachers use computers have a more advanced vocabulary. Using technology in the classroom had a positive effect on students, but there were also adverse effects. The adverse Effects was the following; computers do not have positive effects in all areas of education. The effectiveness of technology is based on student population, software, educator’s role, and the level of student access to the technology. The students did not test better than other students on the state standardized test. The final negative effects were the specific computer programs that hurt student achievement and were not designed to the curriculum. Schacter (1999) determined from compiled data that students will achieve more with technology than without, and there are some negative side effects when using the technology. However, the overall consensus from the five studies is that students will achieve. Student achievement will fluctuate with the different use of computer programs, activities, games, and engagement; but the majority of students will achieve. Gadgets are not equal to excellent education–great teachers do. Teachers need to remember that every student in our classroom had different needs so that they can learn in the way they can understand, and one of them is the instructional uses of technology.
Instructional Uses of Technology. Using the technology in the classroom can benefit the school district, and it is also a tool that can use to empower and engage the students that were born in the digital natives’ societies. The use of technology can provide opportunities for students to meet their learning needs, assist with acceleration, reinforcement, and remediation of content and learning standards. There are some of the most engaging uses of instructional technology, and they are an interactive collaboration, gathering feedback, and embedding questions in videos. In interactive collaboration suggested using the tool called teachers to know best, and the goal of “Teachers Know Best is to bring the perspective of teachers to developers who are creating digital tools for the classroom” (Walsh, 2014). The teachers indicate that the tools are to support student collaboration and to provide interactive experiences.
The other use of instructional technology was gathering feedback, and feedback is a powerful aid to instruction. In digital native’s societies, it is easy to gather student input and feedback in today’s classrooms, for example, the online surveys, clickers (student response systems), plickers (students electronic devices), and Twitter (Walsh, 2014). The final use of instructional technology was embedding questions in videos. Teachers use video for instructional purposes, and free tools that enable educators to embed questions are a powerful aid. Teachers can create a visual learning video, for example, creating musical alphabet letters. When the teachers create a musical learning alphabet, then the student can follow along with the video and learns their alphabet by singing. Teachers can create different types of video based on the grade level of their teaching. The school district can also look into online, blended and virtual learning so that they can reach every student in their classroom. Some of the students need was online learning, blended and virtual learning. However, there are different types of student needs that the teachers must know.
Student Needs
Every student in our classroom had special needs when it comes to learning because every student has a different style of learning and the ability to learn. “Every single intelligent, forgetful, smiling, moody, enthusiastic, apathetic, reflective, short-sighted little (or big) human being that walks into [our] classroom on a daily basis has their own story-one full of promise, [heartbreak], and complexity” (Heick, 2018). As a teacher, it is our responsibility to recognize our student’s needs and find ways to rich our student’s ability to learn, just like parents to a child. The parents were finding ways to help their child learn, just like Language Dancing. Christensen, Horn, and Johnson (2011) stated that language dancing was parent face to face involvement with their infant and “speak in a fully adult, sophisticated, chatty language – as if the infant were listening, comprehending, and fully responding to the comments” (p. 151). As a teacher, we need to talk to our students fully adult that they can understand, even if we need to include technology in our learning.
There are fourteen things that every student needs; first, the student needs self-knowledge, which means that the student needs to think about how they can relate to the world around them. Second, every student needs inspiring models-and modeling, which means that the students “can act as scaffolding, illuminate possibility, provide a pathway, and five students something to anchor their thinking to when everything else seems abstract and academic” (Heick, 2018). Third, every student needs learning strategies, which mean that the students need to know those strategies as well or better than the content. Fourth, every student needs feedback, not judgment, as we all know feedback helps-acts as guidance, and it is helpful and can even be comforting. Fifth, the students need creative spaces and tools, it can be physical or digital, alone or in a group, with apps or saws, robotics or paint brushes, and maker learning or academic. Sixth, the student needs ideas, which means that the students are substantially more talented than the design of most schools and curriculum. Seventh, the student needs an audience, which means that our students need someone to listen to them so that they know that someone was willing to be there for them.
The eight need was a champion, which means that every student needs a champion-someone to believe in them when their opinion fades. Ninth, the student needs a chance to practice, which mean that our students need to have a chance to practice, and not only practice, but they need a variety of support, collaborations, with and without technology, and with and without the audience. Tenth, the student deserves as many chances as it takes, which mean that we need to tell our students that it is real life situations, and the teachers need to let their students know that they should listen in the first twelve times. Eleventh, the student needs to play, which means that we can teach our students just like they were playing games. Thirteenth, the student needs to be able to read and write, which means that the teachers need to help their students so that they can achieve their reading and writing skills. As we all know, “Literacy is the foundation for all formal and academic learning” (Heick, 2018). Finally, every student needs approval that is not always contingent on “success.” All of the fourteen need of students can be added to everything, like curriculum, frameworks, school design, instructional strategies, and anything else that touches the mind of our students. It is the educator role to implement the strategies when it comes to our students need.
Educator Roles
The educator roles or teachers roles was to make sure that we understand our students learning skills so that we can find ways to help them achieve their educational goals. The 21st-century educational systems equip with traditional learning and digital natives learner. However, the societies that were born in the digital natives have interacted into the technology since they were a younger child, and they are using technology throughout their lives. The digital natives can also be called the millennials because they were born between the year of the 1980s and 2000s. According to Cut (2017), new “technologies have been a defining feature in the lives of younger generations in a way that they predict a fundamental change in the way young people communicate, socialize, create and learn” (para. 5). The teacher’s role is to guide our students “how to learn and filter information so that it is useful and applicable, so they can teach themselves anything they need to know now and in the future” (Smythe, 2014). In every classroom, the teachers need to know their students as learners so that the teacher can forge personal connections with their students. However, the teachers need to understand some of the benefits when it comes to students as a learner.
The teacher’s role in the classroom was to prepare lessons, grade papers, manage the classroom, meet with the parents, and work closely with the school staff. We need to keep in mind that being a teacher is much more than our responsibility in the classroom, and much more than just executing lesson plans. “In today’s world, teaching is a multifaceted profession; teachers often carry the role of a surrogate parent, class disciplinarian, mentor, counselor, bookkeeper, role model, planner, and many other related roles” (Cox, 2018). In the 21st-century society, the teacher’s role is changing because the changes took place in the schools and to the digital native societies. “It is clear that the teacher’s role must be redefined to meet the needs and demands of today’s culture” (Johnson & McElroy, 2010). In today society, the teachers need to understand the students as learners even if its harder to recognize in their classroom.
Students as Learners. The teacher’s role is important in our educational systems because they are the one who is guiding their students and teach them what they need to know. Teachers need to know the students as learners; it might be difficult and challenging for teachers to recognize their students as learners because there are many students in their classroom. However, knowing the “students means more than merely acquiring social or administrative information – students’ names and ages, something about their friendship circles, a bit about their family backgrounds, a few statistics from their academic record” (Powell & Kusuma-Powell, 2019). There is some benefit from knowing the students as learners, and it will also benefit the teachers when they understand the students as learners. The first one is for teachers to create a psychologically safe environment for every student in their class. They need to determine each of their student’s readiness for learning, and they need to identify numerous access points to the curriculum to increase engagement and success. Finally, teachers need to develop and demonstrate higher emotional intelligence in the classroom. In a psychologically safe environment, “a caring and interested teacher can develop rapport and trust not just between teacher and student but among students” (Powell & Kusuma-Powell, 2019).
Trust and acceptance create “a psychologically safe atmosphere in the classroom, which provides the security students need to experience the intellectual discomfort of new ideas and adjust their pre-existing mental models to accommodate new, deep learning” (Powell & Kusuma-Powell, 2019). As a teacher, we need to make decisions and judgments in our classroom; we need to recognize our students’ readiness level so that we know how to help them. Some teachers think of learning readiness as dependent on the knowledge, understanding, and skills that an individual brings to a new learning situation. However, we need to appreciate that readiness is intensely influenced by an individual’s prior learning success or failure. It can also influence the student’s self-esteem, sense of effectiveness, cultural norms, social status within the class or group, life experience, characters and attitudes, and students habits. “When we know our students deeply, we [can] consider all these factors and determine individual readiness with greater accuracy – and then pitch instruction more precisely to a student’s optimal zone for learning” (Powell & Kusuma-Powell, 2019).
Teachers can identify the multiple access points to the curriculum, as we all know, access points are the networks that make the content and concepts relevant to the learners, whether through a similar experience, or and interest, or tapping into their way of thinking. Finally, teachers need to develop and demonstrate higher emotional intelligence in the classroom. Teachers need to learn their students as individuals because every student had a different style of learning skill. The students should enjoy the greater flexibility, greater understanding, greater patience, and more accurate attribution of responsibility. When teachers develop emotional intelligence, they [can] frame questions about students and suspend negative judgements (Powell & Kusuma-Powell, 2019). After identifying the benefits of knowing the students as learners, then we can identify more of our teacher’s role. There are some roles that the teacher must fill, and they are, resource, support, mentor, helping hand, and learner.
The role of the teachers that they must fill is to be a resource specialist. As we all know, many of our students will come to the teacher seeking information. “Even if the person is only seeking a source of information, the teacher is the one who must know how to find what the student is looking for” (“5 roles for teacher,” 2017). The second role of teachers is to be supportive because the students are the ones who need support when learning the new skills or piece of information. The third role of the teachers is to become a mentor, and as we all know that mentor was one of the most significant roles as a teacher. As a teacher, we need to be a good mentor to our students so that we can guide our students to the right path and according to God will. God wants us to make disciples of all nations when we teach our children so that all our disciples will spread throughout the world. Matthew 28:19-20 said, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The fourth role of the teachers is to shows their students that they can give them a helping hand. “Teachers who are active in the school will often have more jobs than just the one they were hired to perform” (“5 roles for teacher,” 2017). Finally, the teacher role is to be a learner; a learner is a “person who is always growing in life and will never claim that they know it all. A teacher will be challenged [every day] with a new task that will help them grow into a better person” (“5 roles for teacher,” 2017). The role of teachers is essential in our school system, and it will always be part of the school because the teachers will ensure that their students were on the right track and achieve the learning outcomes. When the teachers understand their roles, then it will be easy to help their students, especially when the teacher acknowledges the students as a learner. However, the role of the teacher might change in the 21st-century because of the technology, but the principle will always be the same.
Teacher’s Role in the 21st Century. The teachers in the 21st century are looking forward to the future, and they are “aware of the ever-changing trends in technology and are in tune of what the future may bring to education” (Cox, 2019). The characteristic of good 21st-century teachers is aware of the career opportunities for their students, and they are always supporting the students thinking. Finally, the teachers will ensure that all their students will not be left behind by digital natives society. Teachers also need to instruct their students on “computer usage, legitimate methods of Internet research, and how [to] identify useful information. Additionally, this focus on technology can open up a world of new resources to support traditional teaching methods” (Flamand, 2019).
The recent technological advances that had affected many areas of our lives, which includes communication, collaborate, learn, and of course teaching. However, before we teach our students in the 21st-century, the teacher needs to “understand how student-centric technology will first take root outside the K-12 system and then permeate it” (Christensen et al., 2011). Teachers need to make a student-centric “decisions by providing remediation, grade-level work or enrichment as appropriate” (Hudson, 2014). There are some characteristics of the 21st-century teacher, and few of them will be mention here — first, the learner-centered classroom and personalized instructions, and second characteristics are students as producers. In the learner-centered classroom and personalized instructions; the student has access to any information possible, and teachers need to understand that the “students have different personalities, goals, and needs, offering personalized instructions is not just possible but also desirable” (Palmer, 2015). In students as producers, the students have the latest and most excellent tools in our societies, and the students were viewed as digital natives, many of them are far from producing any digital content, for example, blogging, how-to videos, and tutorials. After analyzing the technology utilization, students needs, and educator roles (students as learners, the teacher’s role in 21st-century), it is time to find the connection between learning vs. teaching or vice versa.
Connection Between Learning vs. Teaching
Learning and teaching are essential procedures that are linked to the acquisition of knowledge, values, traditions, skills, and behavior, and the two procedure are the two ends of the knowledge achievement process. In the teaching procedures which involves the communicating knowledge whereas learning involves obtaining knowledge. Both learning and teaching are significant in the school system and generally go together. However, it can be easily argued that learning is more important than teaching. There are some concepts in teaching and learning, and it shows that both of them were important in the school system.
The Concept of Teaching. Both teaching and learning have different concepts, first the concepts of teaching. The concept of teaching was “a set of events, outside the learners which are designed to support [the] internal process of learning” (Sequeira, 2012). Teaching was more involves in communicating knowledge to our students, and there are four elements for teachers to use to understand the teaching better. The first element was to “decide what students should learn” (Prozesky, 2000), the second element was to help the students learn, the third element was to make sure that our students have learned. Finally, the fourth element was the look after the wellbeing of our student’s knowledge. We also need to know that we can teach something to others even unconsciously, and we always linked with learning and learners. It is time to know the concept of learning; learning has a different concept than teaching.
The Concept of Learning.The concept of learning was about a change, which means that “change brought about by developing a new skill, understanding a scientific law, changing an attitude” (Sequeira, 2012). Learning can be the achievement of knowledge, behaviors, skills, and values, we can learn throughout our lives, either deliberately or mechanically, and finally, it does not need to be taught to learn something. According to Prozesky (2000), “Educational psychologists tell us that any activity which leads to a change in our behavior is learning” (p. 30). Learning can be formal and informal because formal can be a course which is planned in a structured way (school or college). In informal learning is what we experience in our day by day lives. “We [do not] just learn knowledge and facts – we also learn skills and attitude” (Prozesky, 2000).
Conclusion
We live in a world that technology was easy to access for many of us and it keeps changing every year because some people are gifted with a smart brain and knowledge. They are using their gifts to help the technology expand and easy to use; however, if the technology was overused by many, it could affect our societies lifestyle. Those people with gifted talent never neglect their God-given talent, in 1 Timothy 4:14 (ESV) said, “Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you.” The educator knows that technology helps the teacher in many ways. According to Christensen et al. (2011), “High school teachers report having made good use of computers to make better lesson plans and to communicate more with parents through e-mail and blogs” (p. 82). Technology changes every year so as teachers, we need to be aware and knowledgeable for those changes. It is true that the role of the teacher’s changes in the 21st-century because of our digital native society, and we need to change the way we teach so that we can reach every student in our classroom. However, we need to keep in mind that our responsibilities would be the same, yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
The students will always have needs in their lives; they need guidance when it comes to their daily lives. They also need knowledge and the only way they will gain knowledge is through experience and educations. The teachers provide the educational experience to their students by teaching them the requirement they need. However, as a teacher, we can also help our students to become a better person, especially when the teachers understand the students as a learner, and we have a role that we need to fulfill, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Teachers in the 21st century are looking forward to the future, and they are aware of the ever-changing trends in technology and are in tune with what the future may bring to education. It is important that we know how to connect learning vs. teaching through their concept because we can understand why they are different. Learning vs. teaching does play an important role in educational systems, but we need to remember that learning is not necessary through school. Our students can learn through experience and school. Proverbs 1:5 (ESV) said, “Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance.” Every year our societies change because of the technology, but the concept of teaching will always be the same. We all grow up, we all change, but God word and knowledge will never change.
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