How Do I Define Myself as an Educational Researcher?

I am from Taiwan, and was a middle school chinese teacher for 5 years. After I was graduate from college and soon began my 1-year internship as a student teacher and learn how to teach chinese to 7-9 grades student, it was the time that Taiwan government begin to promote technology integration in k-12 classroom. So I can say that I am the first wave of student teachers who experience this educational reform. I can totally understand what are the barriers that hinder teachers to use technology in their practices. I was very lucky, in my student-teaching year, I have enough time to learn and use the computers that are newly installed in my school. As you may understand that most in-service teachers may mot have such sufficient time to learn new technologies that never happened in their first half of life. Their time for teaching is pretty full.

But the so-called “technology” at that time, was allowing every teacher have their own laptop. They need to learn some basic applications such as word, excel, powerpoint and how to connect to the internet…etc. The fanciest “technique” to use in the classroom, is compile your teaching material in powerpoint slides, and connect your laptop to the projector, and then teach students with powerpoint presentation, which is nothing different from we are doing a presentation in the conference. Even with these techniques we think is very simple today, some teachers still are reluctant to use technology. Because you never know what will happen to your computer next when you are teaching. Sometimes your computer doesn’t work, your projector doesn’t work, your speaker doesn’t work. And all of these problems may make your teaching process more complicated. When you are trying to fix the problem, students are waiting for you.

So that’s the main reason I came here and study learning technologies, because I can understand the importance of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. When I finish my M. Ed and when back to work in the same school, I found that the problems in Taiwan are still the same. And I found out these problems are very similar to the problems in USA. Those barriers, I will say, includes, time, facility, support, culture that put too much emphasis on high stake tests are exactly the same. So that pushes me to continue pursuing PhD and understand how technology integration will happen in classroom.

As a former K-12 Chinese teacher in Taiwan and a current online instructor in the U, I will situate myself as a learning scientist. My research interests focus on K-12 technology integration, online learning, and teacher's development. I'm particular interested in the tensions and synergies among teachers' beliefs, knowledge, and their classroom practice when they integrate technology as well as students' learning process in online learning environments. While being attracted by learning theories and the epistemology brought by Learning Science, I still can’t give up the concept of “design.” Although I’m not competent as a coder for designing instructional multimedia, the design principles and theories I learned from the courses of multimedia track in LT program has enormously played an important role when I design my online courses.

Recently, the idea of “learning designer” intrigues me. In contrast of the traditional term “instructional designer” that the field used to adopt, the role of learning designer implied adopting the approach of learner-centered instruction and designing the learning environment that facilitate learners’ learning. The term also brought up the discussion that if learning experiences can be designed. As an advocate of constructivist learning theories, I believe that we are not designing learner’s learning experiences; instead, we are designing for their experiences. Learners have their potential to construct their own knowledge through their learning experience and negotiate the constructive meanings through social interaction. Based on Vygotsky’s theory of scaffolding (although he never used this term), teachers’ roles are not only instructors that “deliver” the content, but also facilitate learner’s learning by providing more support when the learning begin and gradually decreasing the support to fit learners’ potential level of performances. All teachers should be able to become student’s learning designer. My passion is not only become a learning designer to facilitate my own students, but also want to assist teachers to become learning designers for their students. With more and more affordances provided by modern technology, today’s teachers become more and more capable and comfortable to use technology in their daily life. However, the knowledge of technology doesn’t equal the knowledge of integrating technology into their classroom practices. Teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) serves as a key to assist and transform students’ learning through technology. I’m interested in how teachers develop and construct their TPACK in their teacher preparation process, as well as how their knowledge grows as a in-service teacher in their professional development.

After I finish my PhD, I want to be a researcher that is focus on teacher education. I have taught some undergraduate courses in the U, and some of my students are planning to become k-12 teachers in the future. I like to work with these pre-service teachers. I want to explore some potential technology tools that can actually been used in their classroom. I would like to work with them to help them design content specific curriculum with technology. Also, I want to link these knowledge to their pedagogy in their specific content areas. In addition, I want to assist K-12 schools to develop their technology integration plan, and help these in-service teachers for their professional development. I want to let them understand that teaching is a form of learning as well, just as I am learning from them when I’m teaching them. I want to help them know that learning is a lifelong journey and never stop, especially with technology, which always progresses so fast beyond our imagination.  If I got a chance, I would like to be a researcher and instructor in the university with teacher education program.