Professional development for technology enhanced inquiry science

Leaders in education, science, and policy recognize the value of technology enhanced inquiry materials for science and are stressing the importance of teacher professional development. A recent synthesis of more than 25 meta-analytic studies investigating the Professional Development for Technology-Enhanced Inquiry Science Downloaded from http://rer.aera.net at Swinburne Univ of Technology on June 6, 2012 Professional Development for Technology-Enhanced Inquiry Science 409 role of computer-based technologies in student learning found that the teacher may play an even greater role in students’ technology-enhanced learning than the nature of the technology intervention itself. The effectiveness of the technology intervention depended on the teacher’s goals, pedagogy, and content knowledge (Tamin, Bernard, Borokhovski, Abrami, & Schmid, 2011). Few preservice programs prepare teachers to use technology-enhanced materials to enhance inquiry learning. As a result in-service professional development programs are the most common approach to introducing teachers to the goals and designs of technology interventions and to cultivating teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge in this new domain