June 2002 — Features

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The Internet's Impact on Teacher Practice and Classroom Culture

By Drs. Douglas W. Green and Thomas O'Brien, Binghamton University

Once a district has the infrastructure in place, what can be done to increase teacher practice in constructivist directions? The key is to ensure the staff development program promotes active students facing cognitive challenges. This is at the heart of constructivist practice. Assignments should be designed to give students higher-order thinking tasks at the beginning, while showing them that fact finding is a way to solve problems and support conclusions. In the case of some of the projects we studied, students could have been told that forming and defending an opinion was the main task rather than the last of 10 questions. If possible, tasks should be open-ended so students will stop asking if they have the correct answer and start evaluating their efforts.

Study Highlights

The nature of our study d'es not allow for broad generalizations, but it d'es point to a number of key issues that teachers and administrators must consider as they find a place for the Internet as an instructional tool:

  • Staff development should show teachers how to create more situations where students engage in higher-order thinking. Simply showing teachers how to use computer applications and the Internet is not likely to accomplish that.
  • The Internet increases access for all students to information not known to teachers and, therefore, increases the opportunities for teachers to learn from students. Teachers who are predisposed to being taught by students can plan accordingly.
  • Boys do not appear to be more comfortable than girls in using computers when it comes to Internet access. Girls may even have an advantage when it comes to searching for information and/or communicating.
  • Teachers in our study felt that students with Internet access at home have an advantage over students who do not. Even though it may not be possible to eliminate the entire advantage, teachers should provide additional time online to students who lack access at home without awarding higher grades for papers printed on home computer systems.