THE BOOKS

John L. Rudolph, Section Editor

Powering Up: Learning to Teach Well with Technology, by Eileen M. Coppola. TeachersCollege Press, USA, 2004. xvi + 188 pp. ISBN 0-8077-4499-9.

Technology as a way to transform teaching and learning is an idea that has been aroundfor at least a century and a half. Educational reformers in 1840 extolled the blackboard’sability to elucidate difficult concepts, and Thomas Edison suggested moving pictures wouldultimately substitute for teacher instruction. In Mindstorms, Seymour Papert (1980) addedcomputers to the list of transformative technologies by predicting they would have stu-dents “learning painlessly, successfully, and without organized instruction” (p. 10). Eversince, Papert and other technological utopians (including Sherry Turkle, Roger Schank,and Mitchell Resnick) have engaged in a debate with Larry Cuban and others who claimtechnology is a snake oil solution to institutional problems in schools. To this conversation,Eileen Coppola adds a thoughtful empirical examination of a school engaged in creating a“pedagogical vision for technology use” (p. 24) and looks at how instructional leadershipcan contribute to accomplishing this vision.

Part one of Powering Up lays out a brief history of technology in schools and establishesthe book’s focus on the development of constructivist pedagogy and how it intertwines withthe use of technology. Coppola draws on literature from teacher learning, professional de-velopment, educational reform, and organizational studies to explore the use of computersas a tool for constructivist learning within the nested contexts of teacher learning and orga-nizational culture. In this section, Coppola defines her use of teachers’ theories, knowledge,and skills, as well as her approach to organizational culture.

Part two provides an empirical core—five case-study summaries of teachers at Wood-land High School in Vermont who teach physics, integrated humanities (ancient Greeklanguage, history, and literature), economics, writing, and business. Coppola uses thesecases to provide context for both the description of her findings and their implications. Thecases give an overview of each teacher’s current classroom practice and a narrative of hisor her professional development focused on computer use and activities for professionalgrowth and development. They include descriptions of student projects as well as quotationsfrom teachers about how and why they use technology in their classrooms.

Coppola then steps back from the cases to describe themes and implication she has ex-tracted from her extended study of Woodland High School. Beginning with a discussion ofhow these teachers learned to use technology, she characterizes five common elements: “(1)making a commitment to use computers; (2) defining instructional problems; (3) scanningfor new ideas and practices; (4) creating new curriculum and practice; (5) trying, reflecting,

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and refining in the classroom” (p. 107). It is the trying, reflecting, and refining that Coppolafeels was critical to their development. Next follows a discussion of organizational structureand how it supports teacher learning. Treated here are things such as technological infras-tructure; time, space, and opportunities to work with colleagues; and organizational normsand values. The book concludes with seven recommendations for leaders: (1) “understandthat the best technology use will be rooted in sound pedagogy”; (2) “urge teachers to useclassroom technology through norms, not requirements”; (3) “make technology and mate-rial support a predictable constant”; (4) “accept that learning to integrate computers takeslots of time, and that the best uses will be locally created”; (5) “open the system, acceptexpertise”; (6) “accept that the best teachers are intellectuals”; and (7) “encourage policy-makers in states and districts to be aware of the necessity of consistency and coherence inculture” (pp. 150–153). Administrators, Coppola argues, should value and sustain strong,stable leadership, and consider the value of new leadership paradigms. The book includesan appendix with interview and observation protocols as well as some brief details aboutthe data analysis.

Choosing Woodland High School for a study on integration of technology has draw-backs. It is an extremely well-resourced school, not just in terms of computers and Internetconnectivity, but more importantly in its support for teacher professional development andpedagogical innovation. Teachers described in the case studies have support to travel toconferences, can request additional computers for their classrooms, are given much morethan typical in-school planning time, have a tremendous amount of flexibility with regardto content and structure of courses, and not least of all they have a number of personneldevoted to the support and integration of technology in their school building. In contrast,many large school districts have only two or three support personnel across the entire dis-trict. Teachers in a school this well resourced are far more likely to be able to developpedagogical innovation, and this seems to be one of Coppola’s primary points.

In studying a school where teachers are provided with such a rich environment for in-tellectual growth and development, Powering Up is really about developing an excellentcommunity of teacher learning rather than about technology. Much of Coppola’s findingsare independent of technology use, and even those explicitly related to technology couldbe easily reformulated as being about other tools or innovations that support learning, suchas grouping strategies or block scheduling. Perhaps this is as it should be, since Coppola isfocused on a pedagogical vision that integrates teaching and technology. Seeing technologyas somehow different from other innovations in terms of classroom adoption has a long his-tory; however, looking back over this history there is little evidence that technology, even inthe form of blackboards, is unusual in the challenges it faces. Powering Up does not provideevidence of problems or solutions unique to technology versus other school innovations.

Coppola assumes the technology is critical to the evolution of constructivist pedagogyat Woodland. As Windschitl and Sahl (2002) found in a study of a one-to-one computerprogram, technology tends to reinforce and extend pedagogy already in place in classrooms,rather than transforming teachers’ pedagogy to make it more constructivist. Unfortunately,Coppola cannot consider if technology is amplifying or transforming existing practicebecause the teachers in her cases are already engaged in constructivist pedagogy. Coppola,in fact, brings almost no research more recent than 2000 to bear on the analysis of her cases.This is particularly distressing in a work focused on educational technology given thetremendous growth of the research base in that area over the last 5 years. Coppola describesWoodland High School as, first and foremost, a community of teachers engaged in theirpractice as an intellectual profession in a school committed to developing constructivistpedagogy. These teachers are innovating in all aspects of their practice. In that context, itis not surprising that technology is used to support the constructivist pedagogies teachers

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have in place. What is surprising is that the integration of technology is singled out as beingdifferent enough from other innovative practices to merit special attention.

In a true community of learners, student activity reflects activities of a parallel commu-nity of practice, and, thus, it is natural that students engage in some of the tool uses ofpractitioners. Students in a science class using probes and computers for data collectionand analysis, for example, parallel scientists’ use of technology. Teachers and students atWoodland use technology not out of a commitment to technology use per se, but because ofa commitment to creating an authentic community of learners using tools from a commu-nity of practice. In other words, Coppola’s study appears to be about learning how to teachwell. Technology’s involvement is no more or less relevant than the fact that students areengaged in long-term authentic tasks, or a myriad of other innovative practices that teachersat Woodland are engaged in.

Powering Up provides a cogent, well-written, empirically based look at what is possiblewhen a school reflects Seymour Sarason’s goal of designing school learning communitiesto help teachers learn as much as their students. Excellent pedagogy thrives, and teachersview themselves as both professionals and intellectuals. Coppola provides suggestions forhow instructional leaders can create a culture of intellectual and pedagogical excellencethat leads to technological adoption. These suggestions, however, do not provide much newguidance for leadership. In their essence, they suggest simply that teachers be treated andsupported as professionals. When this is done they will innovate in their practice, whichwill likely include adopting appropriate uses of technology. Ultimately, Coppola’s book isconfirmation that technology needs reform much more than reform needs technology.

REFERENCES

Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms. New York: Basic Books.Windschitl, M., & Sahl, K. (2002). Tracing teachers’ use of technology in a laptop computer school: The interplay

of teacher beliefs, social dynamics, and institutional culture. American Educational Research Journal, 39(1),165–205.

SCOTT MCDONALDDepartment of Curriculum and InstructionCollege of EducationThe Pennsylvania State UniversityUniversity Park, PA 16802

DOI 10.1002/sce.20114Published online 26 September 2005 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).