Preparing teachers, student teachers, and schools for the 21st century: review of recent reports in the U.S.

Abstract

The year 1996 marked the initiation of Getting America’s Students Ready for the 21st Century: Meeting the Technology Literacy Challenge. The grant program aimed to integrate technology in the field of education in the 21st century. This grant program generated many reports in an attempt to measure its success as well as to comment on the state of schools, teachers, and teacher preparation in Schools of Education in utilizing technology to improve teaching and learning. This brief paper endeavors to create a synthesis of the recent research and opinions about the introduction of technology into the classroom as proposed by this plan, and will, in some cases, call for revisions. At the same time, the writing assesses, from a perspective enriched by time, exactly how much of what was suggested by the educational experts was actually put into effect.