There are a universe of possibilities when it comes to integrating computing and digital literacies into teacher education. Below, we share a framework to help faculty unpack and prioritize the concepts, practices, and perspectives that might be relevant to promote across CUNY.
CITE aims to support faculty and teacher candidates to apply CITE equity perspectives, and mobilize crosscutting digital and computing practices to enhance and transform learning and practice around traditional and expanded teacher ed topics.
Click each area or scroll to learn more!
CITE Equitable Pedagogy Goals, Approach, Design Principles
We want computing and digital literacies integration to be driven by the values of our broader community. But we think it is important for our community to take up values and commitments around equity. Below, we summarize the work of CITE’s Equity Working Group to share what we think a praxis of equitable pedagogy entails. Stay tuned for an expanded write-up by the working group.
Equitable CITE pedagogy includes a set of goals that operationalize the equitable processes and outcomes we care about, an approach to design, designer mindsets, and some guiding principles for CITE designs and implementations.
Our Goals
Equitable CITE pedagogy seeks to…
- empower learners and communities
- promote joyful, meaningful learning
- transform institutions towards justice
….for teacher educators, teacher candidates and alum, P-12 students, families, and communities.
Our Approach
To meet those goals, we hope teacher educators and candidates engage in affirming, learner-centered design processes guided by equity-focused mindsets.
Design Principles
We hope that teacher educators’ and candidates’ designs and implementations are guided by the following principles. These design principles are not checkboxes, but rather should be considered holistically together.
- Co-learning and co-construction of knowledge in communities
- Supporting learner agency to tinker with, modify and create tools
- Centering creativity and expression
- Mobilizing computing and digital tools for social action
- Vetting and critiquing tools, tech and tech cultures
- Adopting expansive notions of learning and assessment
Computing and Digital Practices
Computing Integrated Teacher Education means equipping teacher candidates to teach and learn about, with, through, and against technology
We hope faculty help teacher candidates take up a variety of orientations towards technology as they teach and learn these literacies:
| ABOUT | WITH | THROUGH | AGAINST | |
| For teacher learning | Teachers engage in conversations about technology, digital citizenship, and its impacts (from a user and teacher perspective). | Teachers learn with technology to help them explore concepts for themselves. | Teachers express themselves and their learning through their creation and modification of computational artifacts | Teachers to think critically about technologies to dismantle unjust tech. |
| To integrate into teachers’ pedagogy | Teachers strategically bring these conversations to their students. | Teachers teach with technology to support student learning and participation. | Teachers prompt their students to express themselves through creation and modification of computational artifacts. | Teachers strategically bring these conversations to their students. |
We’re using the New York State Digital Fluency and Computing Standards as inspiration, but teacher educators might find many other computational and digital literacies relevant to their work across teacher education. Practices that CUNY faculty have found especially relevant to their contexts include:
Digital Practices
- Digitally-supported communication, participation, reflection
- Critically and ethically navigating digital information and media ecosystems
- Digital storytelling / composition
Computing Practices
- Prototyping, remixing, iterating
- Tinkering, experimentation
- Data practices
- Modeling and simulation
- Abstraction and decomposition
- Algorithms, programming, debugging
Consult our Computing/Digital literacies gallery to learn more about what faculty in the CITE initiative have taken up in their artifact designs.
Teacher Education Topics
We hope that faculty mobilize equitable pedagogical approaches, and the digital and computing literacies above to support teacher education. We’ve decomposed teacher education into six areas, inspired by accreditation standards and the work of Linda Darling Hammond (2021).
- Learners; learning theory, including social, emotional, and academic dimensions; and application of learning theory
- Creation and development of positive learning and work environments, including understand and engaging diverse local school and cultural communities
- Equity and culturally responsive practice, including intersectionality of race, ethnicity, class, gender identity and expression, sexual identity, and the impact of language acquisition and literacy development on learning, teaching strategies, materials, technology used
- Content, pedagogical, and/or professional knowledge relevant to the credential or degree sought
- Instructional Practices and Assessment of and for student learning, use of data to inform planning, teaching strategies, materials, technology used.
- Dispositions and behaviors required for successful professional practice
We also recognize that teacher ed topics in the areas above have been influenced, and will continue to be influenced by digital and computing technologies and culture. This means, the areas above necessarily include tech-related topics like:
- Understanding learners’ digital lives
- Digital citizenship, privacy, health, and safety online
- Assistive technology, using technology for accessibility
- Computing and digital practices across the K-12 disciplines, planning for this integration
- Advocating for learners, equity, and teachers’ professional interests using digital means
