AT&T Fellows Final Report: Catherine Shea and Carolyn Babione

AT&T Fellows Final Reports

December 2001

Name	Catherine Shea and Carolyn Babione
Title	Professor
Department	Education
Campus	IUS
Project Title	Electronic Enhancement of Supervision Project (EESP)
Project Goal	Integrated technology with supervision training of special education teachers to expand the knowledge base regarding distance education and special education preparation
Type of Technology Used in the Project	e-mail, listserv, and webcams

Executive Summary of Results

The 2000 Ameritech Fellows Grant partnered Indiana University Southeast with special education teachers in the southern Indiana region. The Electronic Enhancement of Supervision Project (EESP) integrated technology with supervision training of special education teachers to expand the knowledge base regarding distance education and special education preparation. Technology such as e-mail, listserv, and webcams hold promise for capturing the wisdom of master teachers in distant settings from campus. Care must be taken to ensure that sites and participants have adequate technology expertise, equipment and time for involvement.

Need for the Project

Briefly explain why you believed there was a need for your project and what teaching approach was used to address this need.

For twenty years there has been a national shortage of special education teachers and Indiana reflects this personnel gap. Efforts need to be made to better train special education teachers so they not only enter but also stay in the profession.

One of the most influential aspects of teacher training programs is the field experience component, a chance for the fledgling teacher to be coached by an experienced professional (cooperating teacher) in actual classrooms. The cooperating teacher not only models good teaching strategies and classroom management skills but also supervises and evaluates the university student. Therefore, the supervisory skills of cooperating teachers need to be well developed in order to maximize the benefits of these field experiences. It is expensive to send university faculty to distant schools to teach new cooperating teachers how to supervise and evaluate university students and it is a burden to require these same teachers to come to campus to be trained. Technology offers an opportunity to reduce the cost, improve the convenience, and improve the quality of how cooperating teachers are coached to improve their supervision.

Use of Technology

Briefly explain how your project used instructional technology in a new or different way.

The EESP grant trained three supervision mentors (i.e., master level teachers with documented excellence as cooperating teachers) to use digital webcams, email and a listserv. Various combinations of these technologies were used by the supervision mentors and by project staff to provide guidance and coaching for cooperating teachers.

The project relied heavily on the technical expertise of the technology director on the IU Southeast campus as well as that of staff from the IUS ILTE (Institute for Learning and Teaching Excellence). They participated in the development of the project proposal, provided technical training for the mentors and project director, and worked with technical staff and participating teachers in the public schools.

Instructional Design Plan

Describe how the use of technology used supported your teaching approach:

What student learning outcomes were expected?
How did your teaching plan encourage active learning, provide feedback, address respective learning styles, and build collaboration?
What resources were used? (campus technology support services, etc.)
Would your project be easily understood and executed by other faculty?

Beginning in the summer of 2000, Phase I prepared three supervisor-mentor master teachers to mentor special education cooperating teachers. Phase I included training in technologies such as webcams and discussion listserver. In the first phase, the mentors trained together and collaborated with the project staff to develop supervision training materials, including information for a Web site. Phase II began Fall 2000 and was designed to develop a Web site for the program, pilot the technology in schools, and identify participating classroom teachers for Phase III. Phase III began in Spring 2001 with special education classroom teachers who were mentored via e-mail and listerver by the supervisor-mentors. The classroom teachers received additional supervision training and support from IUS faculty through webcam, listserver, Web sites, and site visits. Phase IV was designed to develop final conclusions and recommendations that could benefit others who embark on the endeavor to mentor electronically.

The “students” in the EESP project were the supervision mentors and cooperating teachers that were coached. These participants shared three learning goals: (a) learning effective supervision strategies and, (b) operating a digital video camera, and (c) using a listserv. Mentors had an additional goal: acquiring knowledge and skills of mentoring.

The project team included two resident faculty at Indiana University Southeast (IUS), an IUS staff member from the Institute for Learning and Teaching Excellence program, a university student technician, three school-based supervisor-mentors, and three special education cooperating teachers. The project was comprised of four phases.

Potential to Impact Student Learning

Clearly define how your project improved student learning - include specific examples of how your project:

Fostered depth of learning
Supported efforts to improve retention
Fostered the learning of large numbers of students
Has broader applications that will affect learning K-12 or community environments?

The potential for student learning focused on the premise that electronic mentoring and coaching can provide cooperating teachers with appropriate responses to questions and concerns that will allow field teachers to better supervise university students without delays. In addition, electronic mentoring has the potential of providing support to special education teachers who may feel isolated from their special education peers, especially in rural settings. The broader application for electronic mentoring extends to other teacher education field experiences and non-education internships especially those at distances from the campus facilities. For example, the lessons learned from EESP could be applied to internships and clinical experiences in the fields of nursing, business, social work, and counseling.

Assessment Plan

Briefly explain the effectiveness of your assessment plan:

What measure of assessment was used?
How did your approach obtain measures of performance?
Did you feel your measurement was accurate and effective?

Early into the Phase I experience, the supervisor-mentors were each interviewed to gain information about personal beliefs and experiences about mentoring. The interviews revealed that the supervisor-mentors had limited previous training in supervising adults and relied heavily on the only experience they could draw on for this mentoring—personal perceptions of mentoring obtained from their cooperating teachers when they were student teachers. When asked to describe the qualities of a good mentor, each referred to her own student teaching experience when, as a novice, their cooperating teacher had successfully or unsuccessfully contributed to their professional growth. Whether the student teaching experience was perceived as “positive” or “negative,” the three supervisor-mentors each referred to her student teaching cooperating teacher as a “model” who was drawn upon as each supervised adults. When the student teaching experience had been perceived as negative, the supervisor-mentor indicated that she was trying not to do what her cooperating teacher had done. If the experience was positive, the supervisor-mentor perceived she was replicating the perceived characteristics of her cooperating teacher when supervising adults in her classroom. Regardless of how long ago the student teaching experience was, each supervisor-mentor acknowledged her student teaching cooperating teacher was influential if not her only model. Another interesting aspect of their pre-service experience is that all three had initially been trained in elementary general education rather than special education.

Cooperating teachers and supervisor mentor teachers were surveyed at the end of the project to determine the degree of satisfaction with electronic coaching and its contributions to their understanding of the cooperating teacher’s role. The initial plan included assessing student teachers regarding their attitudes and beliefs but due to the technical delays encountered in Phase III, the student teachers were finished with their field placements before they could become involved in the project.

Plan for Colleague Development

Describe your role and activities as a mentor:

What mentoring activities were implemented to assist colleagues?
How did you help to develop colleague's instructional technology skills?
How do you think your contributions to the Knowledge Base will help colleagues planning similar projects?
Is your project approach potentially applicable to other contexts or disciplines?
What tips would you offer?

Colleague development included the following:

Campus Brown Bag - faculty chat PowerPoint presentation focused on using technology for monitoring and supervision of field experiences (Spring 2001)
American Council of Rural Special Education (ACRES) - national conference focused on issues surrounding the use of webcams and listservs for coaching cooperating teachers in distant, rural settings (Spring 2001)
Regional Midwest Association of Teacher Education (ATE) – presentation addressed the concept of teacher empowerment when practicing teachers partner with higher education to improve the teaching profession through electronic form (Spring 2001)
Ameritech Summer Forum – (Summer 2001).
Association of Teacher Educators (ATE) - national conference describing the benefits and challenges encountered with partnerships involving different bureaucracies, job duties, and technology environments (the mentor supervisors who are public K-12 special education teachers are co presenters) (Spring 2002)
American Council of Rural Special Education (ACRES) - national conference focusing on using technologies to recognize the expertise of master teachers in rural settings (Spring 2002)

The participants are also working on an article focusing on the changing professional development needs of special education teachers with the advent of the inclusive classroom setting. Issues include the cycle of assuming teaching responsibilities, conferencing, modeling to novice teachers, instructional decision making, and evaluation of the field experience.

Final Comments on Project Results

Do you think you met the goals of your project?
What, if anything,would you do differently?
Did you have any unexpected outcomes? (positive or negative)
Would you recommend this teaching approach to colleagues?
What other comments or suggestions would you offer to complete this report?

The project results are best described through descriptions of project results from Phases I through III. Phase I was conducted at the IU Southeast campus. Phases II and III were all conducted through technology connections with the school sites.

Phase I
Phase I was conducted under ideal conditions at the campus setting. Supervisor-mentors learned to use listervers and webcams under technologically controlled conditions with technical support from the campus IT personnel. In Phase I, university faculty worked collaboratively with three master special education teachers to prepare them for the role of “supervisor-mentors” to other special education teachers. The purposes of this phase were to: 1) expand the supervisor-mentors’ knowledge about current models regarding supervision and mentoring, 2) empower these mentor teachers to take an active role in the development of the project, including critically analyzing the concepts and theories used for their applicability to the special needs classroom, 3) experiment with communication technology as an avenue to facilitate mentoring other special education teachers, and 4) identify potential problems linking technology between university and school settings.

Phase I also involved creating scenarios using e-mail and listserver with identified issues that special education teachers encounter with university students such as student teachers or practicum students. Drawing on personal and professional experiences as special education teachers, the supervisor-mentors provided modifications to the supervision models and strategies addressing challenges in the special education setting. The special education classroom presents a number of challenges that call for a different response than what might be appropriate in the regular classroom setting. For example, while it is important for every student teacher to understand classroom policies (e.g., health and discipline) and school procedures within the first few weeks of the student teaching experience, the EESP supervisor-mentors stressed that student teachers in special education classrooms are more likely to need this information on “day one” and should probably be given this information before 4 May, 2007ent teachers are often expected to begin working immediately in the special education setting, often with an individual student. Mistakes or misunderstood directions can be catastrophic for special education students on medications or behavior intervention plans. Oversights in the special education services to students may result in official complaints, hearings or litigation. These unique needs were addressed by modifying strategies and models of supervision (see website at http://homepages.ius.edu/LZ/webeesp/web_docs/).

The supervisor-mentors created short scenarios of issues that could be more problematic in the special education setting and practiced requesting advice via the listserver from the other supervision-mentors and university faculty. One such scenario described a potential conflict between the student teacher and the instructional assistant:

My student teacher recently experienced a problem in dealing with one of our instructional assistants. The assistant directed a student to finish an assignment given to him the previous day. This direction occurred following the student teacher’s directive to put away all other work and to complete the assignment just given by her. My student teacher is certain that the assistant heard her make this statement. The student teacher chose not to talk to the assistant and is just stewing about it instead. I have some ideas. What would you suggest?

Phase II
Phase II incorporated additional opportunities to gather input from the supervisor-mentors about the project, keep them updated on new developments, create a Web site that would include the modified supervision models and scenarios provided by the supervisor-mentors, and link the technology between the schools and university so that “trial runs” could be made. The trial runs were designed to uncover and solve difficulties that supervisor-mentors might also encounter with the special education cooperating teachers of Phase III.

The greatest challenges of Phase II included both technology and human elements. The technology issues included mismatches of equipment between the university and individual schools, unusable machines, firewalls, and transmission quality. The human issues were: 1) participating teachers who had competing school responsibilities that diverted their attention away from responding via e-mail and listserver to weekly updates and queries about the EESP project, and 2) untangling the technology in the maze of university and P-12 bureaucracies that were imbedded in both systems. The project found that a great deal of bureaucracy now surrounds technology, in both P-12 and university settings. The weight of bureaucracies is exacerbated by either too few or too many rules and guidelines, all good intentioned. In the scheme of things, a project of significant importance to two university faculty members can pale in comparison with the issues and day-to-day challenges experienced in P-12, and vice-a-versa. An uneven valence of urgency can produce dissatisfaction on both sides, neither side being wrong in their priorities. The technology bureaucracies in these institutions may serve as one more challenge that schools of education may encounter when trying to strengthen partnerships with our rural education practitioners.

Questions that were dealt with during this phase included:

How much time can we realistically expect from the three supervisor-mentors for mentoring of other supervising teachers when there are no accommodations made for any type of release time for the project? (e.g., our supervisor-mentors told us during Phase I that they are often the last to leave their classrooms, receiving no additional compensation for record keeping that necessitates their longer day.)
What can we learn about linking universities to school corporations given the bureaucracy that exists at both ends?
How do transmission imperfections and lag time affect the communication process?
Who are the key P-12 decision makers who authorize the “chain of events” to get the technology in place?

Phase III
Phase III was designed to provide electronic communication between six special education classroom teachers and their student teachers, the three trained supervisor-mentor teachers, and the two IUS faculty. Because of the technical delays in Phase II, and the shorter duration for student teaching, the student teachers were not directly involved in the project and only three cooperating teachers were available to continue the project at this point. The technology utilized webcam, listservers, e-mail, and a Web site with additional special education supervision training materials. Technical problems continued to challenge Phase III development. The webcams were not reliable. The participating teachers in the schools did not have the expertise to work out the problems they encountered. The computer systems in schools went down for days at a time. Our participants could devote limited time to solving the technology glitches. Special education teachers are already under undue pressure with the growing demand for their services. The teacher’s first obligation is to the school and students with special needs. For these teachers, the EESP project must, by necessity, take a “backseat” to their teaching obligations.

In summary, EESP is a collaborative project that can be adopted or adapted to other education programs. The technology-based approach holds potential for learning, maintaining and updating supervision skills of P-12 teachers the beneficial aspects of the grant identified from Phase I focus on the importance of using P-12 master teachers to collaborate with university faculty on aspects of program development including performance-based changes. Asking teachers to utilize their expertise as special education teachers to adapt traditional supervision models affirms practitioners’ shared responsibility for teacher preparation and provides a “reality check” for university faculty.

The EESP grant has also identified technical issues for using electronic communication as well as strategies for dealing with the “technology bureaucracy” institutionalized in both K-12 and higher education settings. Schools and participating teachers should be selected based on their tech capabilities. For the initial entrée, it is important to identify: 1) the main “players” in the off-campus setting for connecting the technology as well as who makes the final decision to allow the connection, 2) ascertaining the technology expertise of the off-campus group working with the technology, and 3) expecting that technology problems will slow the project down.

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