Critical elements of successful faculty development in information and communication technology

The almost infinite potential educational uses of information and communication technology (ICT) will only be realized when most teachers have sufficient knowledge and skills to truly integrate ICT into their curricula, utilizing it to make teaching and learning more effective and efficient. For this to be accomplished teachers must experience the integration of ICT into their own pre-service learning as well as into the pedagogical skills they are taught. Teacher education faculty responsible for the pre-service experience of teachers must themselves develop high levels of knowledge, integrative skills, and comfort with ICT. It is the professional development of teacher education faculty that is the focus of this paper. The critical elements of successful faculty development in ICT presented here are drawn from the experiences and evaluation of roughly a year and a half of providing development activities for the faculty of a large, public, urban school of education in the Eastern United States.