ABSTRACT

Beginning teachers are under a great amount of stress as they learn how to teach. During their internship semester, while they are acting for the first time as lead teachers, they are also asked to submit a large number of artifacts such as reflections, literature reviews, and teacher candidate work samples as part of the accreditation system for their university and to the state for their teaching license. At the same time, new teachers are entering a technology-filled world of assessments, professional communications, and record tracking. Progressively school systems are utilizing technology to track student performance and to provide online teaching resources, especially for beginning teachers. New teachers can become connected nationally and globally to other teachers and teaching resources through online repositories provided by many professional organizations. Some examples of these include online courses, journals, books, and opportunities for e-mentoring and social networking. On the other hand, professional learning communities (PLCs) are increasingly hosted in the cyberspace and therefore becoming global and attracting greater expertise. In this chapter three university supervisors present their findings on bringing the promise of a management system they developed using mobile devices and have utilized with twelve preservice teachers around professional dilemmas. The goal of this research was to investigate ways in which a comprehensive teaching management system could provide protective factors and mediate risk factors known to be important to resilient individuals and successful teaching (Beltman, Mansfield, & Price, 2011). The process through which a person is developing the ability to overcome adverse situations and remain successfully adapted has been linked to the concept of “resiliency.” A resilient individual in general is someone who responds to difficult situations with a resilient “nature,” an individual who shapes their own learning through solving problems and ultimately as a result of persistence and practice becomes even more resilient. Resilient teachers are those who “stay in the profession [and] do not just survive, but thrive as confident and healthy professionals” (Beltman, Mansfield, & Price, 2011, p. 196). While resiliency is a mixture of personal and environmental characteristics, most agree that it can be shaped at least in part. Factors in resilient teaching that can be taught; examples include skill in teaching, ability to solve professional dilemmas (teaching problems), motivation to persist and an overall positive outlook despite other factors. Could mobile technologies assist in supporting teacher resiliency in a poor rural disadvantaged southeastern state in the US where teacher turnover rates are twice that of the state average (20 percent as compared with 10 percent)? Through interviews, observations, a pre-/post-technology use survey, a pre-/post-resiliency questionnaire, preservice teacher weekly reflections and artifacts from the apps used on the iPad during their student teaching semester, it was found that all twelve preservice teachers were able to use their iPads and the apps to manage themselves and their classrooms, to solve professional dilemmas, as a teaching tool, and as a way to relax and release stress. None of the participating preservice teachers owned an iPad or had used one before, though ten owned a smartphone. Different preservice teachers depending on the grade level and the school used the mobile device and apps in a plethora of different ways illustrating the flexibility of the technology. None of the schools in which these preservice student teachers taught provided iPads for their students; however all of the schools had a wireless network available. In fact, just the use of an iPad by the preservice teachers for teaching elevated the status of these teachers in the eyes of the students and administrators thereby contributing to their confidence. While there is no one “magic bullet” in education, due to the flexibility, mobility, connectivity, wide availability of apps, cloud computing and sharing, our research illustrated that mobile technologies have the potential to transform education through a targeted and specific teacher support system focused on teacher management.