Introduction
In its simplest terms, the instructional core is composed of the teacher and the student in the presence of content. It is the relationship between the teacher, the student, and the content—not the qualities of any one of them by themselves—that determines the nature of instructional practice, and each corner of the instructional core has its own particular role and resources to bring to the instructional process. Simply stated, the instructional task is the actual work that students are asked to do in the process of instruction—not what teachers think they are asking students to do, or what the official curriculum says that the students are asked to do, but what they are actually asked to do.
– City, Elizabeth A., Richard Elmore, Sarah Fiarman, and Lee Teitel
Instructional Rounds in Education, 2009
Technology can be a powerful tool to help transform learning. It has the potential to empower students to expand their learning beyond the confines of the traditional classroom, support self-directed learning, help educators tailor learning experiences to individual student needs, and support students with disabilities. Technology also has the potential to allow students and educators to collaborate with peers and experts worldwide, engage with immersive learning simulations, and express their learning creatively. Furthermore, it has the potential to collect student performance and engagement data, providing insight into student progress and allowing educators to deploy targeted support.
Yet, as researcher Justin Reich noted, “Predictions of imminent transformation are among the most reliable refrains in the history of educational technology.”1 And, across that history2 and present-day classrooms, it has failed to realize this full potential. Where technology has realized its potential, it is often for a small minority of learners and contributes to growing inequities.3 4 5 Similarly, educational technology (edtech) tools sometimes claim (without independent, research-based evidence) that student assessment results will soar if school systems adopt a given digital resource. Such claims are not only misleading, but they can undermine the true potential of edtech. Reliance on a specific tool to accelerate learning or deliver a comprehensive and rigorous education for every student places all responsibility on the content.6 It ignores educators and students and the relationships between all three.
Somewhere between the promise of transformation and the barriers to realizing that promise lies the potential for states, districts, and schools to build systems that better ensure that edtech’s promise is afforded to all students, no matter their geography, background, or individual context.
This 2024 National Educational Technology Plan (NETP) examines how technologies can raise the bar7 for all elementary and secondary students. It offers examples of schools, districts, classrooms, and states doing the complex work of establishing systemic solutions to inequities of access, design, and use of technology in support of learning. The identification of specific programs or products in these examples is designed to provide a clearer understanding of innovative ideas and is not meant as an endorsement.
Building on the concept of the instructional core, this plan considers the barriers to equitable support of learning through edtech as three divides:
- Digital Use Divide: Inequitable implementation of instructional tasks supported by technology. On one side of this divide are students who are asked to actively use technology in their learning to analyze, build, produce, and create using digital tools, and, on the other, students encountering instructional tasks where they are asked to use technology for passive assignment completion. While this divide maps to the student corner of the instructional core, it also includes the instructional tasks drawing on content and designed by teachers.
- Digital Design Divide: Inequitable access to time and support of professional learning for all teachers, educators, and practitioners to build their professional capacity to design learning experiences for all students using edtech. This divide maps to the teacher corner of the instructional core.
- Digital Access Divide: Inequitable access to connectivity, devices, and digital content. Mapping to the content corner of the instructional core, the digital access divide also includes equitable accessibility and access to instruction in digital health, safety, and citizenship skills.
As a path to closing these divides, the NETP also provides actionable recommendations to advance the effective use of technology to support teaching and learning. The recommendations in each section are also followed by tags identifying whether they are most immediately intended for states, districts, or school buildings. These recommendations are meant as components of solutions that bridge each divide but cannot comprise all of what is necessary within a given geography, culture, or context. Throughout each section, examples are offered of states, school districts, and schools engaged in the work of putting these recommendations into practice.
Many schools in the United States are equipped with greater connectivity and access to devices and digital learning resources than ever before as a result of the need for emergency remote learning brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this continued bridging of the access divide will only add to the failure of edtech to deliver on its promises if systems do not consider its use in conjunction with all components of the instructional core. This NETP attempts to chart a path for all schools, educators, and students to realize the potential of technology in supporting better “everywhere, all-the-time” learning.
1 (2020). Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education (1st ed.). Harvard University Press. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674089044↩
2 Cuban, Larry. Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001.↩
3 (2017, October). From Good Intentions to Real Outcomes: Equity by Design in Learning Technologies. Connected Learning Alliance. Retrieved September 7, 2023, from https://clalliance.org/publications/good-intentions-real-outcomes-equity-design-learning-technologies/↩
4 Attewell, P. (2001). Comment: The first and second digital divides. Sociology of Education, 252-259.↩
5 Reinhart, J. M., Thomas, E., & Toriskie, J. M. (2011). K-12 teachers: Technology use and the second level digital divide. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 38↩
6 City, Elizabeth A., Elmore, R., Fiarman, S., & Teitel, L. (2009). Instructional rounds in education. Harvard Educational Publishing Group.↩
7 (n.d.). Raise the Bar: Lead the World. U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved September 7, 2023, from https://www.ed.gov/raisethebar/↩
