TECHNOLOGY IN TEACHER EDUCATION: PROGRESS ALONG THE CONTINUUM

Schools, colleges, and departments of education (SCDEs) may be placed along a continuum in their integration of technology. The 1995 Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) report, Teachers & Technology: Making the Connection, spoke to one end of the continuum when it raised two important points—that “technology is not central to the teacher preparation experience” and that “most technology instruction . . . is teaching about technology . . . not teaching with technology across the curriculum”.

TECHNOLOGY IN TEACHER EDUCATION: PROGRESS ALONG THE CONTINUUM

Schools, colleges, and departments of education (SCDEs) may be placed along a continuum in their integration of technology. The 1995 Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) report, Teachers & Technology: Making the Connection, spoke to one end of the continuum when it raised two important points that “technology is not central to the teacher preparation experience” and that “most technology instruction is teaching about technology not teaching with technology across the curriculum”.

Parliamentary TA in Portugal

Currently, a structure for parliamentary Technology Assessment (pTA) in Portugal does not exist. However, efforts have been made by the Parliament to support the establishment of pTA through the involvement of external actors. Two different models, a Parliamentary Office of Technology Assessment (GPAT) and a Parliamentary Unit of Technology Assessment (UPAT), have recently been proposed. This paper discusses some of the observations presented in a previous TATuP- paper by Böhle/Moniz (2015) relative to the establishment of TA in Portugal including observations on the GPAT model. In doing so, this paper provides a brief comparative analysis between the two models, including precedents, funding and organisational structure.

Who will advise us?

This essay argues that, in place of the present hit-and-miss system of specialist advisement (a system of scientific experts performing case-by-case studies at numerous regulatory agencies, the US Office of Technology Assessment, for example), we require a corps of