Practicing what we preach: Creating distance education models to prepare teachers for the twenty‐first century

Americans are urging a major transformation of the public schools. Many schools are responding by integrating technology throughout their whole structure. Pre‐service teacher education is not keeping pace with these changes. By the year 2000, the majority of an aging teacher workforce will have retired or resigned, creating a window of opportunity for technology leadership in teacher education. Distance education can help educators seize this opportunity. By infusing distance education strategies into the whole fabric of pre‐service instruction, teacher educators can design constructivist pedagogical models for students to emulate in their own subsequent teaching. Using a judicious combination of interactive technologies, faculty members can develop and direct student‐centered, problem‐oriented activities for students at remote sites. The failure of teacher preparation institutions to reform their curricula in response to and in anticipation of changes occurring in schools may render them irrelevant to the educational transformations predicted for the coming decade.