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(Sep 17, 2007) - The University of Alberta was, in many ways, a natural place for Kathy Adams to conduct her doctoral work in Secondary Education. Born in Ottawa, Kathy moved to Edmonton with her family at an early age. Although she has had the opportunity to live all over the world, Edmonton always seems to call her home: “A number of years ago, my husband and I took our children to Dresden, Germany and stayed for several years. But we always seem to return to Edmonton!”
More than merely having an unshakable fondness for Edmonton, Kathy has always thought that if she did a PhD, it would be at the University of Alberta. With an undergraduate degree in Computing Science from the University of Alberta, and a Master’s degree in Adult Education from St. Francis Xavier, Nova Scotia, Kathy’s research interests are in the area of Educational Technology, an area of strength at the U of A: “I had been told that Secondary Education had an excellent reputation for supporting innovative educational research projects. I met with Dr. George Buck, the graduate chair of Secondary Education at the time, who also happens to be an expert in the history of educational technologies in Alberta schools. That meeting convinced me I was in the right place. I have never looked back. The department support has been outstanding too. I’ve had the opportunity to study with some world-class scholars and educators. I feel very fortunate.”
Kathy’s research at the University of Alberta addresses tensions between the increasing use of exciting new technology in the classroom, and the unintended negative impacts of such technologies on learning and classroom experience. “Over the last decade, I have watched with some incredulity how Alberta schools have embraced computer technologies with zeal, especially considering the high costs relative to any clearly demonstrated long-term gains in academic achievement. While I have always admired Alberta’s willingness to support innovative, local educational initiatives, the province-wide integration of information and communication technologies (ICTs) is a very large experiment with our children’s futures.”
Inspired by a suggestion by Dr. Max van Manen, Kathy’s doctoral research concerns the increasing use of PowerPoint in the classroom, and the ways in which such new technologies serve to reshape knowledge and affect the day-to-day lived realities of classrooms. In a pilot study, Kathy found that PowerPoint can indeed shape, diminish, or enhance certain effects of teaching. In part, Kathy suggests, this is due to a certain predetermined-ness built into PowerPoint slidesets, which “tends to predispose teachers to assume certain habituated and taken-for-granted instructional styles and technologies of practice (the preponderance of bulleting, for example, to represent knowledge, is given by the default slide).”
Understanding the unanticipated and indirect effects of new technologies in the classroom is something that is often neglected in decisions of implementation, but that should be of central importance, especially where the socialization of children is concerned. As Kathy explains, “Much effort has been spent trying to demonstrate the effectiveness of ICTs in the classroom, in part to justify the huge expenditures and infrastructure changes that have already taken place. It is time to take a more critical view, to assess the overall impact of these changes, and to proceed with a more balanced, and I would suggest sober, perspective. In this regard, qualitative research is particularly helpful in revealing the human face of inquiry.”
A faculty member at Grant MacEwan College, Kathy is currently on leave to complete her PhD. She eagerly looks forward to returning to her position, where she plans to share her wealth of new ideas, experiences and understandings. The recipient of a Killam Memorial Scholarship in 2006, Kathy credits scholarship opportunities for enabling her to commit the research energies that her subject deserves: “Receiving scholarship funding has given me the opportunity to pursue my doctoral research full-time. The worth of this extended period of devoted study is simply impossible to estimate.”
By Dawn Alexandrea Berry, Research Profile Project
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