LAUSR

This editorial was written just after the 72nd annual meeting of the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE). This association’s Committee on Innovation and Technology is always actively involved with developing and advocating for initiatives promoting classroom reform and technology innovation in PK–12 classrooms and postsecondary education. For the past 3 years, the AACTE’s Committee on Innovation and Technology has hosted a preconference workshop focusing on improving technology integration throughout teacher preparation: in 2018, Addressing the Challenge of Integrating Technology in the Teacher Education Curriculum, in 2019, Action Steps for Addressing the Challenge of Integrating Technology in Teacher Preparation, and in 2020, Exemplars and Partners in Integrating Technology in Teacher Education. This year’s workshop provided a critical reminder that there is still much work to be done, but organized efforts across organizations (i.e., ISTE, SITE, AACTE) are aggressively addressing the issue of program-deep, program-wide integration of technology (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology, 2017) or “infusion,” which is defined as involving all teacher educators in addressing technology integration (Foulger, 2020). Many of these efforts began as a response to the urgent call to rethink teacher preparation by focusing on the use of technology to effectively support learning, as noted in the 2017 National Technology Education Plan. In this plan, the Office of Educational Technology (OET) cites four guiding principles for specifically using technology in teacher preparation programs: