by Roma Angel

Support for virtual worlds as viable higher education teaching and learning formats must carry significant weight for survival among the various initiatives vying for administrative commitment. This paper examines four areas of administrative commitment essential for the growth of virtual worlds into significant places for institutional teaching and learning. Specific attention will be given to an examination of initiatives within a particular college of education where there is grounded and significant support for virtual world initiatives.

For administrative commitments to virtual worlds to take on the status of support at the significant and sustained levels, virtual worlds as teaching entities first must be viewed as being, or becoming, essential to an institution’s educational program. Central to this commitment is the development of a shared faculty-administration vision. Virtual worlds as authentic teaching and learning formats across disciplines have to be a major aspect of an institution’s shared curriculum conversation. Within the Reich College of Education, Appalachian State University, the workplace for several presenters at this conference, we share a conceptual framework that supports technology as a viable format for dialogic learning.

The college’s conceptual framework focuses on the social construction of knowledge. Currently undergoing a major revision, the revised framework will support six assumptions: (1) all knowledge is socially constructed and all knowledge is social in nature; (2) learning occurs through participation in a community of practice; (3) the development of professional educators proceeds through stages from novice to expert under the guidance of more experienced and knowledgeable mentors from the community of practice; (4) cognition is distributed, i.e., individual thinking and problem solving are revealed through socially contextualized practices; (5) identifiable knowledge bases, general ones plus specific ones for content domain specialties, emerge out of communities of practice; and (6) professional educators must develop dispositions, including attitudes, beliefs and values, about their work in schools. Most of the above wording comes directly from the college’s original conceptual framework website at www.ced.appstate.edu/Conceptual_Framework.htm (retrieved September 10, 2004) and from the revision sites at www.fd.appstate.edu/rcoe_framework/intro_draft.htm (retrieved March 1, 2004).

The newest version of the framework states that “the Framework forms the basis for program and curriculum development, and in a broader way guides interactions among our faculty and students” (Frameworks revision draft, p.l1). The revised Framework cites Lev Vygotsky (1929; 1978) and John Dewey’s (1878) My Pedagogic Creed, specifically: “I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race….Through this unconscious education the individual gradually comes to share in the intellectual and moral resources which humanity has succeeded in getting together….The most formal and technical education in the world cannot safely depart from this general process. It can only organize it or differentiate it in some particular direction” (Dewey, p. 77). As such, it recognizes both the psychological and sociological aspects of learning. The dean of the Reich College of Education, then, measures the ability of the virtual worlds initiative to fulfill the spirit of the college’s conceptual framework. Interestingly, the first Framework notes: “We embrace the exploration of new forms of teaching and learning through experimentation with emerging technologies, and we are committed to the promotion of areas of excellence in the study of teaching, learning, and professional service. (See also RCOE Vision Statement, 1990, at www.ced.appstate.edu).

An interview with Dr. Charles Duke, Dean, Reich College of Education, validates his commitment to the virtual worlds initiative. Having analyzed the program’s ability to provide an alternate framework for positive teaching and learning, he also finds virtual worlds to have potential to enhance the college’s web-enhanced distance education commitment (Interview, August 21, 2004). Dean Duke sees the initiative as having even more future possibility for teaching programs and sees the initiative as providing another option for the social construction of knowledge. That he has bought into the initiative as an enhancement of the above outlined conceptual framework is clear. His commitment seems to validate the assertion that administrative commitment begins with a shared vision. Once there is a shared administration-faculty vision, the three other aspects of administrative commitment are easier to support. Interviews with both the dean of the college and Dr. Art Safer, Department Chair of the Department of Leadership and Educational Studies reveal this fact (Interview, August 23, 2004).

The three remaining areas of support become secondary to the support for vision. These areas are “voiced,” financial and human resource support; maintenance of access to virtual worlds sites; and support for time for faculty conceptualization, building, teaching, evaluation, revision and reconceptualization of the worlds. Justification for voicing support among the larger faculty for the virtual worlds initiative serves to provide other faculty, and other funding sources, validation for participation in the worlds as viable teaching and learning places. Just a word of support from those in positions of power can validate the dialogic aspect of virtual worlds as visions of the social construction of knowledge and can add to the creative aspects of the metaphors present in the worlds. Financial, human resource, material, access and time are all part of the financial package provided primarily by the administration of the college and the department. None of these would receive sustained support without a shared vision.

Selected References and Recommended Readings

Dewey, J. (1897/2004). My Pedagogic Creed. In Flinders (Ed.), The Curriculum Studies Reader.

Duke, Charles (2004, August 21). Interview. Reich College of Education, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC.

Gee, J. (1990). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. London: Falmer Press.

Glassman, M. (2001). Dewey and vygotsky: Society, experience, and inquiry in educational practice. Educational Researcher, 30(4), 3-14.

Glassman, M., & Wang, Ye (2004). On the interconnected nature of interpreting Vygotsky: Rejoinder to Gredler and Shields Does no one read Vygotsky’s Words (2004). Educational Researcher, 33 (6), 19-22.

ISTE. National educational technology standards for administrators. Retrieved September 2, 2004. http://cnets.iste.org/administrators/a_stands.html.

Prawat, R.S., & Peterson, P.L. (2004). Social constructivist views of learning. In Murphy, J. Handbook of research on educational administration (pp. 203-226).

RCOE Conceptual Framework. Http://www.ced.appstate.edu/Conceptual_Framework.htm (retrieved, September 10, 2004; http://www.fd.appstate.edu/rcoe_framework/intro_draft.htm

(retrieved March 1, 2004).

Safer, Art (2004, August 23). Interview. Reich College of Education, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC.

Shuldman, M. (2004). Superintendent conceptions of institutional conditions that impact teacher technology integration. Journal of research on technology in education. 36(4), 319-343.

Streibel, M.J. (2002). A critical analysis of three approaches to the use of computers in education. In L. Beyer, & M. Apple (Eds.), The curriculum: Problems, politics and possibilities (pp. 284-309).

Vygotsky, L.S. (1929). Vygotsky and the social formation of the mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Unviersity Press.