This chapter evaluated leadership and management of instructional technology in teacher education. It recalls that training and educating teachers is of great importance to society. Teachers can have either positive or negative effects on students which can impact on society. A lot of models have been produced for training and educating teachers. According to Wallace (1991), the most common models are skill, applied science and reflective models. The management of the equipment dimension of educational technologies in teacher training is the effective use of the available equipment. Information technology used in the inservice training provided for teachers who are officially teachers, and in the preservice training provided for preservice teachers, should be applied at the top level. The leadership in the dimension of the equipment of educational technologies in teacher training is that it is regularly renewed by the state of the art technology. First of all, it is needed to use updated information technology in order to achieve the equipment target used in preservice training for preservice teachers and inservice training for teachers at the top level.
TopIntroduction
A letter that a high school principal in the USA sends to teachers on the day when the school opens every year:
I am one of the survivors of an Auschwitz. I have seen things which no one should see; gas chambers that the best educated engineers built, children who the best trained doctors poisoned, babies who the accomplished nurses killed, women and children who high school and university graduates shot. I am, therefore, doubtful of the education. What I want from you is these: Make an effort to make your students human. Make sure that your efforts will not raise sophisticated monsters or talented psychopaths. When literacy, mathematics help children become better human beings, then it matters. (Özkan, 2005)
Training teachers in a qualified way is of great importance for each society. Both training teachers and their effectiveness in classrooms have changed and become varied. Besides, teachers’ roles which are one of the important factors of the change have become different than ever before. Teachers who are accepted as strategically power of the development and change have some significant duties in order for the society to adopt the dizzy developments, changes occurred in every field nowadays and not to fall behind of reaching the information society (Erdem, 2013: 23). For this reason, they need to be trained in a way which makes them able to fulfill their duties on the making of information society.
A teacher has some positive or negative effects on both students he trains and people he communicates with, and the society. According to Fromm (2001), “The aim in educational field is to encourage person’s critical powers and offer a setting for creative expansions of his personality. In other words, it is to raise a free and resolute person against being led and being exploited about his influences for other’s benefits”. These words which form the Japanese philosophy of education clearly put forth why societies should appreciate teachers and teacher training: “A society which can reuse each person is a rational, civilized and advanced society. However, a society which can choose the best ones of adults for teaching profession is the most powerful society”. That a society is powerful is proportionate with that an individual is powerful. Making the individual powerful is provided with raising him as a person who can use his individual abilities, make independent decisions, and who accomplished his personality and can live without depending on others.
TopTeacher Education
Teaching profession deserves to be defined as “a profession of professions” as it provides learning of other professions. A teacher is a member of the profession which gives service to the society in the closest, clearest and extreme way. A teacher is also the most important factor of the educational system. The success of the educational system depends on the qualities of teachers who will carry out the education. From the point of the fact that no educational systems produce a service better than the personnel who will run the system, it can be said that a school is not better but as good as the teachers who will run the system and perform it. A teacher is a learning device, a person who holds an exam, keeps the discipline, a supporter of middle class morality and a nominee. A teacher is a reliable person, a substitute parent, a student advisor, a colleague and a communal participant. The architects of the future of a country are teachers. The ones who raise engineers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, soldiers, policemen, drivers, in short, manpower giving services in every part of the society are teachers. Teachers have important roles in countries’ fates. A teacher as a vital factor of communal development and change has to be trained as a person who is sensitive to all the problems around him, creates a solution and who has his own position in life (Sanal, 1999; Genç, 2000; Çelikten & Şanal & Yeni, 2005; Işık & Çiltaş, Baş, 2010; Tutkun, Aksoyalp, 2010).