Technology-infusion earns Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College a national education honor

ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College has been announced as winner of the 2017 Best Practice Award for the Innovative Use of Technology by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. The official presentation will take place March 4 at the 69th AACTE annual meeting in Tampa, Florida.

The award recognizes the college’s infusion of technology into all of its teaching methods courses, rather than offering a standalone technology course. The AACTE announcement noted, “This undertaking required massive support and commitment among dozens of faculty and administrators.”

Punya Mishra is associate dean of scholarship for Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and one of the creators of the TPACK framework for identifying the “Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge” teachers need to teach effectively with technology.

Mishra called the college’s infusion model “a powerful example of how technology integration can be done on a large scale while maintaining fidelity to the vision of respecting the diverse contexts and situations that future teachers will confront.”

Associate Professor Teresa Foulger is leading the Teacher Education Technology Competencies project, an international initiative that combines research and crowdsourcing to establish a list of competencies for teacher educators.

“Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College also received this award in 2009,” she said. “Getting it again eight years later is a testament that we are innovative and forward-thinking, and now recognized as leaders nationally in the use of technology in education. We make it a habit to continually innovate, and one innovative step feeds into the next.”