Is the field of instructional technology a profession? An investigation.

By Steve McCrea Assignment 1 for EDD 8120 Perspectives in ITDE Professor Michael Simonson March 2012 (late submission)

Is the field of instructional technology a profession? According to James Finn, a profession has, at least, the following characteristics: 1. an intellectual technique, 2. an application of that technique to practical affairs, 3. a period of long training necessary before entering into the profession, 4. an association of the members of the profession into a closely knit group with a high quality of communication between members, 5. a series of standards and a statement of ethics which is enforced, and 6. an organized body of intellectual theory constantly expanding by research. After each part of Finns six-part test for becoming a profession has been examined, it will become apparent that the focus of scrutiny should be on the last two parts. The bulk of this paper will center on providing evidence for the deficiencies in those two parts and there will be a proposed remedy to move the vocation closer to becoming a profession. 1. 2. an intellectual technique, an application of that technique to practical affairs,

3. a period of long training necessary before entering into the profession, 4. an association of the members of the profession into a closely knit group with a

high quality of communication between members, 5. and a series of standards and a statement of ethics which is enforced,

This section is perhaps the weakest link in the chain of elements that make a profession in Finns definition. If I have a complaint or dispute with an automobile mechanic, there are procedures for resolving the dispute.

In short, is there a system of certifying that the person doing design work or recommending a program to apply educational technology is trained and effective at doing this work? There are two sources of standards for evaluating the training programs for instructional technologists. According to AECT president Phil Harris,

According to Maria Chilcote, an employee at The Training Clinic (a training company based in Seal Beach, California), training in the field is based on standards developed in part by her employer. Jean Barbazette (who founded The Training Clinic) works on the committee that adopts and amends the standards for the field at the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) and she contributes to the standards issued by ISPI. Chilcote emphasized in our conversation how Barbazettes participation in the standard setting has influenced how the company trains its clients. The standards guide us in how we shape the curriculum. But she emphasized what she sees as a gap in the field: There is no place that a customer can turn to lodge a complaint or to see if a particular instructional designer has complaints registered against him (personal conversation, February 16, 2012). Individual training companies are not set up to act as registrars of complaints. According to Darryl Sink of dsink.com (a training firm), there is no national or state office of professional regulation for instructional technologists, instructional designers or educational

technologists (personal conversation, February 20, 2012). There

6. an organized body of intellectual theory constantly expanding by research. The lack of an easy method to resolve a dispute with an instructional technologist is According to Clark and Estes (1998), we do not have an educaitonal technology. When we succeed, we generate limited contextualized, non-transferable craft solutions to educational problems. [We] tend to cit[e] research studies that are often poorly designed and largely irrelevant to support interventions that seldom generalize beyond their initial application. Later, Clark and Estes (1999) defined an authentic technology as educational solutions

A key cultural point is we must ask whether the problems and solutions addressed by a specific technology will be acceptable to our clients. (p. 250). This point can be applied to the case (mentioned above in section five) where the APEX software failed to meet the needs of students or teachers at Mavericks and Life Skills schools in Fort Lauderdale. Although the industry currently lacks a central place where disputes can be highlighted and potentially resolved (Finns fifth condition), the sixth part of Finns prescription for a profession appears to have the potential for being met. The fact that researchers are pointing out deficiencies in research would appear to be a strength. Clark and Estes proposed a partnership between In Finns definition, the intellectual theory supporting the field of educational technologies needs to be expanding through research. The sheer volume of publication in educational technologies is staggering.

However, in an editorial, Simonson warned in 2009 that many still do not appreciate the importance of studying educational innovations using the appropriate application of the scientific method. He echoed Clark and Estes about the need to move from the realm of a craft to that of a profession by using more rigorous standards in research. With this admonition coming ten years after Clark and Estes, one fears that little progress has been made. Conclusion The task was to determine whether or not the industry is truly a profession. From two of the six checkpoints given by Finn we can conclude that there is more work to be done. The deficiencies pointed out by Clark and Estes in the quality of research (Finns organized body of theory) appear to remain with us, in part because the potential of science to inform educational technology (Clark and Estes) is certainly not filtering down to interactions with clients (in the anecdotes related above). The larger deficit appears to be in the way that standards are not enforced, namely that there does not appear to be a widely accepted method for poor design to be brought to wider public scrutiny. The titles of instructional technologists, instructional designers and educational technologists can sound like professionals to the lay person. I began this paper assuming that these professions existed, in part because there are people who make their living using these titles. Until clients of technologists can report the bad apples (as conveniently as they can single out a doctor or auto mechanic) and work toward dispute resolution in the public eye, it would appear that educational technologists in general can claim to be an occupation and a vocation, but not yet a profession in the way that Jim Finn proposed nearly sixty years ago.

References AECT (2000). NCATE program standards. Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Apex Learning (2012a). Core courses. Retrieved on February 15, 2012 at http://apexlearning.com/Catalog.htm?id_catalog=5.

Apex Learning (2012b). Research base. Retrieved on February 15, 2012 at http://apexlearning.com/Curriculum/Research.htm. Clark R. E. & Estes, F. (1998) Technology or Craft: What are we doing? Educational Technology, 38(5), 5-11. Clark, R. & Estes, F. (1999). The development of authentic technologies. Educational Technology 39(2), 5-16. Cook, B. (2011). Survey of attitudes. Surveymonkey.com, retrieved on March 16, 2012. Finn, J. (1953). Professionalizing the audiovisual field. Audio-Visual Communication Review, 1(1), 6-17. Moore, A. & Baer, T. (2010). Research put into practice: Apex learning Curriculu and pedagogy. Ripoffreport.com (2012). Complaint review. Retrieved on February 15, 2012 at www.ripoffreport.com/school-bullies/northwest-college -of/northwest-college-of-hair. Simonson, M. (2009). Scientific rigor and distance education. Quarterly Review of Distance Education, 10(4), vii-viii. Sink, D. (2012). Findings from ISPI Cnference Workshop. Retrieved on Febrayr 15, 2012 at http://dsink.com. The Training Clinic (2012). Certified instructional systems designer, a five-day training. Retrieved on February 15, 2012 at http://thetrainingclinic.com/certificate_programs/designcert.htm.

Appendix A point of possible interest: Brett Cook, a graduate student at Old Dominion University, has assembled a draft survey to poll the industry. Members of AECT will be invited to participate in the survey at the next annual convention (planned for Louisville, Ky.). The questions have been embargoed, pending review by the students committee.