Chapter 7: Research and Development With regard to teachers as professionals, both researchers and other educators attending our listening sessions were highly concerned about the disconnect between how teachers are prepared versus how they are expected to work with emerging technology. When we discuss learning, teachers are central actors, and thus the contexts in which they are prepared is centrally important to their ability to do great work in current and emerging technological environments. Teacher professional development, professional learning, and leadership (PD or PL) for emerging technologies was seen as an area needing intense re-thinking, and research could lead the way. Today, few who prepare to become a teacher in an established pre-service program learn about the effective use of educational technology in schools and classrooms; those who do have the opportunity to investigate technology rarely think about the structures that shape its use in the classroom and in educational leadership. Consequently, a troubling dichotomy arises between a small set of investigators who specifically consider educational technology in their research on teaching and a broader group of educators who see educational technology as a generic instructional resource. The challenge is high because teacher professional development will remain highly varied by local contexts. Yet insufficient attention to teachers as leaders in the use and further development of effective educational technology is widespread in teacher professional development research. One response can be in terms of investigating how to nurture greater AI literacy for all teachers. AI literacy is not only important to protect educators and students from possible dangers but also valuable to support teachers to harness the good and do so in innovative ways. A panelist reminded the 80 | P a g e
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