The Position Paper

There is a great deal of informed disagreement and controversy surrounding the use of information and communications technologies in schools. Throughout your career as an educator, you will need to routinely inform yourself about current issues, developments and controversies in the area of educational technology, in order to make wise and defensible decisions. This assignment is intended to prepare you for this part of your job.

In the Position Paper you have the opportunity to deeply explore one of the issues that most interests you in this area, broaden your understanding of the various positions that are held on it, and refine your own personal stance on it. Essentially, your paper must:

• Summarize an issue related to technology and education in K-12 schools, and the various perspectives held on that issue
• Present and defend a clear and reasonable (but not wishy-washy) position on the issue
• Use at least five published references (preferably current ones) to strengthen your argument

The paper is to be no more than five pages long, double-spaced, in 12 point Times font (not including references). Marks will be deducted for extra pages.

The Draft

Because many people have never been asked to write this type of paper before, they find it difficult to write well on the first try. This is why you will submit a draft for feedback before the final paper comes due. To maximize your chance of producing a quality paper, you should make your draft as complete as possible. Many of the marks for the paper are based on how persuasive your argument is, and it is very difficult to judge persuasiveness from an outline alone.

To give you an idea of how important the draft is, and how important it can be to getting a good mark, we provide you with a sample of a draft paper, with feedback. This paper would have earned a C at best, but after the comments and revisions it became an A paper.

Evaluation criteria for the final version

Here is how your grade for the Position Paper breaks down:

Here is another sample paper (B paper) from a previous semester is available in Adobe Acrobat format for you to review. The grading criteria and weighting have changed somewhat, but you will get the general idea.

References

Your paper must incorporate at least five references as part of the support for your position. At least one of your references should be to an article in a peer-reviewed academic journal. (A list of all SFU's journals in the area of Education and Technology can be found here. If you are not sure whether a particular journal is peer reviewed, ask a librarian.) Other references can include newspaper and magazine article or web sites, though please stay away from fluffy editorial pieces. (If you look hard enough you can find an editorialist ready to support just about any crazy opinion you can think of!) If appropriate to the subject of your paper, you can also reference software that you have reviewed, and/or personal communications with teachers or others who have helped inform your position. However, you are NOT to formally interview people about your topic -- ask several people the same set of questions so you can compile and report the results. The University now calls this research, and requires a formal ethical approval for it.

All references should be properly cited (see below for details) and should have a meaningful place in your argument. No credit will be given for throw away references, such as "Lots of people have written on this subject (Author 1, 1968; Author 2, 1972; Author 3, 1984; Author 4, 1992)."

For more details about citing, refer to the American Psychological Association (APA) publication style. The library has created a basic guide to help you.

Some Pointers for Getting Started

We will talk a lot about the paper and you will have opportunities to consult your instructor about the options you identify. Also, remember that the issue you choose must be one which can be discussed from more than one perspective. Do some background reading and identify an issue that you can use as the focus of your position paper. This is not easy to do, and may take several attempts; so start early and develop an informed perspective. If you pick a very straightforward or one-sided issue, you will have a hard time getting an interesting paper out of it. For example, while "yes/no" issues are tempting (e.g. "should computers be used for mathematics instruction?"), they are often too broad to be dealt with well in the required five pages. Ideally you want a meaty issue with three or four possible positions that have been studied, such as "Why do so few women enter careers in high technology? Should schools try to change this, and if so how could it be done?"

Next, figure out what the major positions are that people hold on your issue. Consider them with an open mind, then choose a position that you think you can personally stand by and defend. It's a good idea to work with a group of fellow students in the class who share similar interests, so you can divide up the work of figuring out what the possible positions are. This is likely to strengthen the argument you come up with.

Some places to start looking for information

BC Ministry of Education

"The site has information about all of the ministry's technology initiatives and pilot projects, related documents, ministry developed technology resources, useful links to help teachers integrate technology into the classroom as well as information about federal projects. The links page is a compilation of some excellent web sites related to ICT integration."

Canada's SchoolNet

This is a K-12 organization which funds the development of some K-12 internet projects and resources.

Office of Learning Technologies

This is an office within Ministry of Human Resources Canada. Their primary goal is related to the use of learning technologies for the training and support of adults, but they do sponsor and report on some K-12 activities.

Canadian Socieity for Studies in Education

"The Canadian Society for the Study of Education is the largest organization of professors, students, researchers and practitioners in education in Canada. CSSE is the major national voice for those who create educational knowledge, prepare teachers and educational leaders, and apply research in the schools, classrooms and institutions of Canada."

ERIC

"ERIC is the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC), a federally-funded national information system that provides, through its 16 subject-specific clearinghouses, associated adjunct clearinghouses, and support components, a variety of services and products on a broad range of education-related issues."

"The ERIC database, the world's largest source of education information, contains more than one million abstracts of documents and journal articles on education research and practice. By searching AskERIC's web-based version of the ERIC Database, you can access the ERIC abstracts."

AskERIC's page on Educational Technology

"AskERIC is a personalized Internet-based service providing education information to teachers, librarians, counselors, administrators, parents, and anyone interested in education throughout the United States and the world. It began in 1992 as a project of the ERIC Clearinghouse on Information and Technology and is now, with the ERIC Clearinghouse, a component of the Information Institute of Syracuse at Syracuse University. Today, AskERIC encompasses the resources of the entire ERIC system and beyond, using the subject expertise of the 16 ERIC Clearinghouses to respond to your education requests."

The page on Educational Technology contains links to a number of resources associated with education and technology.

Citing references in the text of your paper

Use the in-text, author-date method of citation rather than footnotes, for example:

Smith (1983) compared cognitive styles . . ., or

In a recent study of cognitive styles (Smith, 1983) . . ., or

In 1983, Smith compared . . .

Order two or more citations appearing with the same parentheses alphabetically, just as they would appear in the reference list at the end of the paper. For example:

Past research (Blackburn, 1988l; MacIntosh & Wong, 1987) . . . or,

Past research (Smith, 1982, 1987; Smith & Blackburn, 1986) . . .

If you use a citation from a secondary source, mention both the secondary and primary source in the text. For example:

Gilbert's (1983) article (as cited in Wong, 1987) states that . . .

Quotations

The sources (authors, year/date, and page number) of all quotations must be cited with the quotation when it appears in your paper. Short quotations (less than 40 words) should be enclosed in quotation marks and included in the paragraph. For example,

Smith's (1964) definition of reinforcement as "any stimulous which causes a behavior to increase" (p. 97) can be applied.

Longer quotations require a block quotation format. Indent all lines of the quotations by 0.5 inches and do not use quotation marks. Given the brevity of your position paper, quotations long enough to be given in block format should be used sparingly.

If you omit any words from the middle of a quotation at any point, an ellipse—three periods . . . to indicate the missing text.

If you add words to a quotation (to clarify the meanting or to make it conform grammatically to the sentence in which it is embedded, use square brackets [] to enclose the added words.

Reference List

A reference list which includes all the articles or other materials you cite (and only those you cite) should be at the end of the paper. Alphabetize the enteries in the reference list by the last name of the author. References by the same author(s) should be listed in order of publication.

Journal articles

Prawat, R.S., & Floeden, R.E. (1994). Philosophical perspectives on constructivist view of learning. Educational Psychologist, 29, 37-48.

Prawat, R. S. (1993). The value of ideas: Problems versus possibilities in learning. Educational Researcher, 22(2), 5-16.

Books

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

Popular periodicals or magazines

Kluger, J. (2000, June 12). The battle to save your memory. Time, 26-31.

On-line journals and other publications

Black, P. & Wiliam, D., (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Kappan [On-line]. Available: http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/kbla9810.htm.

O'Neill, D.K., Abeygunawardena, H., Perris, K, and Punja, Z. (2000). The Telementor's Guidebook: A field guide to supporting student inquiry on-line [On-line]. Available: http://www.sfu.ca/~koneill/TMG.pdf.