High School Oracle

Teacher Perceptions of the Oracle Academy Program

Elspeth Payne, MA

Education Policy and Social Foundations

University of Maryland, USA

*******@*****.***

Abstract: Snapshot of six American teachers participating in Oracle Corporation’s Academy program, taught in high schools. Looks at teachers’ backgrounds; level of familiarity with computer science; recruitment; experience learning the material; the benefits they believe they have received by being Oracle Academy teachers; financial implications to them. Related issues and challenges, including possible benefits to the school and the implications of commercialization in public education. Impact of IT curriculum on students is not addressed in any depth. There is little historical academic literature on this topic, which mostly tracks trends over the past thirty years, discussing computers as classroom tools. Does IT coursework engage students? Help them graduate from high school, continue on to college? What research would be helpful in understanding the impact of IT on students, teachers, schools, and eventually on the workforce and national economy?

This is a snapshot of the experience of six American high school teachers participating in the Oracle Academy program (the Academy), a year-long high school computer science/Information Technology (IT) curriculum sponsored by Oracle Corporation. I begin with a discussion of the labor trends that make a computer science program pertinent in high school curriculum, and then address the individual experiences of these six teachers. I look at the teachers’ backgrounds and level of familiarity with computer science, their recruitment and experience learning the material, the benefits they believe they have received by being Oracle Academy teachers, and any financial implications or benefits that have accrued to them as a result of their participation. Finally I take a look at some of the related issues and challenges associated with a program like the Oracle Academy. I will include a discussion of the possible benefits of an Information Technology (IT) course at the high school level to the school and to teachers, and the implications of commercialization in public education. The impact of IT curriculum on students is a broad analysis and I do not address it in any depth.

One of the greater challenges in this topic has been the lack of historical academic literature. There is work trend tracking over the past thirty years, and a good deal of discussion of using computers as classroom tools, but very little about high-school-level IT pedagogy, and much of what is written is introductory in nature – overviews rather than in-depth analyses.

The presence of proprietary computer science in high school generates many questions, including whether IT coursework might engage students; help them graduate from high school or continue on to college; concerns about the effects of commercialization on public education; and what kinds of research that would be helpful in understanding the impact of IT on students, teachers, schools, and eventually on the workforce and national economy itself. As education provides a societal foundation, technology should be described as the engine of social change (Hall, 2001). There are not many comparable programs, and they appear to have no more research available than the Oracle Academy does.

What is the Oracle Academy?

The Oracle Academy (the Academy) is computer software curriculum sold to high schools for a fee ($500 per course per teacher in the U.S.). It is designed for one school year.

The Oracle Academy requires intensive teacher training by Oracle Corporation. The first phase of teacher training, or pre-Institute, includes weekly telephone and Internet conferences up to several hours each. Online access to the curriculum and required homework problem sets is required. Oracle provides Adjuncts to conduct these trainings, regionally local high school teachers experienced in the Academy who act as tutors and mentors. I found, among the teachers interviewed, that the pre-Institute training varied in duration from nine to seventeen weeks, and takes place in the spring semester, usually beginning in February. It is conducted on the teacher’s own time outside of his or her regular teaching load.

Pre-Institute training consists of learning the student curriculum. Teachers are given database access and login privileges to an environment identical to the one students would use. By the end of pre-Institute training teachers should have covered all the curriculum and completed all the problem sets once, as a student would.

The teachers in this study attended the Institute for either one or two weeks, depending on what year they attended.

The course materials and database provided by Oracle Corporation are entirely online, though they are designed to be facilitated by an instructor. Curriculum is not a discussed in any detail in this paper.

On the last day of the Institute, candidate teachers must make their first attempt to pass an exit exam. If they do not pass the exam after three tries, Oracle Corporation will not make the online databases and curriculum available for them to teach the Academy course.

Oracle is a profit-generating business in a fast-paced industry. Oracle has 40,000 employees in 33 countries (see oracle.com for most current statistics). It is the world’s second largest software company after Microsoft, and specializes in large enterprise databases and software – Oracle is the IT behind large-scale businesses such as Yahoo! and Amazon.com. Oracle sells its signature database and software that specializes in answering questions involving large sets of variable data quickly. It has expanded the Academy program to 18 countries at last check. It is not my intention to discuss Oracle’s market position or underlying technology here.

The Oracle Academy aligns with three of seven major action steps recommended by the U.S. Department of Labor’s 2004 National Education Technology Plan: to improve teacher training in technology, support e-learning and virtual schools, and to move toward digital content (pp. 39-44).

At present there is no empirical study data on the success or failure, or definition of success or failure, of the Oracle Academy, other than Oracle’s own published success stories on the Academy website.

Disclosure: I worked for Oracle Corporation as an instructor from 2000-2004, and assisted teaching the Institute at UCLA as part of my duties. I had never met any of the teachers interviewed for this project before our interview appointment, and none of them were recommended to me by Oracle staff.

I recorded one to two hour interviews with each of six teachers currently approved by Oracle Corp. to teach the Academy program. I obtained their consent to use the interviews and assured them of anonymity; the schools and teachers are letter-coded and care has been taken not to identify them in any way in this paper.

Their schools covered a range from vocational to high-tech magnet high schools. None of the teachers had any degree in Computer Science or IT, though five of six had a Masters degree, and one is sitting for the National Boards this year. Some of them taught in Business departments, with bookkeeping and typing, some in Information Technology, with Cisco and A+ certification. Their administrators recruited each of them within their schools; I had expected that some of the initiative might have come from the teachers, but their participation was in compliance with a direct request.

All of the teachers put in unremunerated time and effort to complete their qualification and have not received pay increases or district recognition or recognition for it. Half of the teachers interviewed had students applying to attend their program, and all referred to their students as honors or A-level . Some of them have arranged dual enrollment agreements with local community colleges. The teachers have very few subject matter peers in the high school, and they do not participate in any kind of support community of Oracle Academy instructors. I explore concerns about commercialization in high schools, but it was not a concern.

The curriculum is entirely online, which requires the high school has a working, fairly up-to-date computer lab with Internet access. If the computer lab is not up and connected to the Internet, students cannot access the material or the database necessary to work the problems included as part of the curriculum. If the Internet connection is up and working, students will perforce be exposed to advertising and marketing that is pervasive on web browsers and websites.

There is no longitudinal data available at present on the students who participate, whether it helps them enter college or get a better job out of high school than they might otherwise. Program teachers’ perception of their students’ successes and failures may shed anecdotal light on how the Academy affects their students.

I look at the open issues implied in this program, including teacher advancement, the aging teacher workforce keeping up with new technology, additional projects that devolve to teachers who seem to be computer savvy, and ways to leverage Oracle Academy participation to address the national shortage of teachers in science and math.

There will be two and a half million job openings in computer science, engineering, physical science and mathematics between 2002 and 2012 (National Association of Manufacturing, 2005; U.S. Department of Commerce, 2003). Because of continuous advancements in technology we have an obligation to provide all students with a fundamental understanding of what technology is, how it is used, and how it may affect their future. We have an obligation to help them be technologically literate, just as we help them with language literacy and numeracy. The incorporation of technology in the classroom requires more than using computer-assisted instruction (Center for the Enhancement of Teaching, 1998).

This also illuminates some interesting choices about education’s role in society. Molnar and Morales (2000) make the valid point that the primary purpose of schools is education, not marketing, but if students work with a proprietary curriculum there will be advertising present in some form. Oracle does not advertise any incentive program, which would compound any such influence. There is the question of whether markets provide guidance on matters of justice and fairness that are at the heart of a democratic civil society, and whether commercialization of schools is inhibiting the preparation of a citizenry conscious of values such as justice, freedom, equality, and equity (Giroux, 2002). It behooves us as educators and researchers to be aware of the issues inherent in teaching a sponsored curriculum.

Finally, there is too little research on which IT we teach in public schools, how, and why. What do we want a program like the Oracle Academy to do? At first acquaintance it seems benign. However, much of what works in public education is poorly understood. IT is a wide, varied, and highly specialized field, and is poorly defined or encompassed by professionals who interact with it, much less by bright, well-intentioned, forward-peering public school professionals. Based on this small sample, the Academy requires effort in return for interest and personal challenge. Whether the Oracle Academy helps teach the new basic skills employers seek, encourages students to grow and develop, or helps teachers be better qualified or better teachers, is not clear. IT curriculum may hold consequences and interactions we as yet have no way of identifying or leveraging.

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