Amber Rutan

Artifact Commentary One: Unit 3 Identifying I nstrumental and Missional Thinking(CEP 815)
Goals: 1, 2
Standards: 4, 5

My first semester in the MATC program, I took a class called, CEP 815: Technology and
Leadership. In our third unit, we read articles by Stanley Katz and David Nagel considering
instrumental thinking verses missional thinking. I learned that instrumental thinking is when you are just
using technology to say you are using technology, and also making technology your end result or goal. I
then learned that all educators should think with a missional viewpoint instead, where technology is a tool
or an aid to help reach the learning objective, but is NOT the end outcome. After reading these articles
and my professors lectures, we had to look at a survey question and its answer prompts. The survey
question and prompts revealed instrumental thinking, and we needed to revise the question and prompt to
show missional thinking instead. After making our revisions we had to reflect and explain how we
helped address the idea of missional thinking and could use evidence from the unit three articles to justify
our changes.

This assignment, especially the reading that was a prerequisite, helped me redefine how I used
technology in my own classroom. It significantly changed my thinking about my assessments so I was
not falling into the instrumental thinking trap, and pushed me to create my lessons with a missional
viewpoint instead. This writing and unit truly demonstrated my critical inquiry as an educator (Goal 1). I
had to look at several articles to better understand instrumental thinking verses missional thinking, and
was able to engage in critical inquiry in its many legitimate forms (Goal 1). This assignment also made
me feel like a more accomplished teacher because I set new personal goals to strengthen targeted areas
(Goal 2) of my teaching practicelike technology usageand how specifically to avoid instrumental
thinking in my current classroom. Now, I am trying to ensure that my students are learning the important
concepts of literature, research, and writing with technology as a tool or aid, not just using the technology
as the end goal. Ultimately, as I finished this unit, I became more critically reflective (Standard 4)
about how I was using technology in my own classroom and had to more thoroughly look at my own
beliefs, assumptions, and practices in order to plan for instruction (Standard 4) of technology in a
completely different way. After writing this assignment, I felt like a serious MATC student and know
my technology instruction has improved. Finally, I felt very information-literate (Standard 5) with this
paper. I was able to take the literature I had read from unit three and use it in a meaningful way when I
revised and reflected on this project. I was so enthralled with what I learned about instrumental thinking
verses missional thinking that I shared it with some my coworkers at my district as well (Standard 5).
Although this is an early writing in my MATC program, it still is a project that will stay with me for the
rest of my masters program, and my teaching career.
I have always known that technology is a necessary part of the classroom; however, I realized for the
first time ever, that some of my technology instruction was deeply flawed. Technology is constantly
being pushed into every classroomand rightly so. I am not only teaching English and literature to my
students, but I am also a computer literacy instructor as well. My computer literacy instruction has
changed dramatically because of this unit and paper. I never thoroughly thought through why students are
using technology, other than because they needed to. In the past I have always had these assumptions
about why I needed to use technology: Its the 21
st
century, they are going to college and computers are
the norm. I was an instrumental thinker in many ways. I have changed. The big idea of missional
thinking has helped me grow and rethink about why and how I am teaching technology in my classroom.
Technology is still important and a belief I will always keep in my classroom, but how I teach the
technology has changed: It is never the end result, rather a choice and means to help students share their
learning. It has been one of my best learning moments so far in the MATC program and helped me
evolve in a deeply profound way.