Leilani Cauthen 
In 2021, Leilani Cauthen argued that the SAMR model of technology integration is incomplete for the new models of school. Cauthen’s article appears below, followed by a plain explanation of what SAMR is, what each level looks like, and what researchers have said about its limits.
Does SAMR continue to meet the need of describing the depth and breadth of change needed in education today?
Mention the terms “1:1” or “digital curriculum,” and the widely referenced SAMR model is likely to enter the conversation. Few other models are brought up as frequently with educators who are transitioning their schools to digital devices and curriculum. But does SAMR continue to meet the need of describing the depth and breadth of change needed in pedagogy?
SAMR is a model to help describe, inform and lead a process of change:
• Substitution
• Augmentation
• Modification
• Redefinition
What’s wrong with this, you say? Only just one tiny thing. It is used to describe change within the traditional school paradigm, whether that be an individual classroom with a teacher’s individual practice or a school or a district. It rarely considers contextualization against the new models of school being experimented with and created. Rarely does SAMR spark the conversation of changing the paradigm.
Practically speaking, this is a major and fundamental flaw
Why? Because the only reason education is motivated to transform in the first place is to catch up to outside expectations. In most instances, educators and administrators are not in sync with the workings of industry and consumer culture. The entire perspective of substitution up to redefinition for most viewers from the education industry is already—and only—contextual to education’s standing infrastructure. A teacher. A classroom with walls. A place. Or no place at all.
It would be easy to keep the view that these are the given barriers to the current educational environment. And that the freedoms to substitute, augment, modify and redefine are constrained within those barriers. Wouldn’t this make everyone’s job so much easier instead of throwing out the entire reference point and starting from scratch?
It’s been tried; you might say, to redefine the paradigm itself. But it’s so out-of-sync with the majority of education’s reality of what education should be that the notion to transform fully had to be reined in and the systems of the past restored to practice.
Maybe sticking to the status quo is better, yes? The answer is an emphatical, no. And not just no. Hell no. That type of thinking is old news.
Here’s the new news
The seeming energy-starved low-impact educational constructs of the past are being replaced with a distance anywhere-anytime potential freedom-land of learning that is all-consuming to youth. The super-engagement of games challenges what we think of as learning. The connectivity of the Internet makes learning possible literally anywhere and in many modes.
Literally from birth, learning occurs in everything we do. And now, we have the technology to build learning environments that will allow the natural progression of learning without the limitations of artificial milestones. Students can explore holographic worlds complete with machine-learning algorithmic builds to favor individual students.
The learning laboratories of the future are virtual or some combination of virtual with reality. They are more natural because they are autodidactic—self-driven-from-anywhere—while also capable of requiring basic standards.
Various vendors and even other schools are mastering it for digital distribution and mastering curriculum software. Learning will gravitate towards the best teachers and companies providing the most engaging and effective content.
Now that the Internet can provide a one-stop-shop for any type of curriculum or course possible, and students are graduating having never attended a physical-location school their whole lives from state-led online charters in multiple states, why should we even care about SAMR?
We need to be talking about the redefinition of function, SAMR inside a greater system that is untethering people from a physical location in work, in entertainment, in their education, in worship, and even in their relationships.
Form follows function, and the current educational forms are not aligned to new function. The real question in education surrounding SAMR is why we need the artificiality of an institution for learning. It imposes an artificiality of space, physicality, and time. With the Internet, we have conquered all three. When learning can be done directly, then the form of learning can be a 1:1 direct model with no intermediary of space and time and personnel. There are, of course, a few provisos.
For real redefinition, everyone needs to be scrappy in these new realities we are living and know what these are – blended, virtual, or something else entirely? The best of what you do needs highlighting. The highest skills need marketing.
In the Age of Experience, people will pay for higher value educational experiences, but only if they are above the otherwise expected experiences. Consumer society now expects and even demands a very high level of engaged screen learning. After all, we all live in a society infused with the likes of Amazon, Starbucks, Disney, Uber, self-check-out groceries, and self-driving cars.
Your use of SAMR will be for naught unless each individual and school takes a journey into the future to see which skills are irreplaceably human. Even with a holographic trip to China to learn about the culture and history, what good does it do for a student who does not have a teacher, a coach, a guide, and a mentor tucked in their hip pocket? Someone who can help them explore the interrelationships with their own lives so they can evaluate and make informed decisions? Consider, as just one example, Chinese exchange students in an American school or immigrants arriving in a new neighborhood. How does an American student honor them and their culture? What about the sense of time that the Chinese have? They are predominantly Buddhist and believe they live again, and so built a long-enduring culture with great ritual and timelessness. How can the student consider that against his or her own culture? Human touch is not and will never be ubiquitously replaceable.
Mere questions posed could be online. It’s true, but that magical interaction with a leading figure, the teacher, does something to prove inquiry and answer are dynamic to an individual student. It’s no different than a live audience clapping for you. There is just no substitute for human leadership, but it must actually be human leadership.
The low-value activities of pointing-out next lessons, assigning units, testing, modifying learning paths are all being subsumed by new technologies, or they will be soon.
The machine won’t smile at you in quite the same way, though, no matter how many emoticons you download.
The high-value activities need solid definition so that true redefinition of the teacher’s role as a grand, Socratic-like leader and esteemed guide can be branded, implemented, and then utilized by institutions to hold unto themselves the otherwise escaping throngs of would-be students.
In a nutshell, SAMR is incomplete. To really implement it, consider the competition of the outside world, including new realities. In his book, Infinite Possibility, Joseph Pine talks about six different realities between what is purely “real” and what is “virtual.” Industry is already using all of them.
Here is a quick exercise
Write down the four levels of SAMR. Circle it and label the circle “Competition.” Draw incoming arrows on that circle that is bearing pressure from the outside. Then write down another word at the end of these arrows —“World.”
Now revisit SAMR (Play video) with your new vision.
Related: Digital Learning and Pedagogical Practice
What is SAMR in education? The four levels, examples and limits
Leilani Cauthen asks above whether SAMR still describes the change that schools need. Before weighing Cauthen’s argument, it helps to know exactly what the model says, so this section sets out what SAMR is, shows what each level can look like in a classroom, and reviews what researchers have said about its limits.
What is SAMR?
SAMR is a four-level model for thinking about how technology is used in teaching. Education researcher Ruben Puentedura developed it in 2010, according to an Edutopia explainer from 2020. The letters stand for Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition. The same article gives examples of each level:
- Substitution: a digital tool replaces a traditional one and the task stays the same, such as turning a worksheet into a PDF or recording a lecture for later viewing.
- Augmentation: the digital tool adds useful features while the task stays the same, such as a gamified quiz in Kahoot or a virtual bulletin board such as Padlet.
- Modification: technology redesigns the task and the way people communicate, such as a learning management system like Google Classroom or Zoom’s text chat feature.
- Redefinition: technology makes possible an activity that could not happen before, such as a virtual pen pal, a virtual field trip, a conversation with an author, or students publishing a blog for a real audience.
How teachers use the four levels
In everyday school use, SAMR works as a prompt for a conversation. A teacher who has moved a unit onto a tablet can ask which level the lesson sits at, and what would have to change for the work to rise a level. A technology coach can use the same questions when reviewing a digital curriculum. Cauthen notes that few other models are brought up as often with educators moving to digital devices and curriculum.
The model has a risk, though. A lesson at the Substitution level is not a poor lesson, and a lesson at Redefinition is not automatically a good one. A printed worksheet turned into a PDF may be the right choice if it saves time and the task was already well designed. The levels describe the technology’s role, not the quality of the learning.
What researchers have said about the model
Cauthen’s criticism is that SAMR describes change inside the traditional school paradigm and rarely sparks a conversation about changing the paradigm. Researchers have also raised concerns, from a different direction. In a critical review in TechTrends in 2016, Erica Hamilton, Joshua Rosenberg and Mete Akcaoglu noted that, although SAMR is popular with practitioners, it was not yet represented in the academic literature. They examined the model against theory and earlier research and focused on three concerns: it does not account for context, its levels form a hierarchy, and it puts product ahead of process. The paper ends with suggestions for educators and researchers, which are not summarised here.
The three concerns can be turned into questions that a school can ask when using the model:
- Context. Who are the students, what is the subject, and what does the school have available? The same app can serve different purposes in a kindergarten room and a chemistry laboratory.
- Hierarchy. Does the school treat the top level as the goal for every lesson? Not every task needs to be redefined, and a school that pushes every lesson upward may neglect tasks that are well served at lower levels.
- Process. Are teachers looking at what students think and do while they learn, or only at the finished product? A well-made video can hide shallow understanding, and a modest task can lead to real thinking.
Reading Cauthen’s argument next to the research
The two critiques ask different things. Cauthen asks whether the whole frame of school, with its space, time and staff, should be questioned, and concludes that SAMR is incomplete without that wider view. The researchers ask whether the four levels are a sound tool for the classroom decisions teachers make every day. A school leader can take something from both: use SAMR to start a conversation about technology, keep context and learning process in the discussion, and also ask the larger question of what students need school to do for them.
A practical way to use SAMR
For a team that wants to try the model, a short routine works well. Choose one unit, list the digital tools in use, and place each tool at a level. Next, write what students are learning at each point and how the teacher will know. Finally, decide whether moving up a level would help that learning, or whether the current level already fits the goal.
For related reading, see edCircuit’s piece on digital learning and pedagogical practice, and the professional development guide for ideas on helping teachers use these tools well.
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