This study sought to understand how high school social studies teachers identify and evaluate uses of digital technologies to implement in their classrooms. The research was a case study of three teachers guided by the question: What factors and relations shape social studies teachers' uses of digital technologies within a unit of instruction? The research question was intentionally broad to help grasp the factors and relations perceived by the teachers and not ones predetermined by the researcher. For more than thirty years the literature on digital technology use in social studies classrooms has been filled with promises of potential, calls for change in instructional practices with technology, and expressions of frustration when that change does not come. It is still fairly unclear how teachers experience uses of digital technologies and internalize their experiences to form perceptions of best practice with technology. This dissertation looked at how three high school social studies teachers experienced and defined effective technology use and the factors impacting their perceptions. The findings indicate the teachers' pedagogical approach to social studies instruction, their perceptions of their students engagement, technical knowledge, and behavior, and their experiences with the reliability and accessibility of the technology tools available to them were the biggest factors and relations impacting digital technology use in a unit of instruction. Teachers acted as gatekeepers of technology integration through a reliance on defensive teaching tactics limiting student access to digital technology beyond watching presentations and videos. These actions were, in part, due to actions that aligned with implicit racial biases found in other research around how teachers perceive students of color uses of technology. Despite stated beliefs about the desire to engage students with technology, each teacher knowingly chose to focus on using technology for knowledge transmission to meet their ultimate goal of higher SOL test scores. / Doctor of Philosophy / This study sought to understand how high school social studies teachers identify and evaluate uses of digital technologies to implement in their classrooms. The research was a case study of three teachers guided by the question: What factors and relations shape social studies teachers' uses of digital technologies within a unit of instruction? This dissertation looked at how three high school social studies teachers experienced and defined effective technology use and the factors impacting them. The findings indicate the teachers' instructional approach to social studies, their perceptions of their students engagement, technical knowledge, and behavior, and their experiences with the reliability and accessibility of the technology tools available to them were the biggest factors and relations impacting digital technology use in a unit of instruction. Teachers acted as gatekeepers of technology integration through a reliance on limiting student access to digital technology beyond watching presentations and videos. These actions were, in part, due to what aligns with an implicit racial biases found by research around how teachers perceive students of color's uses of technology. Despite stated beliefs about the desire to engage students with technology, each teacher knowingly chose to focus on using technology for knowledge transmission to meet their ultimate goal of higher SOL test scores.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/106940 |
| Date | 10 December 2021 |
| Creators | Walker, Matthew Daniel |
| Contributors | Education, Vocational-Technical, Hicks, David, Williams, Thomas O., Friedman, Adam Michael, Doolittle, Peter E. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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