Book+Review

﻿ John Lee & Adam M. Friedman (Eds.) ﻿ Research on Technology in Social Studies Education  Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2009 269 pp. $85.99 978 1 60752 279 9

Lee and Friedman’s “Research on Technology in Social Studies Education” is a compendium of research articles and reviews dealing with the use of technology in social studies education. Citing Larry Cuban’s seminal work on technology in education, “Underused and Oversold: Computers in the Classroom” they state their aim is to examine the current body of research so as to identify best practices and provide direction for further research. With this agenda, they focus on how research is being conducted in this field; how technology is affecting teaching and learning in social studies, and what reviews of the literature have to share (p. 7). The selected research articles cover all the “players” in the educational process from K-12 students to graduate level students, from pre-service teachers to current social studies teachers, and teachers enrolled in graduate social studies education programs to historians themselves. The types of technology integration discussed are equally broad, from WebQuests to the use of video to scaffold the historical thinking process. As is typical of most educational research the predominant methods are case study and mixed approach. By virtue of its covering so much ground in the field of technology in social studies education it would be a useful reference for graduate students of social studies education programs and their professors. Although, Lee and Friedman don’t quite meet their stated goal the book does provide examples of technology application and research from which the reader can draw their own conclusions.

There has been much hype about how technology is going to reconceptualize education; changing it from content-based instruction to process-based constructivist learning. This In this technocentric atmosphere Lee and Friedman call for a reasoned approach to evaluate good quality uses of technology in social studies education. Why? Because, they contend, that “the primary purpose of social studies education is to prepare the young people of today to be the citizens of tomorrow.” Therefore, it is essential to improve teaching and learning of social studies. The book is divided into four sections/themes: 1) ways that technology can be used to change social studies instruction from learning facts to creating understanding of historical events; 2) the impact of technology on student learning; 3) teachers’ uses of and attitudes toward technology in their instruction; and 4) the effects of technology on historians’ inquiry process.

The first section focuses on constructs and contexts of research. The first article, by Saye and Brush, describes their Persistent Issues in History Network (PIHN) project. An online resource intended to create a national community of social studies teachers engaged in Problem Based Historical Inquiry (PBHI) to support process based learning. By supplying a suite of online tools (e.g., blogging), classroom videos where PBHI is being used, and over 1400 multimedia resources to historians and educators, PIHN intends to provide scaffolding and support for social studies teachers and students. Examining the project’s website one finds that despite its prestige recognitions there are several broken links and is left with the impression that the site may have gone stale. The second article describes how digital documentaries are a new tool in the social studies teacher’s toolbox about which little research has been conducted. Authors, Hammand and Ferster, make specific recommendations about how to effectively design research of these products; they even include a comprehensive rubric for use in evaluating digital documentaries. The last article in this section describes research about how different change theories can be applied to affect pre-service teachers’ digital history skills and increase their likelihood of using constructivism in their own pedagogy.

Section two’s focus is on technology’s direct impact on students. These articles reveal the positive and negative impacts of technology on learning. The first study reveals that both teacher and student perceptions of WebQuests are mixed. Most significantly almost half of the students did not enjoy WebQuests any more than traditional instruction. The authors conclude that not all WebQuests are well designed and therefore will not necessarily be more engaging or improve learning. The last article discusses how video instructional units can be used to scaffold the learning of the historical inquiry process for college students. They compare short versions of the video instructional units to longer versions, with and without text in an attempt to determine which method represents is most effective. It was determined that the longer versions that included text proved to be the best method of instruction.

The articles in section three concentrate on the teacher in the educational equation; teachers’ attitudes and uses of technology in their instruction. One study looks at how the position of technology, in either the foreground or background of instruction, affects its ability to enable school reform because of its power to reconceptualize the curriculum. Hicks and Doolittle’s case study of a ninth grade social studies teacher and his class shows that students’ are capable of “doing history” and enjoying it. Although, the experience had a detrimental effect on the teacher, who felt he lost control of his class and became frustrated with the technology. This highlights the need to adequately support teachers as they use technology and change to a constructivist pedagogic approach. The last study in this section examines the effects of teachers’ perceptions of their students’ abilities to use high order thinking skills to determine whether, and how, they will use primary digital sources in their classrooms. Recommendations for how to use change theory to alter opinions and specific ways to scaffold instruction are presented.

Section four includes three research reviews. The first discusses the need for the global citizen to have a thorough geographic understanding in order to be effective in the world today. Currently geography operates on the periphery of social studies instruction. Heafner urges it be integrated into other content areas. Stuckart & Berson trace the history and potential of artificial intelligence, specifically simulation and gaming applications offering unique opportunities for students to role play, thus changing the focus of history from content to process. The final article looks at the impact of digital sources on how historians conduct historical inquiry. One positive effect is the easy access to digitized artifacts once not readily available. The author’s caveat to this easy access is that it can lead to historians’ narrowing their research to only those items that can be found on the Internet. Another affect of technology on historical research has been how the dialog has changed from, one to many, to, many to many, thus radically altering how historical analysis is being conducted.

Lee and Friedman, present a broad collection of articles describing the results associated with digital technology being used social studies education. They include examples from the different perspectives (students of different levels, pre-service teachers and their professors, and historians) of those involved in the process. They provide a window into the wide range of technology tools and uses in social studies instruction from WebQuests to digital documentaries to multimedia instruction. The articles demonstrate the positives and negative aspects of technology in social studies education and thus can be a starting point for those interested in conducting future research in this area. Despite it being a timely subject, the book is essentially a number of research articles rather than a collection designed to coalesce around a single point. Nevertheless, it does have merit in its breadth of coverage and its drawing attention to the those areas that need to be addressed in order to best harness the power of technology to enhance historical learning and teaching.