Social Studies TPCK 2 Social Studies, Democracy, and Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A

The connections between social studies, democracy, and technology are complicated. Point in case, although technology is put to democratic use in a number of ways such as to help address social problems, facilitate political processes, and enable access to information; technology also divides haves from have nots and is often applied in educational settings in such a way as to actually distract from democratic and authentic learning. In this paper, I consider a specific example of how technology was used as a tool for facilitating a democratically-oriented social studies pedagogical activity. Namely, I report preliminary findings from a study that looks at how pre-service social studies teachers use technology to find specific historical materials given certain pedagogical aims. In describing these findings, I use the construct of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) as a framework and broadly conceive of social studies as aimed at preparation for and experiences in democratic life. The idea of TPACK emerged as a way to consider the interplay of technology, pedagogy, and academic content in dynamic and productive contexts (Mishra & Koehler, 2008). At its root, TPACK reflects Shulman’s (1986) notion that pedagogical content knowledge develops as teachers transform their knowledge of content for pedagogical purposes, but extends this idea by introducing technology as a dynamic component in this transformative process. In a previous publication, I have suggested that social studies teachers approach this process by engaging subject matter that is “inherently technological ” and by “improving ” subject matter given technological adaptations (Lee, 2008, p. 130). Work with subject matter in such contexts requires pedagogical action.