How Are Social Studies Teachers Using Technology in the Classroom?

So that students are equipped with the skills needed to compete a in a global economy, schools are being given resources intended to increase equity, opportunity, and to close the digital divide. Digital equitability exists when all students have access to both advanced technologies and the learning opportunities the technologies provide (Solomon, Allen, & Resta, 2003). The U.S. Department of Education notes that although students are graduating high school at high rates, performance gaps among students from low socioeconomic and various cultural backgrounds still exist. My study followed a constructivist grounded theory approach to examine how seven teachers in Miami-Dade County were using technology in their social studies classrooms and what they perceived to be both facilitators and barriers to their varying levels of integration. The results of the current study indicated that these teachers were not necessarily opposed to integrating technology in their classrooms because of the technology itself, but rather, the level of integration mostly depended on the student population of each class. Teacher perception of student population and performance were the main determinants of technology integration. Teacher perception of students and their performance with technology, referred to as the 4th barrier to technology integration, adds to the work published by Ertmer (1999) and Tsai and Chai (2012) when they speak about First, Second, and Third Order barriers to technology integration in the classroom. Professional development geared towards the impact of teaching with technology on students who come from low socio-economic backgrounds, atypical learners (advanced and remedial), and non-English speakers should be incorporated into teacher preparation programs so that all students have an opportunity to access the resources the county is providing