International Portal of Teacher Education

Source: Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(4), 476-487, 2009.
(Reviewed by the Portal Team)

This article describes the third administration of a survey of technology use among social studies teacher education faculty members across United States.
The study explores the beliefs, practices, and efficacy of social studies faculty members in terms of instructional technology use.

Methodology
The participants were 77 members of the College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA).
The respondents to the survey were a homogeneous population of white faculty members who have taught from 3 to 5 years and were nearly evenly divided between male and female.
The data gathered from the survey were analyzed using descriptive statistics for the
Likert-scale items, and grounded theory was used for the open-ended responses.

This research has explored not only the general diffusion of technology into instruction but also the specificity of integration by exploring correlations between NETS familiarity, confidence in technology use, and implementation.

Results indicated that when controlling for demographics, familiarity with the NETS and confidence in technology use and instruction predict technology implementation. In other words, if a teacher educator/researcher is confident and is familiar with the NETS, that teacher educator/researcher tends to use specialist technologies (applications which can promote social studies instruction by fostering an environment in which students actively work with and think about social studies content) more frequently in teaching.

Furthermore, for those faculty members familiar with the NETS, changes in confidence have little impact on generalist technology (relatively older, more ubiquitous) use. For those who are less familiar with the NETS, increasing confidence leads to more frequent use of generalist technology in the classroom.