<\/p>\n
The chief value of technology lies, therefore, in providing the leverage so urgently needed for moving social studies instruction away from passive, teacher-dominated approaches emphasizing recall and regurgitation toward active student centered forms of learning demanding critical and conceptual thinking from all students at all levels. (Crocco, 2001, p. 2)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Researchers in the teaching and learning of history advocate instructional approaches that engage students in the process of \u201cdoing\u201d history, including building historical knowledge through the use of primary sources, conducting historical inquiry, and encouraging students to think historically (Kobrin, 1996; Levstik & Barton, 2001; van Hover & Yeager, 2002; Wineburg, 1991). This approach encourages students to raise questions and to marshal solid evidence in support of their answers; to go beyond the facts presented in their textbooks and examine the historical record for themselves; to consult documents, journals, diaries, artifacts, historic sites, works of art, quantitative data, and other evidence from the past, and to do so imaginatively\u2015taking into account the historical context in which these records were created and comparing the multiple points of view of those on the scene at the time to build understandings of historical significance (Levstik, 1996; Seixas, 1996; Wineburg, 1991; Yeager & Davis, 1996).<\/p>\n
For history teachers wanting to embrace historical thinking processes in the social studies classroom, there is much promise. In response to the greater demand for primary and secondary resources, Web sites or archives of historic documents created by libraries, universities, and government agencies have proliferated. These sites allow teachers to access and download documents free of charge for use in the social studies classroom.\u00a0 By allowing students to explore the raw materials of the past, digital history sites, as well as the use of complementary technologies, have the potential to engage students actively in the construction and interpretation of history (Ayers, 1999; Braun & Rissinger, 1999; Tally, 1996).<\/p>\n
However, using primary sources does not automatically translate into historical thinking (Swan & Hicks, 2007).\u00a0 Rather, it is the teacher who juxtaposes documents against one another, who asks critical thinking questions of a document, or who elicits the bias or perspective of the author of the document that allows students to practice historical inquiry skills.\u00a0 As the quote in beginning of this article suggests, technology has the potential for facilitating these processes, but it is the teacher who leverages the technology to conduct historical inquiry in the classroom.<\/p>\n
To date, little research has been done within this framework of intersection between historical thinking and technology in the history classroom (Swan & Hofer, 2008). As researchers wanting to explore this relationship, we constructed an evaluation matrix that would aid in categorizing observational data for one qualitative study of three secondary American history teachers and their uses of primary sources.\u00a0 In this article, we provide background information on the development of the evaluation matrix, present the instrument, and evaluate its effectiveness in categorizing both primary source and technology usage.<\/p>\n
Developing the Tool<\/p>\n
Miles and Huberman (1994) stated,\u00a0 \u201cA conceptual framework explains, either graphically or in narrative form, the main things to be studied \u2013 the key factors, constructs or variables \u2013 and the presumed relationships among them\u201d (p. 18). The development of the conceptual framework for the study, grounded in the literature on the efforts to bring technology and primary sources into history education, helped to provide a focus for the inquiry and means to display the data for analysis.\u00a0 Embedded within the framework are foundational premises about the relationship between technology and the teaching of history.<\/p>\n
Students\u2019 technology skills need to be more than a distinct and often disconnected goal of the curriculum (International Society for Technology in Education, 2007; Mason et al., 2000), but also an embedded support for instructional designs that move beyond teacher-centered, textbook-driven approaches and toward models in which students are more actively involved in their learning (Doolittle & Hicks, 2003; Harris, 1995; Mason et al., 2000; van Hover, Berson, Bolick, & Swan, 2004). Ideally, the technology is employed not only to invite student engagement, but to broaden and deepen student understandings through the purposeful acquisition and assembly of materials to guide students\u2019 learning and encourage independent inquiry.<\/p>\n
According to Crocco (2001), technology-infused pedagogy is evident in \u201cclassrooms that foster questioning, challenging, and reflecting by all students\u201d (p. 388). Incorporating the technology without framing it in sound pedagogy runs the risk of \u201cinvesting a great deal of time, attention, and money to educationally marginal means\u201d (Crocco, 2001, p. 387).\u00a0 More recently, Crocco\u2019s argument has been echoed in the development of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK; Mishra & Koehler, 2006).<\/p>\n
In the area of history instruction, the interpretive student stance advocated by Crocco is wholly consistent with the broader orientation toward disciplined inquiry and historical thinking advanced by Levstik and Barton (2001) and others (Kobrin 1996; van Hover & Yeager, 2002, Wineburg, 1991). The second premise holds that an orientation toward historical thinking is valid and desirable and can be uniquely supported by technology at several pedagogical stages (Brush & Saye, 2000; Hicks, Doolittle, & Lee, 2004; Hofer & Swan, 2006; Lee & Calandra, 2004; Saye & Brush, 1999; Swan & Hicks, 2007). The National Standards for History<\/i> (National Center for History in Schools, NCHIS, 1996) characterized a set of five core skills under the broad concept of historical thinking; these include chronological thinking, historical comprehension, historical analysis and interpretation, historical research capabilities and historical issues-analysis and decisionmaking. From these historical habits of mind historiography, the writing of history, proceeds (Holt, 1995; Levstik & Barton, 2001; Van Sledright, 2001).<\/p>\n
Students are exposed to the ways historians use text-based and nontext primary sources, relics, and artifacts as building blocks in the historiographic process. The goals of the history curriculum encompass the narrative explanation of historical events, as well as the consideration of broader structures and themes and the inclusion of historiographic processes referred to by Leinhardt (1993) as metasystems.<\/p>\n
When such metasystemic processes are appropriately scaled and applied to the classroom use of historical sources, students are expected to frame historical questions, look for and evaluate evidence, identify viewpoints, make connections across sources, assess relevance, draw inferences from text and nontext resources, and develop plausible historical narrative of their own (Barton, 2001). Technology can play several roles in this multistep process, serving as a repository from which sources can be acquired, a platform through which the sources can be delivered and evaluated, and a tool through which student understandings can be demonstrated and assessed.<\/p>\n
These premises were incorporated into developing our evaluative instrument in several ways. First, historical thinking can clearly be taught well without using electronic means of access, delivery, and product demonstration. Consequently, the evaluation of the overall fidelity of the instructional design must be separate from, and must effectively outweigh, the evaluation of technology use per se. Similarly, primary sources are a necessary but not sufficient condition for the practice of historical thinking in the history classroom.\u00a0 For example, a teacher might use a primary source so that students could uncover author bias or to juxtapose it against another document of the same event to understand more fully multiple perspectives in history.\u00a0 In doing so, teachers are building students\u2019 understanding of historical comprehension<\/i> as laid out by the National Standards for History<\/i> (NCHS, 1996).<\/p>\n
Conversely, teachers could use primary sources as they would a textbook, not asking any questions of the authenticity or reliability of the document, but rather using primary sources as a content delivery mechanism.\u00a0 Although primary sources provide an entry point into historical scholarship, simply using primary sources does not translate into historical thinking (Barton, 2005).\u00a0 For those reasons, the evaluation matrix (see Appendix A [PDF]<\/a>) was constructed to gauge the fidelity of primary source use according to three domains, curriculum content, instructional processes, and student products or outcomes (Tomlinson, 1995).<\/p>\n
The first domain, \u201cContent,\u201d consists of the ideas, concepts, descriptive information, and facts, rules, and principles presented to the learner (Tomlinson, 1995). Since we were concerned with measuring the content specific to historical thinking processes, we viewed primary sources as the foundation for the teaching of history.\u00a0 In the evaluation matrix, primary sources used in the classroom were evaluated for their complexity, variety, and orientation.<\/p>\n
The second domain, \u201cInstructional Process,\u201d incorporated the presentation of content, including the design of learning activities for students, the framing of analytical questions, as well as the teaching methods and thinking skills used in the classroom (Tomlinson, 1995). <\/i>Because the study was confined to measuring methods of historical thinking, instructional process was limited to the way in which primary sources were used in exercises promoting historical interpretation, teaching historical methodology, and assembling historical narratives. This component of the matrix was informed, in part, by the continuum of historical teaching purposes framed by Leinhardt (1993).<\/p>\n
Finally, \u201cProducts\u201d are the outcomes of instruction that consolidate learning and communicate ideas (Tomlinson, 1995).\u00a0 The last domain of the evaluation matrix gauged the use of primary sources in assessment, looking at the autonomy given to students in constructing historical narratives.\u00a0 Specifically, assessments were dissected to examine the level of independence given to students in historical inquiry, the degree to which students were supplied primary sources within the assessment, and the extent to which students documented the historical processes used within the assessment.<\/p>\n
The three domains (content, process, and product) were broken into four components, which assumed greater degrees of fidelity.\u00a0 Because no similar evaluation tool existed at the time of this study, we called upon our own experiences as former high school history teachers and current teacher educators, as well as the amalgam of theoretical frameworks that presume levels of sophistication in the various components of instructional design, including content, process, and product, as well as technology integration (Crocco, 2001; Harris, 1997; International Society for Technology in Education, 2007; Kobrin, 1996; Levstik & Barton, 2001; Mishra & Koehler, 2006; Shulman, 1986).<\/p>\n
Although the first three components of each domain related to use of primary sources, the fourth component addressed the use of technology within the three instructional domains.\u00a0 For the technology component, the evaluation matrix confined the use of technology to a mechanism for teachers to acquire primary sources, for students or teachers to deliver primary sources for instruction, and finally, for students to construct a historical narrative using various software (e.g., Microsoft Powerpoint, or iMovie) and hardware (e.g., laptops, projectors, etc.).<\/p>\n
Special attention has been given to the relationship between the use of primary sources and technology, noting these two facets of instruction are potentially mutually exclusive. For example, a teacher may promote historical thinking in the classroom using a multitude of nondigitally acquired primary sources as a means of reconstructing a particular event.\u00a0 The teacher could have students write historical narratives taking into account author bias and historical perspective, meanwhile documenting the metacognitive skills necessary in historical research.\u00a0 Because we aimed to elucidate the role technology played in facilitating historical thinking, it was necessary to provide a mechanism for excluding technology as a factor in historical thinking.\u00a0 The evaluation matrix was constructed with this in mind and provided a lens for examining the data collected.\u00a0 A summary of the evaluation matrix is provided in Table 1.<\/p>\n
Table 1<\/b>
\nAn Evaluation Matrix (Abridged) for the Use of Primary Sources and Technology in the Secondary Classroom<\/i><\/p>\n