Fostering higher order thinking in a technology-rich classroom environment: learning from an exemplary middle school social studies teacher

Many educational reformers have advocated that emerging technology has a great potential for establishing a classroom environment that fosters children’s higher order thinking. What then are the potentials and challenges in using emerging technology in social studies teaching and learning for higher order thinking? In particular, how do secondary school social studies teachers adopt modern technology to engage their students in active classroom learning? This qualitative case study explored the ways in which social studies teaching practice was transformed into student-centered constructivist approaches during which students were engaged in higher order thinking activities when technology was richly utilized in a middle school teacher’s classroom. In this research study, I looked very closely at an 8th grade social studies teacher’s classroom teaching and, more specifically, at an innovative unit of study which was exemplary in the utilization of technology. I collected data from interviews, observations, and document analysis, all of which are typical forms of collecting data in case studies. The research site was a public school, located in an outer suburb of a large central city in Texas. I present, to a certain extent, an intensive and thick account of the social studies teacher’s classroom teaching and her students’ learning in her natural classroom context. Understanding in great depth the teacher’s considerable efforts at integration of various contemporary technologies in her classroom teaching, this study offers the real prospects and potential pitfalls of modern technology for the promoting of students’ higher order thinking in secondary social studies classrooms.