Research in Social Sciences and Technology

1-15

Authors: Eddia Solas, Frances Sutton

The implementation of technology-based pedagogic practices is becoming increasingly significant in higher education as the admission of digital natives increase. This generation of students, so defined as digital natives because they grew up using computers, tablets, smart phones and other digital technology, show a high level of technological competence, but exhibit deficiencies in competencies related to digital academic tools. A group of activities which supports learning, and facilitates student academic success, were compiled in a 28-item challenge for beginning General Education students, as a part of a Life and Study Skills course. Each challenge invited students to access some aspect of digital technology which has the potential to increase their academic competence. The main aim of the exercise was to increase students’ digital academic literacy, exposing them to applications and ICT skills which would increase their efficiency, self-efficacy and accuracy in executing academic tasks. The technology tools used were aimed at accomplishing tasks such as group formation and communication, notetaking, information capture, summarization, synchronous and asynchronous collaboration on tasks, referencing, formatting, grammar check, plagiarism and assessment. Students were challenged to complete particular tasks using specific applications. A screenshot of each completed activity was submitted as evidence of task completion. Students were given 28 days to complete the tasks, after which they were required to do two quizzes, using learning platforms they were exposed to in the challenge, demonstrating their new found proficiencies.

36-53

Authors: Shazia Mirza

This study is a Qualitative case study which highlights the important role of an educational leader using mentoring and socio emotional techniques to save her student from extremist activities in name of religion. Educational leaders should be committed not only toward their students’ academic enrichment but also focus on developing their student's socio emotional wellbeing. The educational leader plays a profound role toward promoting students wellbeing, giving them a message that yes we are here for you and by building in them confidence when they need it the most. Whenever at-risk youth is mentioned, it is assumed that they hide destructive layers under their body and mind. They need someone who knows how to read these signs and the educational leader plays a key role in this regard. This study will help educational leaders and managers to understand the aspects, importance and applicability of social emotional learning (cognitive affective) on student's behavior. Furthermore the study also shows how using some techniques of care, the teacher not only saved her students' life but also the lives’ of many students. This research accentuates the importance of creating a strong bonding with students. For curriculum developers, it is of key importance to inculcate religious content that emphasizes more on aspects related to care through animal rights in Islam and humanity on whole. Furthermore this research provides imperative guidelines to inculcate social emotional learning in Islamiat curriculum and shares the result on student's behavior towards general people. It also emphasizes the leaders' role of managing students on the basis of socio emotional learning.

74-85

Authors: Ramla Hozefa Poonawala

This study examines the awareness of inquiry based teaching amongst elementary science teachers through a workshop intervention, conducted in a private school in Karachi, Pakistan. The case study design deployed, highlighted the learning experiences of 24 participants that took part in the professional development workshop. A qualitative survey was carried before the intervention followed by focus group discussion, document analysis and participant observations during and after the intervention. These methodologies were used to record participants learning experiences and awareness of essential features of inquiry based pedagogy. In addition to this, four primary science teachers were interviewed to examine the adoption of essential features of inquiry in their revised lesson plans. The findings of this study were that before the science training the participants were superficially aware of the fundamentals of inquiry based methods and techniques and knew its importance. However, the in-depth process knowledge and skills/strategies required for an effective inquiry was an identifiable shortcoming. The workshop provided learning opportunities to analyze phenomenon, think scientifically, engage in hands-on science activities. Because of the workshop, the participants demonstrated an improved understanding of what entails an inquiry process and features of scientific inquiry. This research should inspire and inform professional developers about gap in inquiry based science teachings. Furthermore, the study aims to motivate private schools in Pakistan to invest in inquiry based science teaching as a tangible long-term benefit which can translate into better teaching practitioner.

109-121

Authors: Vasileios Dagdilelis

Greece these last 15 years has developed and implemented a large-scale system for the integration of digital technologies in education and more specifically in the teaching practice. "Large-scale" means that the whole program concerns all Greek education system. A very important part of this nationwide project is the training of teachers program that involves practically all Greek teachers - so far more than 120,000 teachers have been involved and soon they will be involved all of them (approximately 150.000). In this paper we present a summary of this plan. The monitoring of this project at national level, almost from its very beginning, gave to us the opportunity of collecting a large volume of raw information and data of both quantitative and qualitative nature.

134-148

Authors: Salvacion Mata Domingo, Nenita Guerrero

This study aims to determine the level or extent of practices on the norms or behaviors of the participants with regard to the use of technology. It is technically termed as digital citizenship. The descriptive survey method was utilized in this study. A researcher-made survey questionnaire patterned from an online article with slight modification is the main tool used in this paper. The research setting of this study is in one of the colleges in Muscat in the Sultanate of Oman. The participants are the two hundred randomly selected students who are officially enrolled in Level 5 and 6 in the Academic Year 2016-2017. The result of the study dwelled on the three main indicators namely: respect yourself and/or respect others; educate yourself and/or connect with others; and protect yourself and/or protect others. This findings revealed that different genders that are at different educational levels have diverse level or extent of norms that are applied when using a technology. As manifested by the participants it was found out that self-education and connection with others is practiced by them at an extent higher than their self- respect and respect to others. Furthermore, it can be concluded that the male is more sensible than female when it comes to self-education and/or connect with others as applied in use of technology. In addition, according to what was shown by most of the participants, protecting oneself or protecting others is generally at a lesser extent of practice by them. Some of the male and female participants are less conscious on what is meant by digital health and wellness.

1-35

Authors: James E. Schul

This study examines a student teacher’s assignment of a historical documentary project in her middle school classroom placement. Results reveal that this student teacher and her cooperating teacher collaborated together to assign the project as a means to foster a personal connection with students and that their mutual commitment to this purpose fostered an experimentalist type of student teaching experience. Despite experiencing adversity with assigning the documentary project, the student teacher was not deterred from completing the project nor from her desire to assign a documentary making project in the future. Implications of these findings are discussed.

59-75

Authors: Areen F. Aldardasawi

As we live in the epoch of popular culture, it is very important to understand it and study its dimensions as well as their influences upon society. Technology is a very salient manifestation of popular culture that has brought substantial changes to the world. Thus, we have to be aware of the effects and the potential effects that technology may have upon us. One type of technology is Facebook which is the most popular social network website in terms of the number of members and visitors. As a virtual society, Facebook is growing more and more popular day by day. In this article, Facebook, as a technological medium, is going to be measured and explained according to Marshall McLuhan's perspective of media and technology. Therefore, we will try to explain, in McLuhan's words, how Facebook is considered a "message" as well as a "cool" or "hot" medium. In addition, there will be an attempt to discerning the reasons why people are very attached to such a virtual social life

1-17

Authors: Mehmet Fatih Yigit

The aim of the study is to find out whether there is a statistically significant difference between value priorities of public and private university students in Turkey and whether their values differ. This is a quantitative study using ANOVA for the analysis of the data. The results suggest that private university students show greater tendency towards universalism, power, tradition, conformity, and hedonism compared to the public university students, while the public university students showed greater sensitivity to benevolence compared to the private university students. The test results also showed that the education level of mothers do not have a significant effect on value priorities of both public and private university students, while father’s education has significant effect on the perception of power.

53-74

Authors: Evrim Erbilgin

This study compares Turkey’s and Singapore’s mathematics content standards in terms of the highligthed mathematical processes. A mathematical processes framework was employed to analyze the content standards drawing on the standards for mathematical practice defined by the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. The standards for mathematical practice include make sense of problems and persevere in solving them, reason abstractly and quantitatively, construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others, model with mathematics, use appropriate tools strategically, attend to precision, look for and make use of structure, look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning. The data sources are 2013 mathematics curriculum standards of Turkey and 2013 mathematics syllabus of Singapore for grades 7 and 8. Data analysis revealed that the two countries reflected mathematical processes differently in their content standards. Some mathematical processes are not identified in Turkey’s content standards while all mathematical processes are observed in Singapore’s content standards. The distribution of the observed mathematical processes are also different in the two countries. Suggestions for future content standards revisions are shared in the paper.

1-16

Authors: Bittman, B., & Russell, W.

Social studies teachers instruct their students through a variety of instructional pedagogies. Social science education researchers have called for K-12 teachers to transition away from a traditional lecture format and move towards a format that encourages critical thinking. Classroom debates of controversial issues are a common method by which teachers engage students in higher-order thinking. This research study utilizes the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 12th grade civics assessment (n = 9,800) to identify instructional techniques that improve student’s score. Utilizing the NAEP Data Explorer online statistical analysis tool, a linear regression was conducted examining the effects of race, socio-economic status, instructional pedagogies, and access to newspapers and computers on student performance. Results show that discussing current events, at any frequency, increases student performance. Students who participated in classroom debates once or twice a month or less also improved.African-American and Hispanic students scored lower, as did students who qualified for free and reduced lunches. This study suggests that the inclusion of current events should be encouraged civics classes.

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Authors: James Mauch & Bulent Tarman

In the early years of Social Studies education, great attention was given to “Social Studies Laboratories” and a teaching and learning pedagogy called “The Laboratory Method”. This study examines historical documents about the development of the social studies laboratory. The researchers examined certain periodicals published in the US such as Education, The Historical Outlook and The History Teacher’s Magazine along with the non-experimental historical research methodology. In an age of inquiry-based projects and “hands-on” approaches to the learning of Social Studies, a brief historical overview of the foundations of such approaches in the Social Studies seems appropriate from US perspective. Parallels are drawn by using comparative approach, and suggestions made, for a twenty-first century approach to a Social Studies Laboratory and a Laboratory Method of teaching the many disciplines that define the Social Studies. The findings of this study indicate that despite the social studies classroom, method and laboratory may have changed a great deal over the past century, the goals of the social studies teacher have not changed. The social studies teacher still works to keep his or her students actively engaged in learning, still works to help them learn new concepts and skills, and still works to help each and every student succeed. Above all, the social studies teacher still looks for strategies and tools to help students prepare for life outside of the classroom. In conclusion, a valuable lesson is to be learned from the early development of the social studies laboratory: the room, the technology and the innovative ideas are meaningless unless accompanied by a commitment to move toward student-centered activities and learning, a twenty-first century version of the “laboratory method”. It is when technological access becomes inexorably entwined with teaching strategies that empower students to use, develop and critique the technology that substantive learning takes place in the social studies classroom.

1-23

Authors: WATERS, Stewart & RUSSELL, William B.

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to understand the experiences of six secondary pre-service teachers that completed a semester long internship with a supervising mentor at a virtual school in the Southeastern United States. The secondary pre-service teachers in this study voluntarily chose a placement in the virtual school over a traditional classroom placement for completion of their initial licensure field experience. This study sought to examine why secondary pre-service teachers chose a virtual internship and what their experiences were like as online instructors. A total of six participants completed a sixty-minute semi-structured interview at the completion of the semester long virtual school internship. Results of the study indicated that secondary pre-service teachers’ primary motivation for entering a virtual internship experience was “convenience.” Additionally, participants felt prepared for future employment in virtual schools, but had some reservations about their prospects in a traditional classroom setting.

44-58

Authors: Korkmaz, U., & Yutrtseven Avci, Z.

The present study investigates pre-service teachers’ experience about playing technology games and their opinions about using contemporary technology to play games as an instructional tool. The participants are272 pre-service teachersfrom a university in Middle Anatolia. The present study used mixed methods. The data was collected through an online survey that was created by the authors. The survey contains demographic questions about the participants` gender, major,whether they play technology gamesor not,and questions about which technology games they play, their opinions about using technology (IWBs and tablets) to play games for instruction, and for which instructional purposes they plan using technology to play games. Following research questions were investigated for the current study: 1.Whether pre-service teachers play technology games or not? If yes, which technology games they play? 2. Whether pre-service teachers plan to use interactive white boards and tablets that were distributed by the government under FATIH project to play technology games for educational purposes? 3. Whether pre-teachers’ opinions about using the IWBs and tablets to play instructional games associated with their gender and playing technology games? 4. For which instructional purposes pre-service teachers plan to use IWBs and tablets to play instructional games? For the second and third questions descriptive statistics and crosstabs were conducted. For the first and fourth questions content analysis was applied. Fifty-four percent (n=148) of the pre-service teachers agreed to use the IWBs and tablets to play technology games for educational purposes while 46% (n=124) did not. There is no statistically significant association between gender and plans usingthe IWBs and tablets to play instructional games. There was a statistically significant associationbetween who PlayingTechnology Games and Plans Using IWBs and Tablets to Play Instructional Games. Pre-service teachers who play technology games reported higher scores than the ones who do not play technology games. The participants suggested that using IWBs and tablets to play games would make learning fun and easy. The study has implications forteacher education and K-12 education policy. The present study also adds to the knowledge of whether the Y-generation pre-service teachers find the recent technology games useful for education or not

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Authors: Bulent Tarman

We are living in a world that is changing rapidly and becoming more globalized. Especially the changes in the areas of science, technology and economy are becoming effective in the areas like education and health that are closely related to human life. We are experiencing a quick process named ’globalization’ that changes economic, social and political structures of the world and that no one can predict the outcome. These changes create new opportunities while opening new challenging areas. In order for countries to compete with each other, they need to be creative in all areas and they also need to be reformist to cope with domestic, national and global problems. In this study, the innovations in the area of education throughout the world will be examined and the place of Turkey compared to other countries in educational innovations will be analyzed. Also the concept of ‘Charter Schools’ as acceleration in educational innovation in the United State of America, who is the leader in terms of innovation in the World, will be analyzed. This study will also analyze the Charter Schools in the USA and discuss whether the concept can be implemented in Turkey and bring dynamism to education or increase the quality of education. While looking for the answers of these questions, the researcher conducted a literature review and also used the data he gathered while staying in the USA for nine years for pursuing his MA and PhD degrees.