The CITE Journal is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal, established and jointly sponsored by six professional associations (AMTE, ASTE, NCSS-CUFA, ELATE, ITEEA, and SITE). The works on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Most Recent Articles
Transformational Technology: Improved Learning Opportunities in Online Mathematics Instruction
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The sudden shift to online instruction caused by COVID-19 social distancing requirements prompted educators to solve new problems of technology and pedagogy. This study shares the experiences of undergraduate students in an elementary mathematics content course with learning to share visual images of their work in online classes. The authors modified the PICRAT framework (Kimmons et al., 2020) for choosing and evaluating technology in terms of pedagogical concerns and students’ opportunities for collaborative interaction to analyze the data. Spanning a two-course sequence in 2020-2021, two cohorts of students received small document cameras to broaden forms of participation, shifting from the instructor “scribing” as students verbally described their thinking during Course 1 to sharing images of their own work as they described it during Course 2. Findings focus on choosing transformative technology and will be of interest to mathematics and teacher educators concerned with equitable instruction.
“It’s More Than Just Literacies, It’s Also Histories”: How High School Teachers’ Self-Reflexivity Shapes Humanizing Critical Digital Literacy Pedagogies
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Digital texts present K-12 educators with challenges and opportunities for engaging students in critical inquiry about sociopolitical issues, especially amid the prevalence of dehumanizing digital discourses on such topics. This comparative qualitative case study examines how two high school teachers (English language development; civics) enacted humanizing critical digital literacy (CDL) pedagogies. The researchers focused on how their standpoints, made visible through their self-reflexivity (SR), informed why and how they selected, interpreted, and taught digital texts, including film and videos, audiobooks, news and social media, and digital compositions related to immigration and other sociopolitical issues. Data included semistructured interviews, focus group data, teacher lesson artifacts, and examples of digital texts and classroom practices. These data were transcribed, coded, and analyzed through theory-informed and emergent qualitative analysis. Findings suggest that, while teachers’ standpoints were highly contextual and tied to their identities, histories, and lived experiences, they informed teachers’ digital text selections and CDL pedagogies in aligned and distinct ways. Teachers’ SR was revealed through (a) justice-engaged standpoints, (b) literacies with histories, and (c) digital texts and tools that foster belonging and community. These cases illustrate how teachers’ SR informs humanizing CDL pedagogies that support students’ sensemaking, historical inquiry, and engagement with social change.
Teacher Self-Efficacy: The Impact on Computational Thinking-Infused Elementary Science Lessons
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In this concurrent triangulation mixed-methods study, we examined the impact of professional development (PD) on teachers’ ability to implement computational thinking-infused elementary science lessons, drawing on Bandura’s four sources of self-efficacy: verbal persuasion, vicarious experiences, mastery experiences, and physiological and affective states. Data sources included the survey Teacher Self-Efficacy for Integrating Computational Thinking in Science, classroom observations, academic year PD attendance, and focus groups. Results showed that while PD sessions influenced teachers’ self-efficacy, the changes were not statistically significant. Teachers’ self-efficacy declined from year to year, with no correlation between attendance of the PD sessions, lesson observations and more. The article highlights how teachers’ self-efficacy changed over time and how attendance at the academic year PD impacted their confidence.
“Just Kind of Stuck”: Possibilities and Pitfalls of TeachersPayTeachers and Pinterest in the Elementary Social Studies Classroom
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Preservice teachers often turn to platforms on the teacher-to-teacher online marketplace of ideas, such as Pinterest, Instagram, and TeachersPayTeachers, to develop curriculum and find classroom ideas and inspiration. This qualitative case study explored the purposes one elementary preservice student teacher expressed for using these platforms, how she wove materials from Pinterest and TeachersPayTeachers into a 12-lesson social studies unit, and the impact of those materials on curricular coherence. Using theories of boundary crossing and pedagogical design capacity, the author argues that materials from these platforms are appealing to preservice teachers as potential boundary crossing objects, but a lack of pedagogical design capacity can lead to an activity-first mentality that impedes curricular coherence.
Geospatial Technology Integration With Professional Development: A STEM Teacher’s Use of ArcGIS, Robotics, and Drones
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Teachers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) need professional learning opportunities to understand how to integrate geospatial technologies like ArcGIS into classroom experiences. Few studies have examined how teachers engage in professional development and then apply new technology knowledge to school environments. Improving the pipeline into STEM career pathways requires alignment between K-12 STEM teaching and learning with STEM careers; thus, research is needed to explore ways K-12 educators can infuse their classroom practices with STEM industry applications like geospatial technologies. This descriptive case study explored one STEM teacher’s 3-year journey in a geospatial technology professional development program led by a university. Over 2 years, the teacher gained expertise in ArcGIS and eventually created an independent robotics exercise incorporating the technology. The study highlights how teachers’ technology integration pathways vary based on individual experiences, school settings, and teaching assignments. Understanding teachers’ experiences with professional development and classroom implementation provides insight into the challenges STEM educators face when transitioning from training to real-world application. Successful geospatial technology integrations require an intricate balance of teachers’ instructional decisions about content with student engagement and technology capabilities. STEM teacher educators should consider the intentional placement of geospatial technologies into courses that have curricular flexibility with content, instruction, and assessment to increase the success of teacher technology integration.
Bridge to Inclusion: Enhancing Digital Literacy for Preservice Teachers With Accessibility Integration
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While efforts are being made to integrate coding and computational thinking into K-12 teacher training, instruction on designing accessible software is often overlooked. To introduce accessibility into training for future teachers, the authors modified a 1st-year seminar for education to include the topic of accessibility through simulation games in a digital literacy module. They tested their approach using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest nonequivalent groups with additional comparison groups. They surveyed 25 students across two sections of the course (one experimental and one control) and analyzed assignment data from 70 students across five sections (the original experimental and control groups along with an additional control group of three more sections). They found that preservice teachers who learned about accessibility developed greater empathy for people with disabilities and a better understanding of the software challenges they face. This was not true for the control group. Similarly, preservice teachers in the experimental group showed an increased desire to teach both accessibility and digital literacy. There was a significant difference in their inclusion of accessibility features in their final project, suggesting that accessibility training can influence education students to prioritize accessibility for an extended period.
The Sangala Initiative: Establishing a K–12 Engineering Program for East Africa
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Lasting educational change in underresourced regions requires more than a donation of equipment or funding alone. The Sangala Initiative, a project initiated by the National Technology Leadership Society, addresses knowledge bottlenecks in the Global South by building local engineering capacity to better both education and the community, starting with establishing a K–12 engineering program suited to the needs and conditions of East Africa. Students in the program will design and fabricate scientific tools that meet genuine community needs — beginning with a 3D-printed microscope and a locally fabricated weather station — and acquire the expertise to maintain and extend those tools after high school. Anchored by a pilot at Hawthorne-Scribner High School in Uganda’s Mt. Elgon region, the initiative is guided by the principles of authentic purpose and reciprocal innovation. This article documents the program’s goal, structure, and early work and suggests ways member associations can collaborate to extend the model.