New Research: How is technology framed in social studies standards and what should teachers do about it?

by Dan Krutka

Several years ago I co-edited a book with Annie Whitlock and Mark Helmsing called Keywords in the Social Studies: Concepts and Conversations. The book drew on Raymond Williams’ Keywords book that encouraged scholars to examine the changing meaning of words over time as a way to understand cultural change and the meaning of words and concepts for the present. We organized the book using the 10 Themes of Social Studies, which were developed in 1994 and updated in 2010. I chose to write a chapter in the eighth section titled, “Science, Technology, and Society” on the keyword  '“technology.” Social studies and media ecology scholar Lance Mason wrote a chapter on “media.” Once the chapters in a section were complete, Scott Metzger wrote a response titled, “Cyber Salvation and the Necessity of Questioning.” 

We all enjoyed taking a step back and visiting these larger concepts because it felt as if these discussions about technology were largely absent in the field where the focus had shifted primarily to how to use, or teach with, computer and digital technologies. “Science, technology, and society” harkened back to an earlier, interdisciplinary effort to ask important questions about technology. In a highly technologized world, why do curricula so rarely ask students to turn their attention to their, and our, relationships with technology?

In social studies, the reality is that technology is scattered throughout state standards which teachers are expected to teach and students are expected to learn, but how is technology included and framed in K–12 content social studies standards in the U.S.? That is the research question that Scott Metzger, Zack Seitz, and I sought to answer in our new publication that was just released in the top social studies journal, Theory & Research in Social Education. You can access the article for a limited time through our 50 free ecopies available here, but please just contact me (dankrutka@gmail.com or @dankrutka on Twitter) if you can’t access the article. I won’t try to review the entire article in this blog post, but instead describe a couple of our findings which have ready applications for teaching about technology in the social studies and beyond. 

Finding #1: “Technology” is often represented by broad labels in standards. Of the 984 instances we identified technology in the standards of 10 states, 216 of them (22%) just included terms like “technology,” “technological developments,” etc. In many other cases, it mentioned broad technological categories such as transportation (n=64; 6.5%) or communication (n=42; 4.3%) technology. When technology is defined so broadly it leaves teachers a lot of space for examining the topic with students, but that also requires teachers to have a plan for teaching about technology. 

Implication #1a: Teachers should seek to define technology with students. Critically inquiring with students about different definitions of technology can help students think more broadly about technology, particularly older technologies which they may see as natural to the world. More narrow definitions of technology tend to focus on more recent material objects (e.g., smartphones, tablets, personal computers) or seemingly less material digital technologies (e.g., internet, apps, cloud). Media ecologists such as Marshall McLuhan or Neil Postman tend to offer broad definitions of media/medium/technology as anything that mediates human experiences. This includes material technologies and immaterial, digital technologies, but also includes language and grades. Teachers may encourage these discussions by leading a Socratic discussion on the question, how do you define technology? Or teachers may, as I’ve been trying recently, spur students’ thinking by asking them to interpret, discuss, and debate a range of quotes on technology (look for that lesson in an upcoming post). Civics of Technology contributor Jacob Pleasants and colleagues (2019) offered ten questions about the nature of technology which could spur discussion. How can you encourage students to critically inquire into the nature of technology by defining it?

Implication #1b: Teachers need an approach for teaching about technology. Standards not only tend toward broad labels, but even when they mention specific technologies such as agriculture (n=62; 6.3%), money (n=34; 3.5%), or railroads (n=26; 2.6%), the standards frequently offer minimal instructions for what to teach. To avoid superficially just teaching about the most obvious effects of technologies (e.g., railroads move people and goods), teachers should ask questions that delve into the collateral, unintended, and disproportionate effects of technology (e.g., railroads encouraged separation of extended families with ease of individual travel, increased speed of “news” over space, facilitated settler invasion of Indigenous homelands). In the paper and on this Civics of Technology site, we offer five critical questions about technology for teachers to use, modify, and adapt to their students and curriculum. Of course, teachers will grow in their ability in using these questions the more they engage with ideas from the technology criticism canon including scholars such as Neil Postman or Ruha Benjamin.

Finding #2: Various technologies pop up somewhat randomly in standards. In his 1992 book Technopoly, Neil Postman (1992) argued (well before the invention of Google search) that “the tie between information and human purpose has been severed, i.e., information appears indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, in enormous volume and at high speeds, and disconnected from theory, meaning, or purpose” (p. 70). The technologies which show up in the standards certainly feel “indiscriminate” and “disconnected from theory, meaning, or purpose.” We state in the paper:

“Even individual technologies for which historical or contemporary significance is well-established were sporadically included in state standards. For instance, the printing press was referenced by only Texas, Nebraska, and New Jersey; the cotton gin by Texas, Mississippi, and Oregon; and television by Indiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Ohio. Credit card technology was referenced in Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, and Oregon yet not specifically in Texas, despite an explicit and frequent emphasis on “the free enterprise system and its benefits” throughout its document. Even technologies as transformative as computers and the Internet, among the most numerous specific references overall, were listed only in seven states. Texas referenced them the most times, but computers (n = 8) more than the Internet (n = 2), followed by Indiana (n = 3 and n = 1), Ohio (n = 1 and n = 3), and North Carolina (n = 1 and n = 1). Mississippi (n = 3), New Jersey (n = 2), and Nebraska (n = 1) referenced the Internet but not computers. Arizona, Montana, and Oregon did not reference either.”

In short, it does not seem like those writing social studies standards, which influence social studies textbooks and other curriculum, sat back and ever asked, which technologies are most important for students to understand and investigate? 

Implication #2: Teachers should teach about longer histories of technologies, particularly through categories. One way to avoid teaching about technologies indiscriminately is to teach their longer histories. While we often learn about genius inventors who invent new technologies out of nowhere (e.g., “Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb”), that is rarely the case. Technologies almost always are just an update on older technologies and represent the work of many people in many places. More than that, technologies can be understood more deeply when we think of them as belonging to longer categorical histories. In the paper, we coded for ten categories (in order of frequency in standards): Production, General, Transportation, Information, Communication, Environmental, Financial, Military, Medical, and Cultural. Instead of teaching about the invention of the automobile, the development of assembly lines, their consumer uptake, and the dedication of public resources to building infrastructure and society for cars (e.g., highways, suburbs), teachers might teach about automobiles in a longer history of transportation technologies including walking, horse-powered travel, trains, streetcars, and more. This longer history encourages students to ask critical questions about cars that bring forth how cars have harmed public health by displacing walking, local businesses by displacing local businesses with drive-thru chains, and the natural environment through endless concrete sprawl into animal habitats. All these effects are relevant in our lives, but typically absent in the curriculum.

One of our aims at the Civics of Technology project is to provide resources that teachers may use, adapt, and modify to critically inquire into the role of technology in our individual and social problems. We seek to follow up on this initial study with scholarship and curriculum that focuses on the longer history of categories such as transportation, financial, and military technologies. Could you collaborate with us on a study or lesson? We hope this initial publication is the first study in a longer line of inquiry taken up by a broad range of scholars so that social studies classrooms might “be places where students find limits for technology to ensure that… we use technologies instead of them using us” (p. 25).

Featured Article

Krutka, D. G., Metzger, S. A., & Seitz, R. Z. (2022).“Technology inevitably involves trade-offs”: The framing of technology in social studies standards. Theory & Research in Social Education. Advance online publication.

References

Krutka, D. G. (2018). Technology. In D. G. Krutka, A. M. Whitlock, & M. Helmsing (Eds.), Keywords in the social studies: Concepts and conversations (pp. 279-292). Peter Lang.

Krutka, D. G., Whitlock, A. M., & Helmsing, M., (Eds) (2018). Keywords in the social studies: Concepts and conversations. Peter Lang.

Mason, L. E. (2018). Media. In D. G. Krutka, A. M. Whitlock, & M. Helmsing (Eds.), Keywords in the social studies: Concepts and conversations (pp. 293-304). Peter Lang.

Metzger, S. A. (2018). Cyber salvation and the necessity of questioning: A response to the science, technology, and society section. In D. G. Krutka, A. M. Whitlock, & M. Helmsing (Eds.), Keywords in the social studies: Concepts and conversations (pp. 305-308). Peter Lang.

National Council for the Social Studies (1994/2010). The themes of social studies. NCSS. https://www.socialstudies.org/national-curriculum-standards-social-studies-chapter-2-themes-social-studies

Pleasants, J., Clough, M. P., Olson, J. K., & Miller, G. (2019). Fundamental issues regarding the nature of technology. Science & Education, 28(3), 561-597.