Preparing future elementary teachers to connect social studies content and skills with technology
necessitates the integration of technology into teacher preparation methods courses. Such
integration hinges on the identification of pre-service teachers’ level of Technological,
Pedagogical, and Content Knowledge (TPACK). These three knowledge areas help shape smart
uses for educational technology beyond entertainment that utilize technology in educationally
profitable ways. The TPACK model is useful for identifying the knowledge required by preservice
teachers for the purpose of wedding instructional technology to social studies content and
instruction. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to describe and to analyze the
integration of an instructional technology lesson in an elementary social studies methods course
in a large Midwestern university. The study, specifically, describes and reports on 25 pre-service
teachers’ perceptions of the utilization of a social studies software technology called Timeliner.
The study reports on the level of TPACK awareness of the study’s pre-service teachers and
offers implications related to instructional technology integration in elementary social studies
methods courses.
Keywords: educational technology, elementary schooling, social studies methods,
teacher preparation, technology integration, TPACK