The Actual Status of Teachers’ Utilization of Technologies for Elementary Social Studies Learning in the COVID-19 Era

This study aims to examine how the elementary social studies learning is currently carried out in the online environment two years later since the online learning was initially provided. Concretely, this study conducted a survey to see which tools the teachers were using for performing the online learning and what kinds of problems they were experiencing. The survey was conducted for about two weeks from November 15th, 2021, to November 30th, 2021, targeting total 116 teachers in charge of Grade3-6 of elementary schools in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do. After excluding four questionnaires with insincere responses, total 112 questionnaires were used for the analysis. The survey method was mail-back This study could find the characteristics of online social studies learning as follows. First, the technologies the teachers utilized the most were shown as Zoom, Padlet, and E-Learning Center in order. Second, the type of online social studies learning the teachers preferred the most was the real-time interactive learning. Third, regarding the biggest difficulties in online social studies learning, the teachers pointed out the decline of students’ concentration on learning, no application of learning methods utilized for face-to-face learning such as simulation and role play, difficulty in cooperative learning between students, and gap of students’ ability to utilize ICT. Also, as the strengths of online social studies learning, they mentioned the improvement of students’ ability to utilize ICT, the students who would find the presentation difficult could even express themselves in writing, easiness to manage the individual portfolio of students, and the possibility of individualized learning for students. Lastly, as the measures for solving difficulties in online learning, they said the development/distribution of various teaching and learning materials necessary for online learning, securement of digital textbook that would be easy and convenient to utilize, and the improvement of teachers’ ability to utilize ICT.