Facilitating Historical Discussions Using Asynchronous Communication: The Role of the Teacher

Abstract

This study examines the effectiveness of asynchronous communication in facilitating historical discussions among adolescents, with a specific focus on the ways in which teachers can affect this process. Threaded discussion board posts and teacher-student email correspondence from a five-week American history summer course are analyzed and triangulated with interview and observational data as part of a single case study. Using a social constructivist framework, the results suggest that the students in this particular course did not critically engage in discussions of a historical nature and often relied on unsubstantiated opinions that rarely challenged preexisting or canonical notions of history. The results also suggest that the teacher's actions or lack thereof may have contributed to the perfunctory social experience that students received. Although this study only serves as one example of K-12 e-learning, the findings offer implications for teaching and learning social studies within online environments.