The impact of ict on student achivevement and attitudes in social studies

The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of teaching social studies with the help of ICT on student achievement and attitudes towards technology and social studies.The research design of the study is quasi experimental. The subjects of the study consisted of two groups (experiment and control groups, 35 each) of students studying at ?Kars Halil Atila İlköğretim Okulu? during spring term of 2010-2011 academic year.Three different research tools were used to collect data: an achievement test on the unit mentioned above, an attitude measurement scale on social studies education and an attitude measurement scale on ICT. The data was collected both at the beginning (pre-test) and the end (post-test) of the application from both experiment and control groups through these instruments.Reliability of social studies achievement test is ,84 Crombach?s Alpha. Reliability of social studies attitude measurement scale is ,89 Crombach?s Alpha. Reliability of the ICT attitude measurement scale is ,97 Crombach?s Alpha. The data was subjected to blockwise regression analysis on SPSS 19.00.When achievement post test scores were treated as dependent variable, and achievement, social studies attitude and ICT attitude scales pre-test scores entered as first block, achievement, social studies attitude and ICT attitude scales post-test scores entered as second block, group as in experiment and control group entered as the final group in blockwise regression analysis the followings are found:The independent variables included in the model explained 35 per cent of observed variance. Findings suggest that the students? attitudes towards the subject and ICT do not have an effect on their post-test achievement scores. However, their prior knowledge on the subject and the treatment i.e. teaching social studies with ICT have a positive effect on their achievement.Those students in the experiment group had higher achievement test than the student in control group did.The blockwise regression analysis suggests that teaching social studies with ICT do not have any statistically significant effect students? attitudes toward social studies lesson.