UNC School of Education

>> Bolick, Cheryl Mason

Cheryl Mason Bolick’s research is grounded in the integration of technology into social studies teaching and learning. She has studied the use of technology in in-service and pre-service teacher education. Specifically, she has documented teachers’ use of digital history resources to develop historical thinking. This investigation has led her to study student learning with digital historical resources.

The integration of technology into social studies education and social studies teacher education is an interdisciplinary focus that intersects with instructional technology, teacher education and curriculum. It encourages collaboration among scholars from these different fields and offers scholars unique opportunities to work across discipline boundaries. Bolick’s publication record reflects her belief that technology should be integrated into the content area through cross-discipline collaborations. Her work is grounded in social constructivism as espoused by Bakhtin: "Truth is not to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction."

Bolick has published research articles in Theory and Research in Social Education (TRSE) and the Journal of Computers and Teacher Education (JCTE). She has also served as a guest editor for both TRSE and JCTE and serves as the technology co-editor of Social Education. Her co-authored piece in Contemporary Issues of Technology and Teacher Education presents the CUFA Guidelines for Technology Integration into Social Studies Teacher Education.

Bolick is currently working on two studies related to high school and college students’ experiences in learning with digital history materials. These studies will begin to fill a void in the literature related to student achievement and digital history resources. She is also currently collecting data for a third data set in a longitudinal study, begun in 1998, to examine social studies teacher educators’ beliefs and practices related to technology.