Teachers' educational technology practices: Understanding teachers' critical thinking skills and teachers' cognitive demand practices in the classroom

Today's global economy requires a new set of skills that workers must master to compete in the world. In addition, the information era has brought many challenges that impact the teaching profession greatly. Critical thinking skills have been identified as necessary for effective and efficient performance in daily activities. This study looked at the association between technology integration and critical thinking skills based on teaching practices among middle school math classrooms (6th–8th grades) in Illinois.;A series of statistical tests were used: discriminant function analysis, Mann-Whitney U test, exploratory factor analysis, correlations, and multiple regression analysis were performed on the datasets to answer the research questions leading this study.;The findings produced positive and negative correlations between educational technology and critical thinking skills. These correlations may be indicators that middle school math teachers prefer traditional methods, such as memorization and repetition instead of using technology to achieve learning goals. The second finding demonstrated that technology integration (interactive problem solving) can be predicted by using performance expectations of the SEC instrument and induction from the CCTST.;Thirty-six middle school math teachers (6th–8 th grades) responded online to three surveys: (1) Survey of Enacted Curriculum (SEC), (2) California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST), and (3) Educational Technology Survey (ETS).