The uptake of technology in education:
Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge as a
way forward?
Joke Voogt
King’s College London
9 September 2013
In this presentation
 Teachers’uptake of technology
 What is Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge
(TPACK)?
 TPACK as a conceptual model
 As a framework for identifying the knowledge base for teaching
with technology
 As a guide during the design of technology-enhanced lessons
and programmes
 TPACK as assessment model?
 Discussion
The professional identity of teachers
 Teaching takes place in a complex and dynamic environment
 Teachers are able to integrate very different knowledge
domains:
 Subject matter
 Pedagogy
 They need to know how students can learn a difficult
concept or procedure
And
 Knowledge about how ICT can foster teaching and learning
The uptake of technology
 Despite experiences in the last decades:
 Teachers have unsufficient knowledge and experience with
the use of ICT for teaching
 Many teachers got their degree when ICT was not as
ubiquitous as it is now
 Many teachers find themselves unprepared for using ICT in
teaching
 Many teachers do not see the added value of ICT for teaching
and learning
What is TPACK?
 Koehler & Mishra (2006):
 TPCK emphasizes the
interactions between content,
pedagogy and technology.
 A conceptual framework
describing the knowledge base
for teachers to effectively teach
with technology
 Do we need to extend
Shulman’s notion of PCT to
TPACK.
The core of good teaching; building on teachers’ professional
identity
“At the heart of good teaching with technology
are three core components:
content, pedagogy, and technology,
plus the relationships
among and between them.”
(Koehler & Mishra, 2006)
Technological Knowledge
• Being able to operate specific ICT applications
• being able to learn how to use specific ICT applications
and its affordances
•A functional understanding of ICT
Technological Pedagogical
Knowledge:
How pedagogy is changing
because of ICT
Technological Content
Knowledge:
How subject matter content
is changing because of ICT
TPACK
 Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: The
knowledge and skills yeachers’need to be able to integrate
subject matter content, pedagogy and ICT
 Important:
 To be able to play with the model
 Ignoring the complexity can lead to too easy
solutions or failures.
 Context counts
Why studying TPACK?
 We became fascinated by
 the attractiveness of the model
 the acceptance of the model by teachers
 but also by the complexity of the model (and what’s behind it)
 We worked on
 Survey for pre-service teachers
 Professional development for
pre- and in-service teachers
(with our PhD students)
 Literature review (JCAL, 2012)
 Discussions/debates/presentations
TPACK as a conceptual framework
 As a guide during lesson
 As a guide for programme development
Two examples
Example 1
 A serious game for vocabulary learning
Example 2
 TPACK as a conceptual model for the development of a
programme of study
Example 1: A serious game for vocabulary
learning
Pedagogical underpinning
Verhallen & Verhallen
 Prepare
 Give meaning
By the teacher in a lesson:
Lesson plans
Feedback on learners’ results
 Consolidate
 Check
 Repeat
With the game on the computer:
Minigames –endless practice,
direct feedback, incentives/ gameplay,
Identification with ‘ídols’
Verhallen & Verhallen
 Voorbewerken
 Semantiseren
 Consolideren
 Controleren
 Herhaling
door de docent in de klas
Minigames (eindeloos oefenen – ook thuis),
directe feedback, beloning/ gameplay,
identificatie met ‘ídolen’
Kenmerken taalgame
Verhallen & Verhallen
 Voorbewerken
 Semantiseren
 Consolideren
 Controleren
 Herhaling
door de docent in de klas
Minigames (eindeloos oefenen – ook thuis),
directe feedback, beloning/ gameplay,
identificatie met ‘ídolen’
Kenmerken taalgame
Verhallen & Verhallen
 Voorbewerken
 Semantiseren
 Consolideren
 Controleren
 Herhaling
door de docent in de klas
Minigames (eindeloos oefenen – ook thuis),
directe feedback, beloning/ gameplay,
identificatie met ‘ídolen’
Pedagogical underpinning
Verhallen & Verhallen
 Prepare
 Give meaning
By the teacher in a lesson:
Lesson plans
Feedback on leaners’ results
 Consolidate
 Check
 Repeat
With the game on the computer:
Minigames –endless practice,
direct feedback, incentives/ gameplay,
Identification with ‘ídols’
Pedagogical underpinning
Verhallen & Verhallen
 Voorbewerken
 Semantiseren
By the teacher in a lesson:
Lesson plans
Feedback of leaners’results
 Consolidate
 Check
 Repeat
With the game on the computer:
Minigames –endless practice,
direct feedback, incentives/ gameplay,
Identification with ‘ídols’
Research on the effects
 Students and teachers are are positive about the game
 Teachers find it attractive because :
 It fits their teaching vision
 It easily fits in their lesson practice
 It can be a substitute for the tekst book
 Effect study (3 conditions):
 In comparison with the game on its own and a paper-based version +
classroom lesson we found the highest effect on learning results for the
game, when used with a classroom lesson (immediate + retention test)
Technological Knowledge
To learn the game
To understand the affordances of the game: feedback and
gameplay
Pedagogical knowledge
• What do my kids already
know?
•How do I organise the
lesson
•How do I know that my
children learned
Content knowledge
• How children’s
vocabulary develop
TPACK: the integration of all these considerations
Technological Pedagogical
Knowledge:
How do I use the game in
relation to my voacabulary
teaching
Technological Content
Knowledge:
-
Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Knowledge of the pedagogical
underpinnings
Example 2: How to position ICT in a teacher education
programme
ICT integration in teacher education? Conditions for
success
ICT integration in teacher education? Conditions for
success
ICT integration in teacher education? Conditions for
success
ICT integration in teacher education? Conditions for
success?
TPACK as an assessment model?
Because of the attractiveness of the model in conversations with
teachers we also wanted to know whether a deacher coulde develop
TPACK that could be assessed
 Perceived TPACK
 Self-assessment
 Interviews
 Teacher reflections
 Self-reports
 Enacted TPACK
 Observation checklist
 Lesson plans
 Researcher logbook
Can we reproduce the seven knowledge domains?
The Netherlands
Flanders, Belgium
Pre-service teachers
Teacher educators
Use of technology in the science
domain
Use of technology in different
domains
Sample:
- 287 pre-service teachers
- age 16-24
- 24% male, 76% female
- distributed over 4 years of
study
Sample:
- 146 teacher educators
- age 26-61
- 29% male, 71% female
- 1-38 years experience as
teacher educator
Instrument: TPACK Survey
(Schmidt et al., 2009), all items
Instrument: TPACK Survey
(Schmidt et al., 2009), T-related
items
Results of EFA (NL study)
factor
Items in factor
Name factor
Reliability
Cronbach’s α
1
TK1 TK2 TK3 TK4 TK5 TK6 TK7
Technological
Knowledge
.90
2
PK1 PK2 PK3 PK4 PK5 PK6 PK7
Pedagogical Knowledge
.75
3
CK1 CK2 CK3 PCK1 PCK2
Pedagogical Science
Content Knowledge
.80
4
TCK1 TCK2 TCK3 TCK4 TCK5 TCK6
TPK1 TPK2
TPCK2 TPCK3 TPCK4 TPCK6
Technological &
Pedagogical enhanced
Science Content
Knowledge
.88
5
TPK3 TPK4 TPK5
TPCK1 TPCK5
Critically applying
learned TPACK
.73
6
Model1 Model2 Model3 Model4
Role models of TPACK
.73
7
TPCK7 TPCK8 TPCK9 TPCK10
TPACK Leadership
.89
The Flanders study (Focusing on the T-related
components)
 Survey for teacher educators
 Only the T-related items from the TPACK Survey
 Specific science-related items were left out, all items were transformed
to “your content area”
 Reliability all TPACK-items together: Cronbach’s α = 0.97
 Reliability for all categories within
the TPACK Survey:
Domain
Cronbach’s α
TK
.95
TCK
.92
TPK
.83
TPCK
.96
Results (FL)
 First: doing the EFA on the NL-data with only the TPACK Survey items
that were included in the FL-survey:
factor
Items in factor
Name factor
Reliability
Cronbach’s α
1
TK1 TK2 TK3 TK4 TK5 TK6 TK7
TK
.90
2
TCK1 TCK2 TCK3 TCK4
TPK1 TPK2
(TPCK1)
TCK & TPK
.85
3
TPCK1 TPCK2 TPCK3 TPCK4
TPCK5 TPCK6
(TPCK1)
TPCK
.77
• Then CFA: a good fit, but
•
•
the correlations between the factors are also very high,
a 1- or 2-factor solution might be possible*
Getting closer to TPACK Core
 Based on our study we think:
1. TK is conditional for TCK, TPK and TPCK
(Voogt, Fisser, Gibson, Knezek & Tondeur, 2012)
(& recent regression analysis)
2. The combination of TPK, TCK and TPCK is the heart (or the core)
of the model (TPACK Core)
And if you take a close look..
It has been there the whole time!

“At the heart of good teaching with technology
are three core components:
content, pedagogy, and technology,
plus the relationships
among and between them.”
(Koehler & Mishra, 2006)
TPACK as a complex and fuzzy concept
 Developing an instrument that is suitable for every situation is
impossible
 It is the specific context that matters most, and T, P and C are always
context-dependent!
 Measuring TPACK by a self-reporting survey is not enough
 More measurement moments are needed
 More instruments (observation, lesson plan rubric, etc) are
needed
Video vignettes: Examples of teachers’pedagogical use
of ICT, including teachers’reasoning on their use of ICT
 Introduction
 Subject, Goal, Nature of ICT use, Perceived added value
 Practice:
 ICT applications, Goals of ICT use, Why attractive, efficient or
effective; How do they integrate content , pedagogy and ICT; Roles
for teachers and students
 Reflection:
 Why this lesson, Why this combination of T,P,C; Would this lessom
be different without ICT; How dom you know you have
accomplished your goals
To finalize
 TPACK seems to quite useful to conceptualise what technology
enhanced teaching and learning could be and how teachers.
Curriculum developers can use it
 However, assessing whether a teacher is TPACK competent is a
rather complex endeavour and it is not quite clear whether it is a
useful model for that
This is team work!
 Joke Voogt (University of Twente) & Petra Fisser (Netherlands
Institute of Curriculum Development)
 Jo Tondeur, Natalie Pareja Roblin & Johan van Braak (Ghent
University)
 And PhD students from Ghana, Tanzania and Kuwait