TPACK

Last week we had our fourth lecture for the course ‘Pedagogies’ and it was about TPACK. What that means I will explain later on.. But it was not the first time for me that TPACK came up in my educational program of CIMA. Last year we discussed about it in the introduction course and also during last years’ CIMA symposium when Punya Mishra was a guest speaker... One of the inventors of TPACK! It was a very interesting day!!

First I will explain what TPACK is and then what the connection is of TPACK and what I have learned so far in the course.

TPACK stands for Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge and is a framework for teacher knowledge and technology integration. Figure 1 (Koehler & Mishra, 2009) shows not only the three components of TPACK, technological knowledge, (TK, knowledge about technologies such as computers, electronic learning environments, and interactive whiteboards), pedagogical knowledge, (PK, knowledge about how students learn and different pedagogical approaches such as problem- based learning or collaborative learning), and content knowledge, (CK, knowledge about the subject matter,) but also the interactions between the components and the context.

Figure 1: The TPACK framework and its knowledge components (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). 

Teaching is a complex and ill- structured practice (Kennisnet, 2010). Since the introduction of new technologies, teachers are expected to use these in their education to make it more effective and more flexible, but this makes the teaching even more complicated. To use technology effectively in their education, it is important to have TPACK (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). To become a TPACK skilled teacher, it is important that you not just have knowledge about the three components technology, pedagogy and content but that the knowledge of these three components emerges from interactions among content, pedagogy and technology. And that is exactly why it is so complicated! But what does it mean? I will try to explain this…

As a teacher you want to teach your students something about where you know a lot about; the content of a subject. But just telling the student what you know is not enough; you have to do that in such a way your students really learn what you want them to learn. Therefore you need knowledge about how you can do that in specific situations and specific contexts for that specific subject; all students are different and are learning in different ways. That is why a teacher needs to have good pedagogical knowledge about how to deliver the content; that is pedagogical- content knowledge. But knowledge alone is not enough; the teacher also needs to have the right skills to DO what he is intended to do best. And that is not it! Teachers also need to have knowledge about technologies they can use for teaching and learning, but again, knowledge alone is not enough! Teacher need to know how they can use the technologies in such a way that the learning process of the students is fostered by it. Thus, on one hand to use the technology in such a way that it really helps the students to understand the content (technological- content knowledge), and on the other hand to use the technology in such a pedagogical way that all students benefit from it (technological- pedagogical knowledge). 

When a teacher is TPACK skilled, he does not only have knowledge about the three components, not only about the three combinations of the components, but about all the three components interacting with each other. He can choose the right content, use the right pedagogical approach to support the learning of that content and use the right technologies in a right way to support the learning of the content and the used pedagogical approach for a specific context.    

I think that it is clear now why it is so complicated to become a TPACK skilled teacher; knowledge about the three components alone is not enough. It is most important for teachers that the knowledge of these three components emerges from interactions among content, pedagogy and technology.

References:

Voogt, J., Fisser, P., & Tondeur, J. (2010). Maak kennis met TPACK. Hoe kan een leraar ICT integreren in het onderwijs? Zoetermeer: Kennisnet.
Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1), 60-70.