Tech Trends, Special Issue on TPACK

by | Wednesday, September 09, 2009

TechTrends is a leading journal for professionals in the educational communication and technology field and is the official publication of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT). The current issue has 5 articles devoted to the TPACK framework (including one by yours truly with Matt and Kristen Kereluik). I am providing titles and key quotes from each (with a link to the article written by us).

Mishra, P., Koehler, M. J., & Kereluik, K. (2009). The song remains the same: Looking Back to the Future of Educational Technology. TechTrends, 53, 5. p. 48-53.

The TPACK framework emphasizes the role of teachers as decision makers who design their own educational technology environments as needed, in real time, without fear of those environments becoming outdated or obsolete. Using this approach, teachers do not attend to specific tools, but instead focus on approaches to teaching that endure through change in technologies, content, or pedagogies. Teachers with flexibility of thought, a tolerance for ambiguity, and willingness to experiment can combine traits that perfectly design and tailor their own educational content, pedagogical, and technological environments.

David Passig recently wrote on the topic of melioration, or “the competence to borrow a concept from a field of knowledge supposedly far removed from his or her domain, and adopt it to a pressing challenge in an area of personal knowledge or interest” (2007)… According to Passig, melioration is a skill that affords teachers the flexibility to experiment with a vast array of technologies to meet their specific educational needs. Novel frameworks and concepts like TPACK and Passig’s melioration are starting to look at educational technology in a new way. These new perspectives focus on overarching cognitive skills, competencies, and creativity rather than technical understanding and functional knowledge of specific technologies


Polly, D., & Brantley-Dias, L. (2009). TPACK: Where do we go now? TechTrends, 53, 5. p. 46-47.

TPACK gives a holistic perspective of the knowledge associated with effectively integrating technology into learning environments, accounting for what teachers know and what teachers do… TPACK provides a robust framework for thinking about teachers’ knowledge related to integrating technology effectively into learning environments. Articles in this special issue have raised questions related to our design of teacher education and professional development programs to develop the TPACK of K-12 teachers, and ways to research or examine teachers’ TPACK. innovation adoption.

Barbour, M., Rieber, L. P., Thomas, G., & Rauscher, D. (2009). Homemade PowerPoint Games:
A Constructionist Alternative to WebQuests. TechTrends, 53, 5. p. 54-59.

Students are required to use PowerPoint to construct home made content-based games. To construct these games, students write a game narrative or story (i.e., a short overview or context for the game that must fit on a single PowerPoint slide) and develop questions to provide the appropriate level of challenge to their games. These three pedagogical skills are required of students as they use a technology-based tool to construct games in a specific content area, and form the intersection envisioned by Mishra and Koehler with their TPCK framework. This combination of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge provides a scalable example of good teaching with technology.

Cox, S., & Graham, C. R. (2009). Diagramming TPACK in Practice: Using an Elaborated Model of the TPACK Framework to Analyze and Depict Teacher Knowledge. TechTrends, 53, 5. p. 60-69.

The introduction of the TPACK model by Mishra and Koehler (2006) has had a profound impact on the field of educational technology. It has inspired teachers, teacher educators, and educational technologists to reevaluate their knowledge and use of technology in the classroom… Thus far, the explanations of technological pedagogical content knowledge and its associated constructs that have been provided are not clear enough for researchers to agree on what is and is not an example of each construct. Mishra and Koehler and others have provided definitions of TCK, TPK, and TPACK that articulate to some degree the centers of these constructs, however the boundaries between them are still quite fuzzy, thus making it difficult to categorize borderline cases. In order to help clarify these boundaries and facilitate study of TPACK in practice, this paper presents the key findings from a conceptual analysis of the TPACK framework.

Graham, C. R., Burgoyne, N., Cantrell, P., Smith, L., St. Clair, L., & Harris, R. (2009). TPACK Development in Science Teaching: Measuring the TPACK Confidence of Inservice Science Teachers. TechTrends, 53, 5. p. 70-79.

In this study we piloted an instrument for measuring confidence levels in four of the seven TPACK knowledge constructs: TPACK, TPK, TCK, and TK. The instrument was useful in helping SciencePlus program coordinators to see significant increase in the TPACK confidence of participants over the eight-month duration of the program. Analysis of the data also helped program coordinators recognize that more could be done to help classroom teachers develop TCK confidence by doing more to help them learn about content-specific technologies
that are used in doing science.

Nelson, J., Christopher, A., & Mims, C. (2009). TPACK and Web 2.0: Transformation of
Teaching and Learning. TechTrends, 53, 5. p. 80 – 86.

Web 2.0 technologies provide possibilities for sharing and building knowledge. Teachers who facilitate collaborative and interdisciplinary projects build on the unique strengths of individual students and encourage the sharing of ideas. In essence, they are teaching students to be life-long learners. The Internet and Web 2.0 technologies afford teachers ready access to collaborative, authentic opportunities for students to engage in meaningful experiences related to the curriculum. TPACK-competent teachers exhibit best practices in pedagogy, content, and technology.

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Thoughtless acts? Technology, creativity & teaching

I have always been interested in the manner in which people use (or re-use) everyday things for purposes they were never intended for. Be it a piece of red tape to mark a glass door so that people don't slam into the glass (as I see at the MSU clinical center every...

Pogue on design

David Pogue has couple of great examples in his latest posting about bad design in the world of software. Check out: It’s the Software, Not You. Potentially useful in CEP817/917...

Manoranjan ka baap

The Indian Premier League, Twenty20 cricket championship was a great success. I had a chance to watch a few games (including the finals and semi-finals) when I was in india and it was a blast. This posting however is about an extremely creative commercial for the IPL...

Oh, Shi(f)t! Only in India…

I just came across this sign on a wall in Bhubaneswar. Check it out, nothing less than "Tension free shiting!" All you have to do is dial a number! Here is the sign cropped close Here is the complete sign. It is part of an advertisement for a packing and moving...

Psychoanalyzing Bush

I picked up Jacob Weisberg's The Bush Tragedy from the library and finished reading it over the past day and a half. I have never been a fan of Bush, mainly because I was troubled, from the very beginning, by his lack of curiosity, and his unwillingness to learn....

Keep TPACK clean 🙂

I came across this sign when I was in India recently and I just HAD to take a picture of it. Click on the picture for a larger version Of course, much of the effect comes from the inadvertent yet appropriate peeling of the paint from the letter "R." But fun...

Clint Eastwood at war

I just finished watching Clint Eastwood's two Iwo Jima movies: Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. Clint Eastwood is an individual who I have come to respect a great deal. His evolution from the somewhat rabid "Make my day" vigilante to the nuanced and...

3 Comments

  1. Matt Townsley

    Shouldn’t have jumped the gun! Patience is a virtue….

    Reply
  2. Punya Mishra

    Matt, I just posted a blog post with that info… anyway, duplication isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

    Reply

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