Why Theory: Or the TPACK story

by | Wednesday, December 07, 2016

Note: There are two key updates / correction to this post

  • The first has to do with a couple of things that I either got wrong, or rushed over. More about that at Update on “The TPACK story” or “Oops!
  • The second has to do with an update to the diagram itself that came in 2018, prompted by identifying a semantic inconsistency in the diagram (particularly around the idea of context). More about that at The TPACK Diagram gets an upgrade.

I was recently invited to speak at the fall Doctoral Research Forum for the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College on the ASU West campus. (A bit more context about the event, from a couple of years ago, can be found in a blog post by my colleague Sherman Dorn titled “Observations from a Doctoral Research Forum“). In speaking with Craig Mertler, who directs the EdD program here, I thought it best to speak about the role of theory in research. This is something that troubles graduate students a lot as they move through the program (and I have posted about it earlier here and here). I contextualized the discussion within the history of the work that Matt Koehler and I did in developing the TPACK framework. This was a fun talk to create and share. I created a narrated video of the slides of the talk, embedded below:

Note: There is an update / correction to this post which
can be found here: Update on “The TPACK story” or “Oops!

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Palindromic poetry in prison, introducing Sandra Gould Ford

Those who follow this blog know that I love visual wordplay. This is most commonly seen in my ambigram work but another area where I have spent some time is in writing palindromic poetry. I wrote a whole series of poems when I was in graduate school at Illinois and...

Facebook Username

I now have a facebook username! Hah! Check out http://www.facebook.com/punyamishra/

Obama at MSU

Soham and Shreya make it to the Lansing State Journal's website photo gallery... Smita and I pulled the kids out of school today to go see Obama at Michigan State. Leigh Wolf joined us... and frankly it was a long and tiring day: reaching campus at 9:30, standing in...

Jugaad, educational toys from Junk (TPACK at work)

I had written earlier about the idea of Jugaad, the quintessential Indian idea of situational creativity. One of the masters at this is Arvind Gupta. Check out his website for tons of wonderful science toys and experiments that can be made from stuff we typically...

Soham starts college, new ambigram,

We dropped off my eldest at the University of Michigan today. He begins the next stage of his life. We couldn't be more excited. Here is a new ambigram design to mark this occasion. Soham whichever way you look at it, with UMich colors! Mouseover the image to rotate...

Technology & research

Patrick Dickson just forwarded an article in the APA Monitor titled Beyond chalk and talk, in which Art Graesser, the new editor of Journal of Educational Psychology, indicates an openness to including more technology related articles in JEP. Patrick argued that this...

TPACK in a podcast

Just discovered a podcast on TPACK (titled Understanding TPCK) at the msad75mltinews website. It appears to be based on the article (Too cool for school) that was recently published in Learning & Leading with Technology.

stealth assessment

Just heard this of stealth assessment idea (from Michael Spector at NTLS) that struck a chord. More here, [word document].

Disseminating Action Research

Disseminating Action Research

The difference between theory and practice is, in theory, somewhat smaller than in practice — Frank WestphalKnowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion— Daniel J....

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Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Designing Theory: New article | Talking About Design - […] in memory. I have also given talks about why theories are important (such as this one titled Why Theory?)…
  2. Designing Theory: New article – Punya Mishra's Web - […] in memory. I have also given talks about why theories are important (such as this one titled Why Theory?)…
  3. Theoretical Frameworks: A walk through the forest with my friends - […] Why Theory: Or the TPACK story […]
  4. The TPACK diagram gets an upgrade – Punya Mishra's Web - […] story, full of blind alleys and external factors that guided its evolution. (See this video “Why Theory: The TPACK…
  5. Blurred visions: Another history of TPACK – Punya Mishra's Web - […] I had posted recently a video based on a talk I had given at ASU. In that video I…
  6. Update on “The TPACK story” Or “Oops!” – Punya Mishra's Web - […] had recently posted a video of my talk fall Doctoral Research Forum for the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College on…
  7. Diigo links 12/08/2016 – DrAlb - […] Why Theory: Or the TPACK story […]

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