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…

TPCK book covers

I finally received a copy of the Handbook of TPCK for educators (which I had blogged about previously here). It looks great! Matt and I have a key chapter (Introducing TPCK). I hadn't read this in a while, and after I got the book, I skimmed it... and it reads well....

Tech Trends, Special Issue on TPACK

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...

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...

Connections: Photo Haiku from Summer 2016

Connections: Photo Haiku from Summer 2016

For the past 17 years (with just two exceptions) my summers have been spent teaching in the MAET program. 2016 was the last time I did that, teaching in Chicago the third cohort of the MSUrbanSTEM project. The MAET program runs somewhat concurrently in three...

The future of work & learning: An interview

The future of work & learning: An interview

I had posted earlier about my visit to Bangalore back in summer to participate in the Quest 2 Learn Annual Summit organized by the Quest Alliance. The two day conference focused on The future of work and learning. During my visit I was interviewed by Aakash Sethi, the...

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday, Internet 40 years old today! It all started 40 years ago today, when a couple of computers were connected by a long gray cable ... Read more (and watch a video) at National Geographic

Teachers & technology, a quote

Just heard this in a talk by Sugata Mitra, titled Sugata Mitra: Can kids teach themselves?Any teacher who can be replaced by a computer .... should be! — Arthur C. Clarke See the entire video...

Designing the futures of STEM education

Designing the futures of STEM education

“What knowledge is of most worth?” is a question asked over a 100 years ago by the English philosopher, Herbert Spencer. His unequivocal answer was—science. This question (and his answer) resonates even today, though the context within which it is asked, and how we...

New media, new genres

There is an interesting article in today's NYTimes titled Content and its discontents by Virginia Heffernan. In this article she makes the argument the new digital, online media require new ways of representing information, new ways of thinking about how ideas are...

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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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