Research: TPACK
The TPACK framework
The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework, is one of the most influential frameworks for technology integration in teaching, first introduced in Mishra and Koehler (2006). The framework seeks to capture some of the essential qualities of knowledge required by teachers for the intelligent integration of in their teaching.
Key articles
I would like to highlight a few articles about the TPACK framework that I have been part of.
- Mishra & Koehler, 2006: The article that first introduced the framework
- Koehler & Mishra, 2008: The introductory chapter we wrote for the first TPACK handbook
- Herring, Koehler, & Mishra, 2016: The introductory chapter to the 2nd TPACK handbook.
There are of course many others – which can be found by using the search function on the top, or by browsing the blog posts related to TPACK at the bottom of this page.
The TPACK story
A few years ago I was asked to speak at the fall Doctoral Research Forum for the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. I decided to speak about the role of theory in research since, in my experience, this is something that many graduate students find challenging. I contextualized the discussion within the history of the work that Matt Koehler and I did in developing the TPACK framework. You can see the video of the talk Why Theory: Or the TPACK story to learn more of the origin of the idea. (Incidentally, Matt has his own version of the origin story that you can find at Blurred visions: Another history of TPACK.
TPACK, ChatGPT & GenAI
The rise of Generative AI (and tools such as ChatGPT) and their potential impact on education have been discussed and debated ad-nauseam. The key question, is what it is that teachers need to know to intelligently integrate these technologies in their practice. This paper brings together some early work on people’s psychological responses to media, my work on the TPACK framework, and our evolving understanding of these new technologies. Citation given below.
Mishra, P, Warr, M, & Islam, R. (2023). TPACK in the age of ChatGPT and Generative AI. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, DOI: 10.1080/21532974.2023.2247480
Fun with TPACK
It doesn’t have to all work and no play. Below are some fun TPACK related resources that I have either created or archived.
Spread of the idea
The TPACK framework has influenced research and practice across the world. One of the measures of its impact is the extent of scholarship and research that has emerged from it.
Data from Judi Harris (tpack.pages.wm.edu)
Learn more about
There are a wide range of resources about TPACK on the web. On this website you can find
- The TPACK Newsletter: Curated by Judi Harris and archived here
- TPACK videos based on presentations that I have made over the years.
Other important resources are the TPACK.org website (maintained by Matt Koehler) and the wikipedia TPACK page (maintained by members of the TPACK-Special Interest Group at SITE).
Blog posts related to TPACK
27 Windows on the Universe (03): The Spark
This is the third in a series about the human side of science, drawn from interviews with 27 cosmologists. The first post told the story of the transcripts. The second described the method. This one is about where science begins: in wonder. And what happens when...
Why Sal Khan’t: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling
Two pieces crossed my feed recently, both about Sal Khan and the AI tutoring revolution that wasn’t. The first was Matt Barnum’s reported piece in Chalkbeat, where Khan himself acknowledged that Khanmigo, the AI chatbot tutor he launched three years ago with...
The Paragraph is the Interface: AI Metaphors Meet the Talmud
Danah Henriksen and I recently wrote a paper, currently in press, titled "The Mirror and the Black Box: AI Metaphors and What They Mean for Learning." It's about how the metaphors we choose for AI shape what we can and can't think about it. The paper traces a...
Speculative Fiction & Learning Futures: The Sequel
Sometimes you do a project and think it’s done. You archive it, link to it from your blog, and move on. And then, years later, it finds a second life you never anticipated. A few years ago, during the pandemic, I was part of one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve...
27 Windows on the Universe (02): The Artifacts in the Machine
This is the second in a series of posts about the human side of science, based on interviews with 27 leading cosmologists. The first post told the story of how these transcripts came to exist. This one describes how they were analyzed. How the analysis was done I...
Of Three Minds
I was of three minds,Like a treeIn which there are three blackbirds.—Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" I thought of Stevens's three minds earlier today when I looked at my calendar for the upcoming week. That’s what I usually do on Sundays,...
SITE 2026: There in Spirit
SITE is my conference. It has been for years now, and not being able to attend this year’s meeting in Philadelphia was bittersweet, to say the least. But even though I couldn’t be there in person, our team had a strong presence, and that’s what matters. A huge...
27 Windows on the Universe (01): The Fan Letter
This is the first in a series of posts about the human side of science, based on interviews with 27 leading cosmologists. The series explores what drew these scientists to the universe, how they think, what drives them, and what shaped their paths. 01: How this series...
AI in Education: Digital Education Dialogues Podcast
In this episode of Digital Education Dialogues, the discussion centers on the intersection of AI, teacher training, and the future of educational innovation. It was fun to be a guest on a show run by Chris Dede, since we are usually co-hosts on Silver Lining for...
The Autocomplete That Didn’t: Three More Reads on Dampuni
I recently wrote a post about my son Soham, aged two, replacing words in the Humpty Dumpty poem with a nonsense sound (“Dampuni”) and what that small act of linguistic mischief reveals about play, evolution, and how children learn. I thought I was done with it. I was...
Humpty Dumpty Sat on a Dampuni: Play, Evolution, and Futures Thinking
This is the first of two posts. You can find the second post here. When my son was about two, we used to play a complete-the-nursery-rhyme game. It was a simple game: I would recite the first few words of a poem and he would complete it. The point was that he knew the...
Large Language Models and Intelligent Tutoring Systems: Conflicting Paradigms and Possible Solutions
I have a new chapter out, co-authored with Danielle McNamara, Gregory Goodwin, and Diego Zapata-Rivera, in the latest volume of Design Recommendations for Intelligent Tutoring Systems (Volume 12: Generative Artificial Intelligence), edited by Anne Sinatra, Vasile Rus,...
Six Years, 266 Episodes, and One Persistent Question
On March 11, 2020, my friend Yong Zhao sent me an email. “I am interested in a thought experiment about education,” he wrote. “What if the Coronavirus forces schools to close for more than a year? I think this is a great opportunity to do some imagination and...
Dissertation in a day
For the past six years, I have been a co-host on Silver Lining for Learning, a weekly webinar series that began on March 20, 2020, the very week the world shut down due to the pandemic. What started as an urgent conversation among colleagues about how to keep learning...
Danielle McNamara on Magic Tutors, Learning Engineering & AI’s Role in Education
Over the years, our column series in TechTrends has explored the intersections of creativity, education, and emerging technologies. Recent articles have examined how GenAI shapes curiosity, how it complicates writing instruction, and what it means to personalize...