Using
ICTs in Teaching and Learning: Reflections on Professional Development of
Academic Staff
Markus
Mostert and Lynn Quinn
Rhodes University, South Africa
Rhodes University, South Africa
ABSTRACT
Focussing on professional development
of academic staff as higher education practitioners, this paper reports on the
relationship between ICTs and teaching and learning in higher education, and on
the way that that relationship plays out in a formal staff development course
offered at Rhodes University, South Africa. The Technological Pedagogical
Content Knowledge (TPCK) framework developed by Mishra and Koehler (2006) is
used as a theoretical lens for demonstrating the undesirability of an unnatural
separation of ICTs from teaching and learning in dominant discourses within
institutional and national environments. The paper concludes by highlighting
some implications of the TPCK framework for staff developers and curriculum
design in higher education.
Key words: information and
communications technology (ICT); learning technologies; professional
development; academic development; educational development; curriculum design.
INTRODUCTION
Internationally the way in which higher
education (HE) is conceptualised is changing. Globalisation, massification,
shrinking resources, the proliferation of information and communication
technologies (ICTs), increased demands for quality assurance and greater public
accountability, and increasing competition among higher education institutions
have all contributed towards changing the traditional role of academics.
Academics now operate in what Barnett (2000) terms “a world of
supercomplexity”, where the very frameworks on which their professions are
based are continuously in a state of flux. Technological and economic changes,
for example, have resulted in a reorganisation of time and space (Giddens 1984,
cited in Unwin 2007). Furthermore, the supercomplexity and uncertainty of the
postmodern world have caused people to be more reflexive, which, in turn, has
led to a heightened sense of ontological insecurity for academics (ibid).
This changing context of higher
education (HE) both internationally and in South Africa presents new challenges
for lecturers. In particular, the expansion of the application of technology in
teaching and learning has been one of the most ubiquitous major recent changes
in higher education (D’Andrea and Gosling 2005). On the one hand the use of
ICTs is presented as a solution to many of the teaching and learning challenges
brought about by the new HE landscape, while, on the other hand, starting to
use ICTs in their teaching and their students’ learning often represents an
almost insurmountable obstacle to lecturers.
Some of the ways in which higher
education institutions have responded to the challenge of implementing ICTs in
teaching and learning include developing coherent institutional strategies to
change (see for example, McNaught and Kennedy, 2000 and Salmon, 2005),
focussing on the impact of learning technologies (Beetham et al., 2001, Timmis,
2003 in Conole, White and Oliver, 2007) and the offering of models for
representing and understanding organisational contexts and change management
(Morgan, 1986 and Mumford, 2003 in Conole, White and Oliver, 2007).
Yet another strategy employed by higher
education institutions in response to such challenges and which this study
reports on, focuses on support and staff development issues (Smith and Oliver,
2000; Oliver and Dempster, 2003 in Conole, White and Oliver, 2007), placing
greater emphasis on the professionalisation of academic staff as teachers and
assessors. Staff development units are tasked with contributing to the
professional development of academic staff in HE through professional
development workshops and courses leading to formal qualifications. Through
these initiatives Academic Development (AD) staff need to find ways of not only
helping academics cope with these changes, but also of assisting them in
developing appropriate strategies for preparing their students to operate
successfully in a world of “supercomplexity”.
With regard to the use of ICTs in
teaching and learning, however, a major problem is that staff developers
themselves are often ill-equipped for using ICTs in their own teaching and
courses, let alone for assisting academic staff to follow suit.
In response to these challenges, Unwin
(2007) proposes a model of professional development that entails the
establishment of professional learning communities as a way to counteract the
sense of ontological insecurity. Following from the “communities of practice”
concept developed by Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998), such learning
communities are important as they could contribute towards lecturers
reconceptualising their professional identities. For Knight and Trowler a
community of practice is “a closely interacting group of practitioners within
which contextualized, situated learning is always happening and is legitimized”
(2001, 9). Such communities “have the potential to encourage teamwork,
democratic discourse, creativity and trust” (Unwin 2007, 298). Also, within a
learning community people bring along different resources and expertise which
they can share with members of the group. Wenger (1998, 85) argues that
These professional communities have
allowed a sense of belonging and confidence in shared decision-making when
(often) external factors seemed to be working against us … (in Unwin 2007,
296).
In an environment which is not always
supportive of change, Academic Development (AD) staff are challenged to design
workable strategies in formal professional development courses for promoting
effective practice in teaching with technology. Investigating the relationship
between ICTs and teaching and learning in higher education, this paper uses the
Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) framework developed by
Mishra and Koehler (2006) as a theoretical lens for reporting on the practice
in a staff development course for academics at Rhodes University, South Africa.
ICTs
AND HIGHER EDUCATION
Many have regarded ICTs as the solution
to a range of educational problems. In South Africa, much of the discourse on
using ICTs in HE teaching and learning, however, seems to focus on access to
technology; that is, on the availability of computers, the Internet and
bandwidth rather than on the way ICTs are being used in support of teaching and
learning. In many contexts this focus on access has resulted in pedagogically
poor applications of technology where ICTs are only used in transmission modes
of teaching and learning. Following some spectacular failings of eLearning
projects globally, (see, for example, Latchem, 2005) there now seems to be a
growing concern about the application of those technologies in teaching and
learning to investigate how they can and are being used to support teaching and
learning (see for example, Czerniewicz and Brown, 2006).
In addition, there has been a growing
recognition that technology used in the absence of a sound theoretical
framework or pedagogy is generally not very effective in reaching programme
goals. Laurillard (2002); Mishra and Koehler (2006) and Unwin (2007), for
example, have cautioned against the use of ICTs without a conceptual framework
or without a clear understanding of why and how the ICT will contribute to
students’ learning. These insights have led some higher education institutions
(HEIs) to realise that pedagogically sound integration of ICTs in lecturers’
teaching requires more than technical support; it also needs professional
development for lecturers to use ICTs in their teaching and learning.
There seems to be a wide variation in
how HE practitioners conceptualise the integration of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) in teaching and learning. This implies a
question concerning our understanding of learning with ICTs and the implications
for the professional development of academic staff.
Discourses
on ICTs in HE separate ICTs from teaching and learning
Following Shephard (2004), we use the
concept of ICTs in teaching and learning to broadly include computer-based and
online tools and resources used to support student learning, but we also focus
on the interactive use of those tools to facilitate interpersonal communication
and collaboration. At Rhodes University, however, many of the discourses on the
role of ICTs in teaching and learning seem to conceptualise the use of
computers in isolation from lecturers’ teaching practice. Users of one such
dominant discourse, for example, believe that the use of ICTs only add value to
those students who are under-prepared for higher education studies. Such
students should therefore be sent to a computer laboratory to work through a
computer-based tutorial or other courseware product on a particular topic. This
thinking is in line with a model of computer-based education that emphasises
learning as the transmission of content over the construction of knowledge and
seems to be loosely based on behaviourist theories of learning, even though
their designers might profess constructivism as the underlying theory of
learning (Thorpe, 2002). In this model, students “learn” or supposedly
“construct their own knowledge” by working, often sequentially, through
courseware lessons such as computer-based “tutorials”, drill and practice
programs, simulations, tests and games (Alessi and Trollip, 1991).
Given the way in which ICTs are dealt
with in isolation from teaching and learning in official documentation
pertaining to teaching and learning, this separation of ICT-use from other
teaching and learning endeavours in South African Higher Education comes as no
surprise. The same division is, for example, reflected in the Higher Education
Quality Committee’s (HEQC) Improving Teaching and Learning (ITL) Resources
(2005). Developed during 2003 in a series of workshops the ITL Resources was a
collaborative project between the HEQC and academics in private and public
higher education institutions in South Africa and other countries. Aimed at
quality promotion and capacity development these resources contain suggested
good practice descriptors that are consequently used as the basis for the
institutional audits conducted at various South African higher education
institutions.
With regard to the use of ICTs in
teaching and learning, the ITL Resources contain the Unit Standards for a
Web-based Learning elective module, which forms part of a postgraduate
qualification for higher education practitioners, (the Postgraduate Certificate
in Higher Education and Training or PGCHET), aimed at providing professional
development and recognition for HET practitioners. However, apart from this
elective, all of the references to computer(s), IT (information technology),
technology and the Web relate to access and the provision of resources and
services. Where the use of ICTs is somehow connected to learning in these ITL
Resources, references to ICTs are used exclusively in relation to the
development of computer literacy skills for both students (2005, 112) and staff
(2005, 141), despite a recognition, in these very resources, that
… technology has revolutionised
teaching and learning; and academic staff members now face the challenge of
introducing effective ways of engaging technology for learning (HEQC 2005,
140).
Furthermore, in the unit standards for
the PGCHET itself, the use of ICTs in teaching and learning is dealt with in
isolation from other core modules such as curriculum development, assessment,
evaluation and learning design. While the unit standard for the elective module
mentioned above, Design and develop web-based learning, specifically focuses on
the use of ICTs in teaching and learning, none of the other seven compulsory
core unit standards or four elective unit standards addresses the issue of
using ICTs in support of teaching and learning. We believe that this separation
of the use of technology from other teaching and learning topics severely
limits the potential of ICTs to enhance teaching and learning.
Fortunately, due to the widespread use
of the Web and the increasing pervasiveness of ICTs as experienced by
university educators and students, the practice of isolating educational
technologies is increasingly being challenged in favour of practices based on
social constructivist learning theories that, for example, emphasise
interpersonal interactivity over interaction between a student and a courseware
program. Consequently, computers are assuming a more central role in mainstream
teaching and learning.
This shifts the location of learning
beyond the confined spaces of “the lecture” and student computer laboratories
with limited “opening hours” towards learning anytime and anywhere, with
profound implications for the everyday practices of teaching, learning,
research, administration and recreation.
Since “there is no single technological
solution that applies for every teacher, every course, or every view of
teaching” (Mishra and Koehler 2006, 1029), the appropriate and pedagogically
accountable integration of ICTs into teaching and learning, however, presents
many challenges which have to be addressed in professional development courses.
Implications
for professional development
Due to the relative newness of the
field as well as the increasing pace of technological change, much of the work
being done in relation to the use of ICTs in teaching and learning can be
described as exploratory and thus is often implemented in the absence of well
developed theoretical frameworks (Unwin, 2007). Practice that develops slowly
and theory hardly at all (Laurillard, 2002) severely limits the potential of
ICTs to enhance teaching and learning.
It is therefore unsurprising that ongoing
debate seems to characterise discussions about the most appropriate way of
supporting academic staff in using ICTs in their teaching and in their
students’ learning. Shephard (2004, 67), for example, distinguishes between the
provision of technological support to describe an orientation of “let us help
you to develop and use these learning resources” and professional development
to signify the scaffolding provided to lecturers to help them develop the
theoretical understandings and skills that they will need “to find, develop,
and use these learning resources” in ways which contribute to the kind of
learning that is valued in higher education.These different orientations to
assisting academic staff to integrate ICTs in their teaching and learning have very
specific implications for educational technologists and academic development
practitioners alike.
With regard to the support model, the
term “instructional designer” is often used to describe the role of educational
technologists. In supporting staff (“let us help you to develop and use these
learning resources”), both an instructional designer and a lecturer (as content
expert) would often be part of a courseware development team which might
include one or more of the following: a project manager, a graphics or web
designer, a programmer, a web developer, etc. Instructional designers would
therefore engage in specific projects (e.g. developing a piece of courseware),
with target and sign-off dates, often following well-established software
development models such as the modified ADDIE model as described by Kruse and
Keil (2000).
In a professional development context,
however, educational technologists increasingly fulfil the role of “curriculum
designer” alongside one or more academic staff members in a curriculum
development team (Littlejohn and Peacock, 2003). In this context, educational
technologists are more likely to play the role of “curriculum designers”
(rather than that of instructional designers), resembling the function of
academic development practitioners more closely. Here emphasis moves away from
specific ICT-based interventions (for example as in the case of developing a
piece of courseware) to a series of consultations over a longer period of time,
in a whole module or course that is presented over anything from a few weeks to
an entire academic year. Lecturers starting to use a learning management system
usually make small incremental changes to their courses and teaching as they
adopt various tools or features of a learning management system (LMS) over a
period of time. In this process they would be assisted by an educational
technologist (acting as a “curriculum designer”) who would work alongside them
to negotiate the pedagogical implications of various options of using ICTs
(Oliver, 2002).
The support model described above might
have a more direct and radical impact on the teaching and learning in a
particular course. However, this is also exactly the reason why this approach
attracts fewer academics:
… the historic constancy of lecturing
methods on campus may make it hard for faculty to imagine strategies that take
them outside an intuitive core of shared assumptions and beliefs about teaching
methods (Daniel 1996, 137).
The combination of increased use of
LMSs in higher education, inflexible course structures, time tables and the
dominance of the “performance” model of teaching (Morrow, 2007) therefore seem
to have shifted the role of educational technologist from “instructional
designer” to “curriculum designer”.
After outlining the context and some of
the challenges involved in the integration of ICTs within a Postgraduate
Diploma in Higher Education (PGDHE) course we will use Mishra and Koehler’s
(2006) Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Model as a lens through
which to view our own practice.
ICTs
in a Professional Development Course
Since 2000 Academic Development (AD)
staff members at Rhodes University in South Africa have offered a Postgraduate
Diploma in Higher Education (PGDHE) aimed at professionalising the practice of
academic staff in the Institution. Although the curriculum for the PGDHE was
developed by a team of AD practitioners, the team did not initially include an
educational technologist. At the time the application of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) to teaching and learning was addressed in the
PGDHE through stand-alone presentations by an educational technologist. These
stand-alone presentations did however not seem to lead to either successful
learning about ICTs in teaching and learning, or to significant implementation
of ICTs in participants’ teaching and courses. According to Mishra and Koehler
(2006) this de-contextualised practice is indicative of the knowledge
structures that underlie much of the current discourse on educational technology
that separates technology from pedagogy and content.
The introduction of a learning
management system into the PGDHE in 2005 resulted in closer collaboration
between the AD practitioners teaching on the programme and the educational
technologist in the department. This has led to the formation of a
“professional learning community” (Unwin 2007, 295) comprising the AD staff and
the educational technologist, which has enabled an “integrated pedagogic
approach to ICTs”. Since ICTs are now used to support participants’ learning in
the PGDHE, the use of ICTs to enhance teaching and learning in Higher Education
is modelled for participants to use in their own teaching.
The
Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education (PGDHE)
The curriculum for the PGDHE offered at Rhodes University is based on the South African unit standards for the PGDHET, the competency-based national qualification for lecturers in HE mentioned earlier. Since the curriculum development team adapted the unit standards into a modular format, the curriculum for the PGDHE displays a higher level of theoretical coherence than is usually associated with unit standard-based programmes. Based on the curriculum development team’s shared theoretical and philosophical beliefs about what constitutes an appropriate approach to the development of academic staff in higher education, the practice-based, two-year course was designed to meet the specific needs of lecturers within the context of their disciplines, the university, and the higher education context, nationally and internationally. The stated purpose of the course is to encourage the professional development of lecturers by assisting them to enhance their ability to facilitate, manage, and assess their students’ learning, to evaluate their own practice effectively, to develop their knowledge of higher education as a field of study, and to provide professional accreditation (Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education Course Guide, 2006). The programme is offered in the form of four core modules (Learning and Teaching in Higher Education; Curriculum Development; Assessment and Moderation of Student Learning and Evaluation of Teaching and Courses) and one elective module.
Despite the positive evaluations on the
programme as a whole (see Quinn, 2003; 2006), the curriculum development team
has always felt that the add-on workshops on technology, although offered as
part of specific modules, were not successfully encouraging participants to use
technology to enhance their teaching and their students’ learning. This
perception was borne out by our analysis of participants’ teaching portfolios,
the primary method of summative assessment in the programme, which contained
little evidence of their using ICTs in their teaching, and from feedback we
elicited from them.
Learning
about ICTs in the PGDHE
At our institution the close
relationship between ICTs and teaching and learning has been recognised in that
the position of the educational technologist is based in the unit that is
mandated to develop teaching and learning, rather than in, for example, the
division that is tasked to provide ICT infrastructure and services to the
institution. While the academic development staff members have always
recognised the importance of integrating ICTs into teaching and learning, we
were less certain about the most appropriate way in which it could be
integrated. Consequently, ICTs in teaching and learning were initially treated
as an “add-on” rather than central to teaching and learning. This was also
evident in the development of the Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education
(PGDHE). Based on national unit standards this programme made provision for the
“teaching” of ICTs in teaching and learning through an elective module worth 10
credits (initially called “Design and develop web-based learning”) and one
90-minute session in each of the “Learning and Teaching in Higher Education”
and “Assessment and Moderation of Student Learning” modules. While the
elective, now called “ICTs in Teaching and Learning”, provided PGDHE
participants with the space to investigate and report on an ICT-related
intervention, take-up of this elective was very low with only approximately 17%
of participants taking this elective over a 5-year period.
Following several years of
experimenting with various web-based learning management systems (LMSs), the
institution adopted Moodle in 2004. While the LMS initially had very little
impact on the way that the PGDHE was taught, the facilitators of the programme
started using the LMS as a repository for resources (in 2005), but later also
more interactively by requiring PGDHE participants to reflect on their learning
in online journals (in 2006) and in participating in online discussion forums
(in 2007). The primary aim of integrating ICTs into the PGDHE was to expose
participants to the potential of ICTs to enhance their teaching and their
students’ learning by modelling the use of ICTs. This is particularly
significant as very few, if any, of the PGDHE participants had any previous
experience of being taught using ICTs. While we do not claim that this
integrated model of imbedding ICTs into the curriculum was solely responsible
for the increasing uptake of the LMS amongst PGDHE participants for their own
courses, we will assert that it is a more pedagogically sound approach than the
earlier practice of de-contextualised, add-on presentations in two of the
modules as described above.
TECHNOLOGICAL
PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE AS THEORETICAL LENS
The need to have conceptual lenses
through which to explore research data has been thoroughly argued (see for
example, Mishra and Koehler, 2006 and Oliver, 2003). Such theoretical lenses
allow researchers (and practitioners) to make inferences about the world. May
goes so far as to claim that the findings of social researchers are meaningless
unless they are situated in a theoretical framework which must be made
explicit: the “facts do not speak for themselves” (2001, 30). Furthermore he
argues that social theory and concepts are necessary both for interpreting
empirical data, but also as a basis for critical reflection on the research
process, and social life and social systems in general. The main aim of our
research was to use the available theory to help us begin to uncover the mechanisms
and processes at work in our context.
Technological
Pedagogical Content Knowledge
There seems to be emerging consensus
that the integration of ICTs into teaching and learning requires balancing
different sets of knowledge and skills. Inglis, Ling and Joosten (1999, in
Shephard, 2004), for example, identify three zones of expertise: expertise in
information technologies, expertise in instructional design and expertise in a
subject area. Based on Shulman’s (1986) notion of pedagogical content knowledge
(PCK) Mishra and Koehler (2006) developed a theoretical framework that not only
corresponds closely with the zones of expertise identified by Inglis et al.,
but also identifies four additional sets of teacher knowledge bases by
focussing on the areas of overlap between each pair in this triad, as well as
the interplay of all of three of these primary knowledge bases (See Figure 1).
For Mishra and Koehler,
TPCK represents a class of knowledge
that is central to teachers’ work with technology. This knowledge would not
typically be held by technologically proficient subject matter experts, or by
technologist who know a little of the subject or of pedagogy, or by teachers
who know little of that subject or about technology (ibid, 1029).
Claiming that this framework enables a
deeper understanding of a range of contextually bound and complex
relationships, Mishra and Koehler (2006) argue that
a conceptually based theoretical
framework about the relationship between technology and teaching can transform
the conceptualisation and the practice of teacher education, teacher training,
and teachers’ professional development (ibid, 1019).

Figure 1. The Technological Pedagogical Content Framework (Mishra and Koehler 2006, 1025)
As explained above, much of the earlier
theorising about the use of technology in education involved viewing technology
as being separate from both content and pedagogy. A number of scholars have
pointed to the failings of traditional add-on methods for teaching the use of
technology. Mishra and Koehler, for example, regard these methods as “ill
suited to produce the ‘deep understanding’ that can assist teachers in becoming
intelligent users of technology for pedagogy …” (ibid, 1032) and suggest
that it is necessary to integrate the use of educational technology with sound
pedagogy and that doing this requires the development of “a complex situated
form of knowledge that [they] call Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge
(TPCK)” (ibid, p. 1017). TPCK emphasises “the connections, interactions,
affordances, and constraints between and among content, pedagogy, and
technology” (ibid, 1025).
In practical terms, apart from looking
at the three types of knowledge in isolation, Mishra and Koehler suggest that
it is necessary to examine them in pairs: pedagogical content knowledge (PCK),
technological content knowledge (TCK), technological pedagogical knowledge
(TPK) and the three combined as technological pedagogical content knowledge
(TPCK). Substantially expanded from Shulman’s initial three categories, this
model is useful for helping researchers to decide which research questions they
need to ask and what data it is necessary to collect. As will be described
below, we were interested in determining whether the participants on a
professional development course had developed TPCK. The following elements and
relationships were considered:
Content knowledge. In the context of a professional development course which
is made up of lecturers from a range of disciplines it is safe to assume that
they have or are able to acquire the disciplinary knowledge they require for
teaching. In such a cross-disciplinary course for lecturers it is therefore
neither practical nor necessary to teach “content knowledge”. Participants
should however be encouraged to critically examine their disciplines; to think
about issues such as what counts as knowledge in their disciplinary areas, and
so on (see for example Quinn and Vorster, 2004).
Pedagogical knowledge. Mishra and Koehler define pedagogical knowledge as “deep
knowledge about the processes and practices or methods of teaching and learning
and how it encompasses, among other things, overall educational purposes,
values and aims” (ibid, 1026). This kind of knowledge is the focus of a
professional development course for lecturers in higher education. In addition,
another purpose of such a programme is to encourage participants not just to
develop their disciplinary identities (e.g. lawyer, historian, geologist), but
also to develop their identities as teachers in HE. For this to happen,
participants need to be exposed to current theories of teaching and learning
generally and those applicable specifically to HE contexts.
Pedagogical content knowledge is knowledge linked to the teaching of a specific
discipline. PCK explores, for example, the difference between teaching history
and teaching chemistry or drama. It requires knowledge of which curricula and
teaching and assessment methods are most likely to achieve the learning
outcomes of specific disciplines and courses.
According to Mishra and Koehler, PCK
“is concerned with the representation and formulation of concepts, pedagogical
techniques, knowledge of what makes concepts difficult or easy to learn,
knowledge of students’ prior knowledge, and theories of epistemology” (ibid,
1027). Pedagogical content knowledge also includes the ability for disciplinary
experts to make explicit the academic literacies of their disciplines (Boughey,
2002) to enable students to understand not only what counts as knowledge in
their disciplines but also how to express that knowledge. In the context of a
cross-disciplinary professional development course such as the PGDHE, much of
this cannot be explicitly taught but participants can be asked critical
questions which encourage them to transfer generic pedagogical knowledge and
apply it to the teaching of their specific disciplines.
Technology knowledge. We would like to believe that lecturers in higher
education should come with some basic level of computer literacy skills. They
should, for example, be able to work with computers, networks, the Internet and
understand operating systems, computer filing systems and so on, in the same
way that they are able to work with books, pens, and overhead projectors, for
example. We are aware, however, that this picture does not reflect the current
reality at Rhodes University. Since all seven parts of TPCK are necessarily
integrated and should not be viewed in isolation, participants’ potential lack
of basic computer literacy skills might jeopardise their development of TPCK.
Since we do not see the development of basic computer literacy skills as core
to our function, these literacies are being addressed by the Human Resources
Division. Within the PGDHE course, such skills are therefore only addressed on
an ad-hoc, just-in-time basis when required.
Technological content knowledge is “knowledge about the manner in which technology and
content are reciprocally related” (ibid, 1028). Again, in the model which we
propose for professional development, TCK is not explicitly taught, but it is
modelled through the use of technologies to teach the programme. Due to the
practice-based nature of the PDGHE, participants are encouraged to reflect on
how technology is used and to think about how they could apply it in their
contexts.
Technological pedagogical knowledge is made up of generic knowledge regarding how technology
can be used for general pedagogic aims. While TPK is not directly addressed in
the PGDHE, the educational technologist offers hands-on workshops which focus
on the potential of technology to support teaching and learning in general and
aim to develop participants’ TPK.
Technological pedagogical content
knowledge emerges from and goes beyond the three
basic components of content, pedagogy, and technology. For Mishra and Koehler,
quality teaching requires developing a
nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between technology, content
and pedagogy, and using this understanding to develop appropriate
context-specific strategies and representations (ibid, 1029).
In their framework, and in the way in
we theorise our practice, separating the components is only for the purposes of
analysis. In reality all seven are necessarily integrated and should not be
viewed in isolation from one another; they exist in dynamic tension. It is
obvious then that content neutral, add-on generic courses or workshops to train
lecturers to use ICTs in teaching and learning, while they have a valid place
and purpose, are unlikely to lead to integrated knowledge which will enable
lecturers to take full advantage of the potential of educational technologies
to enhance their teaching. TPCK is more likely to help academic staff to
develop the kinds of curricula, teaching and assessment methodologies that will
ensure that their students engage in the kind of learning appropriate for their
context.
Further
Reflections on our Programme
Mishra and Koehler found that the TPCK
framework helped them to articulate “a clear approach to teaching (learning
technology by design), but also served as an analytical lens for studying the
development of teacher knowledge about educational technology” (1041).
Their framework has enhanced our
understanding of the practices which we are implementing intuitively. Using the
framework enabled us to analyse evaluation data and to critically reflect on
the relationship between content, pedagogy and technology and on how we were
developing the range of different knowledges in our programme. It enabled the
“development of deeper understandings of the complex web of relationships
between content, pedagogy, and technology, and the contexts in which they
function” (ibid, 1043). Assisting us in building metacognitive understandings
of our practices, the TPCK model will in future enable us to consciously
integrate the development of TPCK in a more deliberate and theorised way.
Our analysis of course evaluations and
our own critical reflections show that we as educational developers and other
lecturers as participants on the PGDHE, have made shifts towards developing
TPCK, that is, a more nuanced understanding of the relationships between the
three types of knowledge and how to develop TPCK in a way which is commensurate
with the aims, purposes, underpinning philosophy and outcomes of the PGDHE.
Lecturers who attended our professional development programme in 2007 are
beginning to acquire the appropriate knowledge which will enable them to use
ICTs in their own teaching in ways which will lead to the kind of learning
valued in higher education.
It is our contention that the formation
of a curriculum development team which included an educational technologist and
our using of ICTs to teach the PGDHE enabled us to powerfully model ways of
integrating ICTs into teaching. Participants were thus able to experience
firsthand the potential of using ICTS in this way for their own learning in the
PGDHE. Most of the participants believe that their learning was significantly
enhanced by having access to a LMS. Pointing to some specific features of the
LMS, other participants described their experiences in the following ways:
The journals have been a very useful
way to record my thoughts about the learning tasks … it’s been a very good way
of receiving comments back from my course facilitator. I think this system
works very well, and it’s a very convenient way of exchanging information, and
then storing it in one place. … The journals are also a ‘safe’ space to record
your thoughts when you’re not necessarily on top of the material yet – it is
then very useful for reflective purposes to go back later and see how your own
views and understandings have changed.
I found the … journal entries to show
progression in my thinking and allow me to ‘build’ a piece of work. Forum
discussions have been really great – as we can easily share our thoughts at a
convenient time and refer back to what has been said.
Some of the feedback from course
participants provides evidence that they began to acquire the appropriate TPCK
to use ICTs in the design of their own courses and modules:
... using Moodle in the course has made
me aware of its potential in my teaching – this has been the best way of
demonstrating it to us.
I have become so aware of it [need to
integrate ICTs in teaching and learning] that I have made it my elective to
investigate the potential to use it at my college.
… how I am currently using Moodle is
that it is a resource site at the moment, but it is an interactive resource
site … I’ve sectioned off stuff so as to lead people gently into what its all
about and then added the use of the calendar tool, where I keep updates on all
sorts of useful information …it’s really cool. I’ll be ready next year.
CONCLUSION
If, according to Mishra and Koehler
(2006) educators have to develop or maintain these seven sets of knowledge bases,
what are the implications for academic development staff who are tasked with
the professional development of these educators? Which sets of knowledge bases
should they possess or develop for themselves?
Implication
for staff developers
As discussed earlier, due to the
specificity of content knowledge in various disciplinary contexts, it is
neither feasible nor desirable for academic development staff to be responsible
for lecturers acquiring any of the Content Knowledge, Technological Content
Knowledge, Pedagogical Content Knowledge or Technological Pedagogical Content
Knowledge for any disciplines other than in the disciplinary area of Education
and related fields (e.g. Psychology, Adult Education, etc.), which is already
represented as Pedagogical Knowledge in the TPCK model. While educational
developers would normally, by virtue of the field they are working in, have
already acquired Pedagogical Knowledge, the possibility of them having
developed Technological Knowledge and Technological Pedagogical Knowledge is
rather slim. This is often because they too, have not experienced being taught
with digital technologies, but primarily because the structures in which
educational technology operate frequently perpetuate the undesirable split
between the development of teaching and learning on the one hand and the use of
ICTs in teaching and learning on the other.
Assuming that staff developers have
already developed their Pedagogical Knowledge, they would be required also to
develop their Technological Knowledge as well as their Technological
Pedagogical Knowledge so as to enable them to become comfortable in advising
lecturers on the potential role of ICTs in their teaching and curricula and
thus maintaining their professional status and credibility as staff developers.
Educational Technology will consequently have to be perceived as less focused
on technology and more orientated towards effective teaching and learning.
Working in teams which include an educational technologist seems to be one way
in which academic staff developers can begin to gain the other types of
knowledge that will enable them to help their “students” develop TPCK.
Implications
for curriculum development
In line with the ideas of many academic
development practitioners (see, for example, Toohey, 1999; Mishra and Koehler,
2006; Unwin, 2007) we would like to argue for curriculum development to be a
team-based activity. Although this is certainly not a new idea, like many
campus-based institutions, lecturers in most departments at Rhodes University
work in isolation from their colleagues when developing their courses,
resulting in academic processes at this institution still resembling a cottage
industry where all the major teaching and assessment processes are managed and
executed by a single individual (Daniel, 1997). In cases where curricula are
indeed designed by teams of colleagues, the absence of an educational
technologist (or “technology enthusiast”) may perpetuate the perceived divide
between teaching and learning on the one hand, and technology on the other. It
might therefore be worthwhile to promote the idea that the curriculum design
team should also include an educational technologist (or enthusiast) and other
specialists, for example an information science specialist from the University
Library.
Rather than acting primarily as an
“instructional designer” as described earlier, educational technologists have a
role to play in identifying areas of teaching, learning, assessment and
evaluation that might benefit from the use of ICTs and in assisting lecturers
to use ICTs in pedagogically sound ways. “Practitioners require support in
moving from individual development of learning resources and courses towards
team-based collaborative development and re-use within learning communities”
(Littlejohn et al., 2007, 144). The ICT enthusiast “will be there to mediate …
the potential of the technologies with the desired pedagogies. … they will be
able to reduce anxieties and allow the development of confidence within the
learning community with the technologies being used” (Unwin 2007, 302).
In this paper we described the
establishment of a professional learning community within an academic
development unit, the purposes of which were to address both the lack of
knowledge and experience of the AD staff with regard to using ICTs in teaching
and learning, as well as to model the various ways in which lectures can
integrate ICTs into the teaching and learning of their disciplines. Through
using technology to teach our course and through forming the professional
learning community we have tried to provide a professional development
experience for lecturers that might help them to develop the kind of nuanced
understandings called for in Mishra and Koehler’s TPCK framework (2006).
ENDNOTES
1.See also Shephard (2004) on the need
for team-based approaches to curriculum development in higher education.
2.Analysis-Design-Development-Implementation-Evaluation
plus a “Rapid Prototyping Phase”
3.As Mishra and Koehler (2006, 1026-7)
acknowledge, these ideas are not new. They cite, for example, Keating and
Evans, 2001; Zhao, 2003, Hughes, 2005 and Neiss, 2005 who have argued
similarly.
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