Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Implications for Teacher Educators

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Implications for Teacher Educators

In most educational arenas, vision has far outpaced performance in educational uses of digital technologies. This is due in large measure to focusing upon the technologies' “effectiveness,” rather than how the technologies can be used to address the needs of an increasingly diverse student population.

In response, AACTE will commission a collection of papers addressing the concept and implementation of “technological pedagogical content knowledge” (TPCK). Based on Lee Shulman's influential definition of pedagogical content knowledge, TPCK describes the knowledge and skills that teachers need to meaningfully integrate technology use into instruction in specific content areas. Recognizing that, for example, effective uses of technology in mathematics are quite different from effective uses of technology in social studies, advocates for TPCK argue that teachers need specific preparation in using technology in each content area they will be teaching.

Mishra & Koehler (2005) describe TPCK as a complex, situated form of professional understanding; the nexus of teachers' content, pedagogical, and technological knowledge, arguing that

      this form of knowledge is different from, and greater than, the knowledge of a disciplinary expert (say a mathematician or a historian), a technology expert (a computer scientist) and a pedagogical expert (an experienced educator). (http://punya.educ.msu.edu/PunyaWeb/research/designaspedagogy/)

If pedagogical content knowledge addresses how specific content should be taught (per Shulman), technological pedagogical content knowledge addresses how it should be taught using the full range of purposively selected digital and nondigital technologies. Futhermore, both PCK and TPCK must be developed and applied considering the increasingly complex nexus of multiple cultural, individual, and socioeconomic contexts for teaching and learning.

For the “Technology Pedagogical Content Knowledge: Implications for Teacher Educators” project, AACTE's Committee on Technology and Innovation is working to identify authors for a collection of papers addressing aspects of TPCK of interest to those who teach teachers. After authors are identified, AACTE will sponsor a one-day seminar for them to come together and discuss the contents of their papers, the first drafts of which the group will have read prior to participating in the seminar. Following the gathering, the authors will revise their papers based upon the suggestions received and ideas generated during the meeting. AACTE will then make the TPCK collection available as a monograph. The proposed publication will be announced and released at the 2007 annual meeting.

Through this project, we will work to situate Mishra & Kohler's concept of TPCK in the realm of teacher education, exploring TPCK's parameters within and between multiple curriculum areas, varying teaching and learning contexts, and in use with both preservice and inservice teachers.

“Technology” will be assumed to encompass the full range of digital and nondigital tools and resources that can be used to assist learning and teaching in elementary through secondary schools. The following diagram illustrates the monograph's working definition of TPCK for teacher education.

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Teacher Decision Making

Paper topics in this monograph will include:

• Foreword by AACTE Innovation & Technology Committee

• TPCK in Teacher Education
• TPCK in English Education
• TPCK in Reading/Language Arts
• TPCK in Social Studies/History

• TPCK in Science
• TPCK in Mathematics

• TPCK in Foreign Language Education
• TPCK in Arts Education
• TPCK's Emerging Cross-Disciplinary Organizational Structures
• Methods Courses Structured to Develop TPCK
• Helping Inservice Teachers to Develop TPCK

• TPCK for Addressing Issues of Equity and Access Across Disciplines
• Summary and Future Directions (AACTE Technology & Innovation Committee)

Invited papers will be due on June 1, 2006. Authors and committee members will gather at AACTE's offices in Washington, D.C. on June 23, 2006 to discuss the contents of the manuscripts, within and across individual contributions to the monograph. Revised papers will be due on September 1, 2006. The published monograph will be released to the public in February 2007.

For more information about this project, please contact Bobby Cato at bcato@aacte.org.