Teaching teachers about TPACK

In the lasts few posts I wrote about TPACK. Based on these thoughts I worked with three other students in a group on designing a professional development program for teachers during the past few weeks. The program intends to develop the TPACK of primary school teachers. The primary activity is that teachers work together to designing lesson plans for lessons that integrate ICT. In this program we did involve the whole school to foster implementation and curriculum alignment within the school. This not only includes the principal, remedial teacher and school counselor, but also 3th and 4ht year pre-service teachers doing an internship. This way pre- and in-service teacher share their knowledge and experiences while developing TPACK. As mentioned in the earlier post, the T could be a lot of things (materials that support teaching and/or learning). Therefore we narrowed this element down to ‘digital technologies’, focusing on ICT integration in education.

In this post I will reflect on the process we went through to design the professional development program, my experiences in working with TPACK and I will share my ideas about the way teachers can be stimulated to integrate (not just use) digital technology’s in education.

The process

In short, we started with defining context variables (e.g. facilities, infrastructure, culture, etc.), than reviewed the literature on TPACK, factors influencing ICT integration and implementation strategies. After that we designed the program based in the literature findings and context characteristics. To conclude we compared the designed program with other literature findings, for instance the development stages Niess (2009) defined, and developed an evaluation plan to formatively (half way) and summatively evaluate the designed program.

During this process we faced a few challenges, especially since we had to make the context up because we did not have enough time to work with a real one. Luckily we had different disciplines in our design team which really contributed to finding a solution. Our group consisted of a teacher (German), an educational program designer (India) and two students with a background in educational science (Dutch). This assignment showed again that it is important to use these different insights in the design process. For example we could use the teachers’ insights on how things would work out in practice and whether activities are feasible. Making up the context also showed that the context you design for is an important influence on the design. We noticed that some parts in the design could not be worked out properly without knowing the context variables.

Source:
http://www.vrijebasisschool-
heistcentrum.be/ouderraad.htm

The implementation is something we considered from the start, so we identified key actors, like teachers, a principal, etc. from the start. I believe support from key-stakeholders is crucial for successful implementation and therefore we involved the whole school.

Not only the implementation should be considered from the start, but also the evaluation of the program. We embedded activities to evaluate the impact of the program into the design. Embedding the activities means you need to consider these in the first phases of design; otherwise the coherence will be in ‘danger’.

I will share new insights I stumbled into during designing the program in the next parts.

Working with TPACK

Before I started this program I already had some experiences with TPACK. I used the model to evaluate how much TPACK teachers really used in practice during my bachelor assignment and therefore I (among other things) made an observation scheme based on the TPACK model. This is another way of using the model than we did during the last assignment and again is another way than we did use the model (in some classes) during the course. That is what I find so cool about TPACK. It gives a structured way to think about using technology in educational practice but at the same time you can use the model in a very flexible way, like designing and reflection. On the top of that, you can use different elements from the model as a starting point. All this flexible ways of using TPACK does however need abstract or/and out of the box thinking, something which might be hard for teachers since they need to take a step back from what they see in practice.

TPACK and the relation with other factors

During the last assignment I learned more about how TPACK relates to other factors of the teacher. When the context and stakeholders were set, we started on developing the program itself. But where to start? What should we focus on? In the last post I mentioned the ‘TPACK minded’ teacher and that getting TPACK minded starts with being aware of the added value TPACK can offer to teaching. This idea is what the program focused on. Focusing on ‘making teachers aware of TPACK’ is somewhat abstract, so to start we reviewed literature to identify factors that influence the teacher in this ‘getting TPACK minded process’. While digging in the literature I found out how the TPACK of a teacher is related to other aspects of the teacher such as attitudes and beliefs. So working with TPACK in this matter made us see the relations between other factors needed to develop TPACK. I simplified this in a model that include the factors we could focus on in the design. The model is shown in the figure below. These are elements that are feasible to consider in such program.

Relation  between factors.

Stimulating teachers in integrating technology

As I said in the previous post and in this post, making teachers aware of TPACK is one of the first steps. Next to that, a few other factors influence the way teachers use their TPACK in practice (see above). To get teachers to really integrate technology, and thus really use TPACK, it is important that teachers have positive experience, attitudes and beliefs towards ICT (in this case, could be another technology as well) in education. Good practices might help here, but also teachers telling other teachers about success stories might be a good start. Teachers self efficacy plays an important role in the process. To gain self efficacy, teachers need practice, learning by doing and on the job is the key. Of course teachers need to gain experiences with technology to increase their ICT-skills, but this is less effective if teachers gain these skills isolated from a subject- and pedagogy-specific context. This is what TPACK can be a great help in, gaining skills in an integrated way (the way teachers see it in practice) and not isolated from each other.

As also mentioned in the previous post, we need to start this process in teacher education but we should not forget the in-service teachers. I think that working on TPACK with pre- and in-service teachers might help to break the cultural barrier. By this I mean the (often) fixed culture in schools that is hard to change, especially by one teacher that just finished teacher education. Often these teachers have a lot of new insights but these are not used by the school they will get a job.

A shared vision throughout the whole school, motivation, willingness and voluntary teachers is the key but how do we initiate that? At the end, during presentations of the other groups, it was funny to see most of the people struggled with motivational issues since everyone made the assumption that the teachers were all very motivated to work with ICT en TPACK and all joined voluntary In reality this is most likely not the case; in general there are always some teachers that do not share the enthusiasm towards ICT integration. For these teachers this threshold is a lot higher, so they need to take a jump instead of a step to pass the first development phase. This is however also related to attitudes, beliefs and experiences. We tried to pay attention to these factors by letting teachers share their attitudes, beliefs and experiences in the beginning of the program. Next to that we embed different technologies in the program, and let the teachers work with different ones to foster positive experiences.

Though I think that this might help to take a step in the right way but it might not initiate teachers volunteering. I think we need to give teachers time and space to develop that willingness and voluntary behavior. It is like learning to cycle, fall and try again until you got it. But teachers need to get time to do so and they often do not get the time and space to do so. Their performances are important so trying something is out of the questions since it might risk their performances.

How to make teachers initiators instead of ‘just’ applicators?

Bottom up is the key, is often what is stated in literature. Easily said than done I would say, because how do we get teachers to come with ideas like working on their TPACK development? Most of the teachers feel probably that they are stuck in their day to day job; teaching. I believe that there should be a balance between bottom up and top down policy.

Source: http://smiledaily.org/101Volunteer.html

In companys like Google, they give their employees time to work on something (somehow related to their work) they chose themselves. Maybe this could also be a strategy for teachers, to stimulate their willingness to try something new or improve professional development (make it more bottom up). This might be a little bit far-fetched because to start something like that, teachers might need some guidance in the beginning. And of course we need to consider that there are children involved that should not become a victim of experimenting teachers, but I bet we can find a solution for that (peer-feedback before try outs or asking children after school time).

How to make teachers educational artists (creativity)?

As also mentioned in my earlier post and in this post, creativity could greatly influence the quality of education when using the TPACK model. Creativity is however something that cannot be teached. I do believe it can be stimulated though and I think helping teachers to think out of the box would improve working with the TPACK model. The creativity part the model implies should not be underestimated. Although this does not mean that with no creativity, a good TPACK based education cannot be reached (and the other way around).. To help teachers think out of the box they need to experience out of the box. I would like to point to the metaphor witch I used in the post about educational artist.

A tool to support teachers in this out of the box thinking with the TPACK model is maybe something that might be helpful (think about a ‘question card’ that states questions with every element in the TPACK model to help teachers think from a different perspective, used in collaboration with other teachers), but the pitfall of this is that the tool would create a ‘new box’ in which teachers get stuck.

I want to end with a question that came to me when I started to think about the way I tried to interpret the model. I am, whether I like it or not, automatically colored by the society in I live in. I look at TPACK from the Dutch educational system while in Africa and Kuwait people also ‘do TPACK’. Therefore I question: am I, as an educational designer, able to understand TPACK completely without being the real expert in the context of teaching? The actual expert is the teacher. We can’t design without the expertise teachers have and should always use their insights.

References used in text: 

Niess, M. L., Ronau, R. N., Shafer, K. G., Driskell, S. O., Harper S. R., Johnston, C., Browning, C., Özgün-Koca, S. A., & Kersaint, G. (2009). Mathematics teacher TPACK standards and development model. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1), 4-24.