Spinning a Tale of Two TPACKs

I remember the giant, “Aha,” moment that I experienced when I first heard the TPACK framework discussed.  Many months ago I spent some time effusively discussing the power of the TPACK framework and my concerns about how to develop TPACK.  I’ve read a few papers on the subject, heard and enjoyed Judi Harris’ and Mark Hoffer’s talk at ISTE, and have visited the TPACK wiki.  I am most definitely a devotee of the framework.  It has continued to influence my thinking about how to guide educators to employ more effective teaching strategies in the classroom and how technology can help make that happen.

Despite my enthusiasm for the TPACK framework, it has at times been a struggle for me to truly use it as a guide because of some niggling tensions.  One tension relates to the problem of just how complex TPACK is, but that concern is for another post.  In this post I want to discuss a suggestion for the framework based on a need I’ve felt for a little more structure.

Act I:  A Tale of Two TPACKS

First I want to spin a tale of two TPACKs.  If you’re bothering reading this post, you probably know what TPACK is, so I won’t recap that story.  That tale has been told and told well by Koehler and Mishra.  Check out the TPACK wiki for more info.

Here’s how the second tale begins.  Recently I wondered whether there were interesting parallels between educators and other disciplines.  I considered scientists first.   One way to characterize the role of a scientist is that they add to our collective understanding of the world through an evidence-based approach to discovery.  What forms of knowledge are necessary for effectively fulfilling that role in society?

Science TPACK

Maybe this is wholly ridiculous (in which case it would be a dead-end as a plot twist), but I think that essentially scientists have their own form of TPACK.  Scientists have content knowledge (CK)  – from their field of study, they have technological knowledge (TK) – of what tools are available for conducting science and how to use them, and they have instead of pedagogical knowledge, process knowledge, (PK) – knowledge about how to effectively conduct each stage of scientific inquiry.

Below is a table that compares the two forms of TPACKs.  I didn’t outline the three middle levels of complexity TPK, PCK, and TCK mostly because I’m lazy, but I think it works.  Just as an example, at the intersection of process knowledge and technological knowledge, the scientist would need to know what tools are appropriate at each stage of the process of inquiry.

So I think there are some interesting parallels, but this is just the beginning of the story.  On to Act II…

Act II:  Providing Structure to Our Tale

There are two things that really struck me about the above comparison.

1. It is fairly easy to define the process that a scientist goes through, but not so easy to define for a teacher: Sure there are people like Feyeraband who would tell you that there is no clear process for scientists and that any attempt to define a process only constrains scientists. Sure the “scientific method” is not rigidly adhered to.  But basically it serves as a good guide for the scientific process.  If you wonder what the process is for an educator who is trying to sculpt a learning experience, it is a little bit more difficult to define the process.  There is no clear agreement, but there are lots of overlapping similarities.  I think this is okay because the scientific method has similar variations in its construction.  However, I think it is interesting that if you search learning model or learning process on the internet you get dozens of different definitions, and few are process oriented, whereas if you do the same for the scientific method, the guidelines are fairly uniform.  I think this will have to be a topic for another post.
2. The Structure of the Process is important. It is what defines the types of knowledge that are important.  This is what I want to elaborate on below.
   

The TPACK framework is outlining the types of knowledge that you would need in order to be an effective practitioner in education.  The Science TPACK outlines the types of knowledge that you would need in order to be an effective practitioner of science.  Now you might say that knowledge about the process, structure of each, would be nested in the pedagogy/process sphere described above.  For example, knowing the scientific method would be a fact that is nested within the Process Knowledge circle and knowing the process of learning/teaching would be nested within the Pedagogical Knowledge circle.  But I want to make an argument that the process should be outside of that sphere.  Here’s why in brief.

The process that you go through as a scientist or an educator defines your role and your daily practice.  It is something that guides your entire endeavor.  Separate from that process is knowledge how to perform each aspect of your process well and effectively, knowledge when that stage of the process is appropriate, etc.  So I would argue that the actual process itself is outside of TPACK, and knowledge of how to effectively perform each stage, when it might make sense to vary the process is what resides in the PK circle.  The PK represents the knowledge that you will constantly be balancing and negotiating with the context, the current content, and the technology.  The general structure is not negotiated because it is foundational to your role.  You may find that after a “Check for Understanding” you need to provide more “Input,” so the process may not be strictly linear, but the elements of the process and the general order is fairly firm.  Below are diagrams of what I’m talking about, but as I mentioned previously the process for educators isn’t as proscribed as it is for scientists.  There is no “Educational Method” that is as universal as the “Scientific Method.”  So I used the lesson planning steps outlined by Marzano in What Works In the Classroom.

So I would describe the diagrams below as saying this:

Just as in science there is a methodology for inquiry, their is a methodology/process for teaching.  What informs that daily practice or implementation of that process is TPACK.

Okay, that’s my two cents.  I don’t know whether there is any real import to what I am saying here. What I think extracting the process from the center of the PK bubble would help me resolve is resolving some of the complexity.

I think what ends up worrying me the most at the end of this post is that the “way to teach” isn’t clearly defined.  Maybe teaching and learning is just too complicated, maybe there are two many variables like social interaction, motivation, context, etc., but perhaps we can agree on a general structure/process as a foundation.

TPACK for Educators

 

TPACK for Scientists

 

 

TPACK & Learning by Design, my thoughts

In my last post I gushed about a framework for teacher knowledge that I believe is quite powerful, TPACK.  When I first learned of TPACK, I felt like a light went on.  Since I work in an edtech dept. for a school district, I quickly shared the framework with my colleagues.  Ever since, when I have planned professional development I have considered the framework the guiding principle.

Along with the TPACK framework, Mishra and Koehler proposed a strategy for developing TPACK called Learning by Design.  Here’s how I understand the strategy:  In order for teachers to develop TPACK, they should learn about technology in the context of solving a pedagogical problem.  For example, a small group of teachers might be asked to develop a learning experience for students to teach about the evidence for global warming.  In the process of designing this instruction, the teachers would consider what pedagogical strategies might help students to understand this evidence and what technology tools might help make this possible, easier, etc.

I think in general this strategy makes sense.  We want teachers to be instructional designers and consider technology use not because it would be “so cool” but because it is a natural fit.  If that’s what we want as an endpoint, why not start there?  … But I have reservations.  My thoughts on this strategy are shaped by my experiences as a student at SDSU and as a professional developer in a school district.

In my COMET masters classes at SDSU, learning by design is precisely the approach our professors are using to teach us about how technology can be used for instruction.  We are given a problem.  For example, create an educational video on the topic of your choosing.  The tool we use is completely open.  The video can be filmed, animated…be created in Flash, iMovie, Final Cut, Adobe Premier, etc.  If we don’t know the technology tool that will help us realize our vision, we learn it.  I think learning by design works in this situation very well.  But the reason it has worked in the SDSU classes is because the students are already at least fairly tech savvy, are motivated learners, and chose to participate in the program voluntarily.  We are ready and willing!

As a professional developer who develops pd for teachers who range from technology pros to complete newbies, I haven’t been convinced that learning by design would work as well in our district.  Here’s why:  I’ve worked for the past three years with a grant called ESETT.  ESETT’s goal is to help middle school science teacher integrate technology into their curriculum.  What we have found throughout the implementation of this grant (that has a heavy emphasis on professional development) is that in the first year of implementation, the teachers focus on learning the tools and dabble with finding ways to use it in the classroom.  In the second year, the teachers are at the point where they are using technology more frequently with students and feel more competent  In the third year, teachers can easily make choices about technology and explain why the tool is helpful in a particular situation.  Hence, it isn’t until the third year that most teachers develop robust TPACK.  It takes time.  It is only after teachers know what tools are available, have a rough idea of what the tools can do, and begin to feel comfortable with using technology in a supportive environment that teachers have developed TPACK.

In fact, when we begin to work with new teachers, we tend to tell them not to worry about the technology.  We encourage them to let us, as resource teachers, be the technology experts in the beginning.  Their job is to decide about the content and pedagogy and we help them find a good technology fit.  Once we help them plan, then we support them (if they want us too) by being in the classroom when they first use the new technology.  Now I don’t think this amount of support is always possible, but I do think that although the ultimate in professional development would be to develop grade-level/content area Professional Learning Communities that work together to design instruction while considering technology, pedagogy, and content, I think that getting to that point will generally require a bit of scaffolding.

Another strategy we have tried with our newest group of teachers in order to try to accelerate the development of TPACK is to have their first professional development experience be about seeing the technology work from the student perspective.  We created a Moodle course with a number of learning tasks (focused on our outcomes for the PD – i.e. developing an idea about how a classroom would be different with technology).  Each learning task had the teachers using some of the tools that they would have available to them once they are planning instruction.  For example, we showed them the basics of Inspiration so that they could brainstorm how the classroom would be different with technology and had them upload their work to Moodle as a student would.  Also, we had them synthesize their thinking in a ComicLife at the end of the day.  This way teachers learned using the tools that they would expect others to learn from.  This strategy helped them see how all of the tools can fit together in daily instruction, and there were many discussions toward the end of the day where teachers saw some natural fits with their curriculum for some of the tools and we began to help them plan those learning activities.

To sum up, I think generally there will need to be some kind of scaffolding before teachers will be comfortable learning using the Learning by Design approach.  Anyway, this is extraordinarily long for a post, so I had better stop writing, but thank you if you’ve been patient and read this far!

Innovation in Education & TPACK

What is innovation?  It’s not just about change, and I don’t think it’s just about things being better.  I think innovation is a new idea or invention that makes us wonder how we ever did things before.  It can’t be just that it is better.  It has to be soooo much better that we can’t imagine a world without that invention anymore.   For example, Windows Vista might be better than Windows XP Professional…ok, just kidding.  Bad example.  For example take 2, the Leopard OS may be better than Tiger, but the difference isn’t so great that we think, “Dang, I don’t know how I managed with 10.4!” Leopard is not an innovation even though it’s better.

But some ideas and inventions are, in fact, innovations and are such that you think, “Wow, how did I ever manage?”  Take Internet search engines and all of the ever-growing content on the web.  Who did we ask pre-Google?  What did we do when we needed to figure out how to get somewhere before mapquest and Google maps?  Having vast amounts of information stored on the web in such a way that anyone with a computer and connection can query this massive database is radical and has made our life so much easier/more fair/etc.

from Open Learning at BYU

Now in education there is always change.  Every year there is a new curriculum or a new strategy that we try only to abandon it next year or a few years down the line in exchange for another “New” idea.  There are very few ideas or strategies that can truly be called innovation.  One recent idea, in my humble opinion, is a true innovation, and it has to do with teacher knowledge and how we develop that knowledge in teachers.

TPACK, or Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (if you prefer the mouthful version), is just that innovation just as it’s predecessor PCK, or Pedagogical Content Knowledge, was before it.

If you don’t know the story of TPACK, here’s a quick synopsis.  It used to be that when teachers learned how to teach they would take their content classes and then take general pedagogical classes, and they were separate.  Then this guy named Shulmann came along in the ’80s and proposed PCK.  His point was something like this:

Sure teachers need to know how to teach in a general sort of way, but if they teach science, then there are particular pedagogical concerns that are different than if you teach math.  The way you learn how to solve quadratic equations may be different than understanding ecosystems, and most likely the way you teach it is different too.

Out of this idea methods classes were born in teacher education classes.

Ever since personal computers and internet access has become a dominant force in our culture and in teaching, technology classes have been a part of teacher education programs as well.  However, they are generally separate in the way that content and pedagogy were taught separately pre-Shulmann.

TPCK from tpack.org

Recently Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler have preposed that Technology should not be taught in isolation in teacher education because the way that you use technology will be particular to your content and your pedagogical focus.  When taught in isolation, technology generally focuses on the skills of using technology.  For example, a teacher will go to a workshop and learn how to use PowerPoint or Moodle.  This workshop will teach what each menu does, what icons mean, and how to create something using those tools.  The focus is not on how to use it to teach within a content area.  This is the revolution that Mishra and Koehler are proposing (as I understand it).

Why is this a tremendous innovation?  Because it should revolutionize professional development in the use of technology.  We should no longer focus on the tools because they are just that…tools!  We need to focus more on what those tools can create and how we can use them to make amazing things happen in education.

Now as much as I think that TPACK is a truly innovative idea/framework, I’m not sold that the Learning by Design strategy for professional development is as innovative or effective, but since this blog post is already far too long, the reasons for that opinion will have to wait to be shared until next time…