Assessing Pre-Service
Science Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) Through
Observations and Lesson Plans
Sadef Canbazoglei ,
S. Selcen Guzey & Havva Yumak
Along to development of
technology, more and more teachers have integrated technology into their
teaching. Recent studies have shown that teachers need to have a good
understanding of how technology can be coordinated with pedagogy and content
knowledge in order to apply technology effectively and efficiently into
classroom instruction (Hughes, 2005; Margerum-Leys and Marx 2000; Niess, 2005;
Zhao, 2003). To understand teachers’ knowledge about educational technology and
the use of these tools in the classroom instruction, Mishra and Koehler
developed Shulman’s framework (1986) pedagogical content knowledge by adding
technology, so it became Technological, Pedagogical, Content Knowledge (TPACK)
TPACK framework is an integration of Technological Knowledge (TK), Pedagogical
Knowledge (PK) and Content Knowledge (CK). TPACK is able to help the teachers
in using technology effectively in their teaching. To investigate teachers’
development of TPACK, several researchers organized TPACK-based courses for
pre-service science teachers of professional development programs for
in-service science teachers and they investigated teachers’ development of
TPACK (e.g Chai, Koh and Tsai, 2010; Graham et al, 2009; harif and Hofer, 2011;
Jaipal and Figg, 2010 and etc). In this study, a science method course was
designed using transformative TPACK model and pre-service teachers’ development
of TPACK was studied over the course through observation and lesson plan data.
Thus, the purpose of this study was to assess the pre-service science teachers
TPACK at the end of semester-long course.
The case study methodology was
used in this study, because it was possible to obtain in-depth knowledge of
subject matter of the study and examine the problems in every aspects (Meriam,
1998) and multiple case study were applied to 27 pre-service science teachers’
TPACK. Each participant’s TPACK was examined first, then the analysis units
were compared to each other.The results showed that the TPACK-focused
ScienceMethods course had an impact on pre-service teachers’ TPACK to varying
degrees. Most importantly, the course helped teachers gain knowledge of
effective usage of educational technology tools. Conclusion, teacher education
programs should provide opportunities to pre-service teachers to develop their
TPACK so that they can effectively integrate technology
into their teaching.
The authors used case study and multi case study in this study. They also used observation and documentation to gather the data. I am wonder why they did not use interview to gather the data because interview can provide the supporting data which are not provided from the previous steps. Don't you think so, Fia?
ReplyDelete