Exploring teachers’ use of TPACK in design talk: The collaborative design of technology-rich early literacy activities (A summary)

This paper entitled Exploring teachers’ use of TPACK in design talk: The collaborative design of technology-rich early literacy activities written by Ferry Boschman (Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands), Susan Mckenney (University of Twente), and Joke Voogt (University of Amsterdam). This paper is published in Elsevier journal under computers and education category. Published in December 2014.

This research studied how one group of teachers create technology-rich lesson modules, within designing content and activities for early learning environment what so called as PictoPal. PictoPal contains on-computer and off-computer activities, such as online and offline Clicker. Lanksheaar and Knobel (2003) showed that technology mainly applied in these sectors, coding/decoding and vocabulary. They mentioned that the use of technology for a productive purpose is severely lacking. The research finds out about the nature of design talk when it is a collaboration between rich-technology design and literacy activities.

TPACK framework is used in the context of PictoPal in seven areas. First is in PK whereas knowledge about kindergarten teaching and learning as well as the socio-emotional development of kindergarteners. Second, CK that relates to early literacy concepts, such as phonological awareness and vocabulary building. Third, PCK that relates to the implementation of general instructional strategies in teaching and developing literacy. Fourth, TK relates to the general knowledge of technology itself and TCK relates to knowledge about how to operate PictoPal. The last TPCK that relates to the affordances of PictoPal to teach specific early literacy content.

Boschman, McKenney, and Voogt (2014) mentioned that there are three factors influencing people in designing and providing reasons.  Those are first external priorities, practical concerns, and existing orientation. The study of the paper has four levels of inquiry, namely no collaborative inquiry, shadow inquiry by sharing knowledge and information, deep inquiry for analyzing and synthesizing information, and planning.

The aims of the study were to find a correlation between integrated knowledge. There are some questions related to the paper, such as what is the nature of the design talk that emerges when teachers collaboratively design technology-rich I contact PictoPal?. The subquestions of the study are to find out the TPACK domains that represent in design talk of teacher team (1), the link between TPACK to explicit design reasoning (2), and depth inquiry relates to TPACK (3).
The participants of the study were teachers from three school districts who teach in kindergartens. There was a preliminary meeting to give a description of the research and there were six teachers agreed to participate in the research plus one teacher-coordinator. The teachers were in the age around 58 years old and had teaching experience about 30 years.
The research was designed by using existing PictoPal structure, the design on and off-computer activities. There was also three classrooms involved. The process was devided into three workshops which lenght 50 minutes each. The first focused on creating a draft for on and off learning activities. Then second and third were installed PictoPal and learn how students and teachers experienced by using PictoPal. The data was collected through videotaping and make a transcript.
The research found out that there are four possibilities of TPACK in the first workshop: TK, CK, PCK, and TPCK; PCK in the second workshop; and TPCK in the third workshop. It was found that TPCK and PCK rose in workshop two but then declined in workshop 3. Combination of PCK and TPCK make up the main body of code in the three workshops. In workshop 1, it was distributed evenly (PC:TPC:3:3), emphasized PCK in workshop 2 (10:4), and TPC on workshop 3 (2:7).
Related to how depth the inquiry in design talk relates to TPACK, the first workshop showed shallow inquiry, teachers shared their ideas and viewpoints, also little constructive conflict. On the second workshop which was aimed at share to analyze. It showed about teachers own belief, technology, and teaching and learning early literacy by integrating PCK with T to form TPCK. In the third workshop, was about analyzing external priorities and it showed that external priority was being outweighed by rationale.
In my view, the findings from this research are useful and practically implemented in collaborative design because many possibilities will arise during the process, such as stress, complexity, and productivity. A facilitator can give support through procedural support, to support teachers to act productively during the workshop sessions. Teachers who engage in such activties will develop their skills in experimenting, reflecting, collaborating, problem-solving and analysis (Vermunt and Endedijk, 2011).  Design talk reflects to TPACK development and occurs in and through various level of inquiry.