TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge)

Technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge— TPACK—refers to the framework developed by Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler to describe the knowledge that teachers need in order to effectively teach with technology. The TPACK framework was developed to respond to two challenges confronting teacher educators. First, there was a systemic push for teachers to integrate technology in ways more consistent with the growth of technology outside of education. Second, there was limited treatment of technology for teachers, beyond generic uses. As Judith B. Harris and her colleagues reported, technology use in classrooms has historically been conceptualized and supported using a predominance of approaches that overemphasize technology and technology skills. These approaches typically include additional technology-focused teacher education courses; professional development workshops; and demonstration resources, lessons, and projects. Taken together, these approaches were labeled by Seymour Papert as technocentric because they begin with technology skills and only later aspire to help discern how these technologies can be used to teach content-based learning at different levels.

The TPACK framework, in contrast, characterizes what teachers need to know about technology by reconnecting technology to both subject-matter knowledge and teachers’ pedagogical understanding. In this way, the TPACK framework builds upon the work of Lee Shulman and the construct of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) that describes how and why teacher knowledge of pedagogy and content cannot be considered solely in isolation. PCK captured a unique type of knowledge that characterizes an interaction between pedagogy and content in order to implement strategies that help students to fully understand content. Similarly, the TPACK framework extends Shulman’s notion of PCK by considering how technology, pedagogy, and content interrelate in order to create a form of knowledge greater than the sum of the three separate knowledge bases. This entry first describes the components of the TPACK framework and discusses the implications of the framework for teacher educators. It then discusses the different conceptual lenses the TPACK framework provides for researchers in the area of teaching with technology.