TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge): Implications for 21st-Century Teacher Education

Teacher education programs have to adapt to ensure that teacher candidates are ready to teach in schools that are continually adding new technology. It is not enough for teacher candidates to know how to use technology for their personal use; it is essential that these future educators reexamine classroom practice to integrate technology into teaching. With the introduction of emerging technologies, the context of learning has changed dramatically, changing how best to prepare educators. This adds to the responsibilities of teacher educators to ensure that teacher candidates are prepared to integrate technology effectively into their teaching.

Margaret Niess argues that unless teacher preparation courses change dramatically, K–12 students will be robbed of a meaningful and productive education. Teacher education preparation programs have an obligation to meet the expectations associated with integrating new technologies, content, and pedagogy. One solution is to blend the components of quality educational practice into a format that allows teacher candidates to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to become effective educators in 21st-century learning spaces. This entry discusses the format called the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) model, developed by Punya Mishra and Matthew Koehler. It first discusses the model and its development. It then discusses how changes in K–12 classrooms are consistent with the TPACK framework and how TPACK can be incorporated into the experience-based model of teacher education.

Mishra and Koehler present a view of how technology integration concepts can be encompassed into the work of teacher education. Their research led them to propose a new framework for technology integration that recognizes the complexity of merging a number of skills and expectations into a manageable approach for teacher educators. Their work extends Lee Shulman’s earlier work that blends content and pedagogy knowledge and adds the complexity of integrating technology into content and pedagogy. They argue against the view that technology is an integral component in both content and pedagogy. They promote the view that there is an interrelationship of content, pedagogy, and technology. In their TPACK model, the three are interrelated and dependent upon each other (see Figure 1). While each area is a [Page 786]stand-alone content area, they contended that the strength of the idea lies in the flow of emphasis within the instructional option or, to use their term, contexts.

Figure 1 Components of the TPACK framework

Source: Reproduced by permission of the publisher, © 2012 by tpack.org.

Recognizing the merits of the individual areas of study, the emphasis of this model is how each component contributes to the others. The expectation is that when faculty members possess all the types of knowledge, for example, technological, pedagogical, and content, or combinations of the three, their means to addressing teacher education demands could become more dynamic and flexible.