Now What? (Education and Technology in a Post COVID World)

“The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.”

Sir William Henry Bragg

Mishra and Koehler’s (2006) article on the idea of TPCK was so in-depth that I had dreams about it last week. I’m not kidding. The authors really, really dove into a concept they helped to formalize. Admittedly, it was a long read, but I appreciated the thorough description and also the ideas the writing gave me for thinking about my own research.

The article begins with a quote from Sir William Henry Bragg: “The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them” (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 1017). I appreciated this quote as a frame for thinking about a concept that combined several ideas I was already familiar with: TPCK, or Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge.

The authors (2016) posit that the introduction of technology as a tool in education will change the very foundation of how humans teach and learn. But merely teaching teachers how technology works will not suffice. Instead, those in the business of teaching teachers need to lay new groundwork for preparing them for the future of education….groundwork that “requires a detailed understanding of complex relationships that are contextually bound” (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 1018).

Teaching is far more complicated that merely passing along information to students in a formal setting. The authors are correct in that it is very complex and interwoven with relationship-building, motivational prompting, and creating an atmosphere of engagement with sometimes tedious material. Being a teacher is not for the faint of heart!

The authors (2016) discuss the importance of frameworks and give a broad definition that I definitely plan to tuck away for use in future papers: “Having a framework goes beyond merely identifying problems with current approaches; it offers new ways of looking at and perceiving phenomena and offers information on which to base sound, pragmatic decision making” (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 1019).

The TPCK framework then gives educators a frame for “thinking about technological pedagogical content knowledge and how it informs the debate on what teachers need to know (and how they might develop it)” (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 1019).

The authors then give a very in-depth discussion on the previously-established various forms of teacher knowledge including pedagogical (P), content (C), and a combination of the two: pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) (Mishra & Koehler, 2006).

In my mind, a teacher is hopefully knowledgeable about the content they are teaching and also knowledgeable about standard pedagogical practices…but then again, as a former industry professional, knew my content inside-out, backwards and forwards from working 10+ years in the media trenches. Yet I learned pedagogical techniques by trial-and-error after being thrown into the deep end of a higher education classroom. Now, the idea of understanding how people learn best is at the heart of everything I do.

Anyway, back to TPCK…In the 1980’s, a researcher combined the two ideas of P and CK to emphasis the interconnectedness and intersection of the two forms of knowledge. Later on, scholars would explore the role of technology and how that might intersect with PCK (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 1021).

Generally, educators have tended to view learning technology as an entirely separate undertaking. However, the TPCK framework discussed in this article involves not just the incorporation of technology (T); but rather also seeking the ways it can best be used as a pedagogical (P) tool and also as a tool to best explain and illustrate the various forms of content knowledge (CK). (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 1025). In short, TPCK combines all the above topics and uses an intersection of teacher knowledge of all of them to create new and innovative ways to teach.

The authors go on to explore TPCK as a framework for research, including the concept being a guide for the kinds of questions one could ask when designing a research project on education and teachers’ use of technology in developing curriculum (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 1039). Additionally, the authors developed a survey instrument to use in conjunction with the TPCK concepts. They explain that TPCK is versatile, being a tool that can lend itself to descriptive, inferential, and application studies (Mishra & Koehler, 2006).

This is an idea I will definitely bear in mind as my own research continues.

‘Til next time…

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M.J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for integrating technology in teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.