1. The process of designing a lesson based on TPACK
1.1. PK (inquiry learning) as a starting point for designing
In this post I want to reflect on working with the TPACK model in practice. Together with two teammates I designed a lesson based on TPACK. As a starting point for designing, our group got inquiry learning. So, our starting point was in the Pedagogical Knowledge-circle (PK).
First of all, we looked at the concept of inquiry learning and looked for a model with several steps of the inquiry learning process:
- Knowledge attack;
- Ask questions;
- Create hypothesis;
- Gather information;
- Construct new knowledge;
- Report;
- Integration of knowledge.
Along with this model we thought about the learning activities for the learners as well as the activities for the teachers during inquiry learning.
1.2. Defining the context
After defining this pedagogical approach as a starting point we had to move on to a second circle of the TPACK model. But it appeared to be very difficult to move on without a clear understanding of the context in which this inquiry learning will take place. Therefore we first decided that we wanted to chose for secondary school education and for students in the age of 13-14 years. We chose a class size of about 20 students . We chose secondary education, because of the age of the children and the different subjects that are given to this students. We also decided that we wanted to design a lesson for geography.
A question to consider was in which dept we had to specify the context? We chose to be quite specific, but wouldn’t it be better to be more general so the lesson we designed can be given on other schools than the one who fits perfectly to our context? When you make choices as using blackboard, the school has to be familiar with this kind of technology because otherwise this lesson cannot or would not be given. I think this could be a hindering factor for designers of more general lesson material. It is progressive to design lesson with the integration of technology like computers, video (beamer/interactive whiteboard), blackboard. But a lot of schools do not (yet?) have this new technologies (enough computers/whiteboards etc). I think that it is very difficult to take that into account when you want to design lesson material with TPACK (so with the use of certain technology). As pictured in the framework, the context encloses everything and therefore influences the TPACK elements. But what if you want to design a lesson for a more general context?
1.3. Which content are we going to teach?
The second circle we wanted to define is the content knowledge-circle (CK). First we chose a subject that seemed suitable for inquiry learning. It became geography, because of the possibilities for inquiry of different topics within the subject. Choosing a specific topic for our lesson was harder to do. First we had to think of different possibilities, so we looked on the Internet for geography topics. One of the topics within geography we found was “Tsunami”. We thought this was an interesting topic for inquiry learning, because the tsunami of 2004 is well-known an lots of information is available about this topic. Besides that different questions can be investigated.
After deciding which content we are going to teach, we defined the overlapping circle of PK and CK: PCK. This helped us to get a clear vision of the activities of the inquiry lesson about Tsunamis. Which we wrote down in a table (with steps of inquiry learning and corresponding actions/activities)
1.4. Which kinds of technologies are suitable for our lesson?
So the context, PK, CK and PCK are clear. Time to move on to the next circle, technological knowledge (TK). In this phase the technology that we wanted to use for our inquiry lesson about tsunamis had to be defined. It became clear to us that it was easier to think about PTK and CTK first, so the connection between technology and content/pedagogy is clear. After all, the linkage between the circle is most important.
So, how do we want them to investigate about the topic? Tsunami is a topic which has been widely in the news. That’s why we choose to do something with Internet search on this topic. So the students can look for information on the Internet, using a computer. In order to stimulate prior knowledge and to motivate the students to inquire something about tsunamis a video of the tsunami of 2004 is shown. Therefore a video that is downloaded from the Internet (e.g. YouTube) is needed. Furthermore there are several other kinds of technology that we wanted to use in our lesson. These are more related to support the whole inquiry learning process. Therefore a Blackboard environment will be used to provide students with an online workspace and the teacher can easily post information/announcements etc. For the students to present their findings we thought a PowerPoint presentation would be suitable, so that’s again another kind of technology that is going to be used during the lesson. To divide the technologies under these two circles was hard. We decided to see the Internet search and the video as a mean to support the content: TCK. The other technologies (blackboard, email, PowerPoint) were more for supporting the learning process of inquiry and are not directly linked to the content. So we chose to elaborate these in combination with inquiry learning under PTK. But the Youtube video isn’t only for visualizing the content but also for stimulating prior knowledge, and internet search is a way to inquire about the topic. So, by doing this I realized that technology indeed can have a different function, one is more for pedagogical support and the other more as a way to teach the content , but that this function can also be two-dimensional. Before working with TPACK myself, this distinction was less clear. When we thought of technologies in the lectures I didn’t had this distinction in mind. But when we wanted to describe TPK and TCK this became clear.
After defining TCK and TPK we thought of the circle of TK. This appeared to be more of a summary of the kinds of technologies we used an the knowledge about how the technology works.
When we were making the presentation, we saw that the sequence in the report is TK, TPK, TCK. Actually the thinking process started from TPK to TCK and at last TK.
1.5. Moving on to TPACK
When all these circles are filled in. At last, TPACK can be described. This was a difficult last step, how can you describe TPACK? Is it a adding up of all the elements that are described before, or does it really is a new ‘competence’? We chose to define TPACK as all the knowledge that is needed to give the lesson. Therefore we made a table which consists of the steps of inquiry learning, the actions that follow these steps and the teachers knowledge about these steps and actions. In the table below you see how step one: knowledge attack is elaborated. In our case TPACK in the form of this table is sort of a summary.
1.6. Thinking of implementation and support
This assignment did not stop after designing the lesson, we had to think about how to implement it as well. Therefore we thought it would be nice if we would describe the spider web of Van den Akker for our lesson. The spider web consist of ten elements which are all related to curriculum. By describing all these ten elements we think we gave a clear vision of the rationale and arrangements our lesson needs. Next to this description, the complete lesson plan is written out. Giving activities of the teachers and the time that has to be spend on this activity. When we were busy writing this lesson plan, we thought of the way we could best describe the plan. We chose to do this specific, but not all written out in direct instructional text. An example of the way we described the lesson plan is described below:
1.1. PK (inquiry learning) as a starting point for designing
In this post I want to reflect on working with the TPACK model in practice. Together with two teammates I designed a lesson based on TPACK. As a starting point for designing, our group got inquiry learning. So, our starting point was in the Pedagogical Knowledge-circle (PK).
First of all, we looked at the concept of inquiry learning and looked for a model with several steps of the inquiry learning process:
- Knowledge attack;
- Ask questions;
- Create hypothesis;
- Gather information;
- Construct new knowledge;
- Report;
- Integration of knowledge.
Along with this model we thought about the learning activities for the learners as well as the activities for the teachers during inquiry learning.
1.2. Defining the context
After defining this pedagogical approach as a starting point we had to move on to a second circle of the TPACK model. But it appeared to be very difficult to move on without a clear understanding of the context in which this inquiry learning will take place. Therefore we first decided that we wanted to chose for secondary school education and for students in the age of 13-14 years. We chose a class size of about 20 students . We chose secondary education, because of the age of the children and the different subjects that are given to this students. We also decided that we wanted to design a lesson for geography.
A question to consider was in which dept we had to specify the context? We chose to be quite specific, but wouldn’t it be better to be more general so the lesson we designed can be given on other schools than the one who fits perfectly to our context? When you make choices as using blackboard, the school has to be familiar with this kind of technology because otherwise this lesson cannot or would not be given. I think this could be a hindering factor for designers of more general lesson material. It is progressive to design lesson with the integration of technology like computers, video (beamer/interactive whiteboard), blackboard. But a lot of schools do not (yet?) have this new technologies (enough computers/whiteboards etc). I think that it is very difficult to take that into account when you want to design lesson material with TPACK (so with the use of certain technology). As pictured in the framework, the context encloses everything and therefore influences the TPACK elements. But what if you want to design a lesson for a more general context?
1.3. Which content are we going to teach?
The second circle we wanted to define is the content knowledge-circle (CK). First we chose a subject that seemed suitable for inquiry learning. It became geography, because of the possibilities for inquiry of different topics within the subject. Choosing a specific topic for our lesson was harder to do. First we had to think of different possibilities, so we looked on the Internet for geography topics. One of the topics within geography we found was “Tsunami”. We thought this was an interesting topic for inquiry learning, because the tsunami of 2004 is well-known an lots of information is available about this topic. Besides that different questions can be investigated.
After deciding which content we are going to teach, we defined the overlapping circle of PK and CK: PCK. This helped us to get a clear vision of the activities of the inquiry lesson about Tsunamis. Which we wrote down in a table (with steps of inquiry learning and corresponding actions/activities)
1.4. Which kinds of technologies are suitable for our lesson?
So the context, PK, CK and PCK are clear. Time to move on to the next circle, technological knowledge (TK). In this phase the technology that we wanted to use for our inquiry lesson about tsunamis had to be defined. It became clear to us that it was easier to think about PTK and CTK first, so the connection between technology and content/pedagogy is clear. After all, the linkage between the circle is most important.
So, how do we want them to investigate about the topic? Tsunami is a topic which has been widely in the news. That’s why we choose to do something with Internet search on this topic. So the students can look for information on the Internet, using a computer. In order to stimulate prior knowledge and to motivate the students to inquire something about tsunamis a video of the tsunami of 2004 is shown. Therefore a video that is downloaded from the Internet (e.g. YouTube) is needed. Furthermore there are several other kinds of technology that we wanted to use in our lesson. These are more related to support the whole inquiry learning process. Therefore a Blackboard environment will be used to provide students with an online workspace and the teacher can easily post information/announcements etc. For the students to present their findings we thought a PowerPoint presentation would be suitable, so that’s again another kind of technology that is going to be used during the lesson. To divide the technologies under these two circles was hard. We decided to see the Internet search and the video as a mean to support the content: TCK. The other technologies (blackboard, email, PowerPoint) were more for supporting the learning process of inquiry and are not directly linked to the content. So we chose to elaborate these in combination with inquiry learning under PTK. But the Youtube video isn’t only for visualizing the content but also for stimulating prior knowledge, and internet search is a way to inquire about the topic. So, by doing this I realized that technology indeed can have a different function, one is more for pedagogical support and the other more as a way to teach the content , but that this function can also be two-dimensional. Before working with TPACK myself, this distinction was less clear. When we thought of technologies in the lectures I didn’t had this distinction in mind. But when we wanted to describe TPK and TCK this became clear.
After defining TCK and TPK we thought of the circle of TK. This appeared to be more of a summary of the kinds of technologies we used an the knowledge about how the technology works.
When we were making the presentation, we saw that the sequence in the report is TK, TPK, TCK. Actually the thinking process started from TPK to TCK and at last TK.
1.5. Moving on to TPACK
When all these circles are filled in. At last, TPACK can be described. This was a difficult last step, how can you describe TPACK? Is it a adding up of all the elements that are described before, or does it really is a new ‘competence’? We chose to define TPACK as all the knowledge that is needed to give the lesson. Therefore we made a table which consists of the steps of inquiry learning, the actions that follow these steps and the teachers knowledge about these steps and actions. In the table below you see how step one: knowledge attack is elaborated. In our case TPACK in the form of this table is sort of a summary.
1.6. Thinking of implementation and support
This assignment did not stop after designing the lesson, we had to think about how to implement it as well. Therefore we thought it would be nice if we would describe the spider web of Van den Akker for our lesson. The spider web consist of ten elements which are all related to curriculum. By describing all these ten elements we think we gave a clear vision of the rationale and arrangements our lesson needs. Next to this description, the complete lesson plan is written out. Giving activities of the teachers and the time that has to be spend on this activity. When we were busy writing this lesson plan, we thought of the way we could best describe the plan. We chose to do this specific, but not all written out in direct instructional text. An example of the way we described the lesson plan is described below:
- Ask the learners to think of (sub)questions and to write them down on one side of the paper they got.
- While the learners are busy write down the names of the groups, so you can make groups on blackboard etc..
Besides that we thought of hindering and stimulating factors for implementation, and came up with some stimulating ideas to support implementation.
After that another important issue for a successful implementation is the support that is given to the teacher. Therefore we thought of a one-shot-workshop with follow up support. By thinking about the way we wanted to support our teachers I learned to think about factors as costs/time/availability etc. Even we could choose our own context, we chose to think in ‘real life terms’ for money and time and not to idealistic. Therefore the workshop and follow up support we chosen seemed suitable and cost efficient.
What seemed hard in thinking of support is taking into account the factors that Natalie Pareja mentioned in her lecture, the factors to consider. Like, time, costs, etc. It is very appealing to think of a idealistic world, because we had the freedom to make up our own context. But we wanted to stay close to a realistic world and therefore these factors are very important. To make choices based on these key factors, the support is much harder to design. The costs for the workshop and the follow-up are not very high (1800 euro), but it’s a lot of money for a school. Time is always a difficult aspect for teachers. They don’t have much time for activities next to the classroom practice. This workshop and the follow-up take up about 10 hours spread over 1 month, it’s important that the school provides that time. Lastly commitment and ownership from the teachers might be difficult if participating is obligated. We decided to make it obligated though, because otherwise the school might spend a lot of money on the project, while only a few teachers decide to participate. As mentioned before to get teachers motivated even though it’s obligated it is important that the school leader is supportive (time, costs, but also vision).
After that another important issue for a successful implementation is the support that is given to the teacher. Therefore we thought of a one-shot-workshop with follow up support. By thinking about the way we wanted to support our teachers I learned to think about factors as costs/time/availability etc. Even we could choose our own context, we chose to think in ‘real life terms’ for money and time and not to idealistic. Therefore the workshop and follow up support we chosen seemed suitable and cost efficient.
What seemed hard in thinking of support is taking into account the factors that Natalie Pareja mentioned in her lecture, the factors to consider. Like, time, costs, etc. It is very appealing to think of a idealistic world, because we had the freedom to make up our own context. But we wanted to stay close to a realistic world and therefore these factors are very important. To make choices based on these key factors, the support is much harder to design. The costs for the workshop and the follow-up are not very high (1800 euro), but it’s a lot of money for a school. Time is always a difficult aspect for teachers. They don’t have much time for activities next to the classroom practice. This workshop and the follow-up take up about 10 hours spread over 1 month, it’s important that the school provides that time. Lastly commitment and ownership from the teachers might be difficult if participating is obligated. We decided to make it obligated though, because otherwise the school might spend a lot of money on the project, while only a few teachers decide to participate. As mentioned before to get teachers motivated even though it’s obligated it is important that the school leader is supportive (time, costs, but also vision).
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