Exploring primary school teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) in online collaborative discourse: An epistemic network analysis

Abstract

The contextual influences on technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) enactment and the method of TPACK assessment remain to be important research topics. Discourse data of 81 teachers in an online professional learning community were collected and analyzed based on the framework of TPACK. Frequency distribution and time series characteristics of teachers’ knowledge domains were analyzed. In addition, epistemic network analysis was used to compare the epistemic network characteristics of teachers in the higher‐score and the lower‐score groups, different age groups, and post and reply groups. Results showed that teachers’ knowledge domains enacted in the context of online discourse were mainly pedagogical content knowledge and general pedagogical knowledge. The teachers in the higher‐score group had a rich, organized and flexible knowledge structure of TPACK. Younger teachers had more connections between pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, while senior teachers had more connections between technological knowledge and pedagogical knowledge. The teachers in the reply group had more connections among the different categories of knowledge as compared to the post group. Finally, implications, limitations and future research were discussed.

Determining the Technological and Pedagogical Content Knowledge Level of the 4th Grade Teachers on the Unit; Electric in our Life

“…Similar results were found by Roig-Vila, Mengual-Andres, and Quinto-Medrano (2015). In addition, Zhang, Liu, and Cai (2019) found that elementary teachers had lower TPACK levels compared with middle school teachers' TPACK levels. According to the researchers, this difference may be related to teachers' academic performances and professional development performances in teacher education programs.…”

“…Avcı and Ateş (2018) also put strong emphasis on professional development programs to increase teachers' active and effective usage of technology and as a result, increase their TPACK levels. Zhang, Liu, and Cai (2019) stated that elementary teachers rarely use technology in their lessons, especially at lower grades, and they prefer to use storytelling and children's songs in their instruction. In their study, Topçu and Masal (2020) examined mathematics teachers' perceptions and self-evaluation skills about TPACK by considering how and to what extent they use technology in their instruction and found that teachers had the highest score for the PCK sub-dimension and the lowest score for the TK sub-dimension.…”

A technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) sssessment of pre-service EFL teachers learning to teach English as a foreign language

“…TPACK also becomes the focus of a variety of studies. In a study conducted in China by Zhang, Liu, and Cai (2019) on primary school teachers, the results indicated that the teachers engaged in more extensive group collaborations had a rich, organized and flexible knowledge structure of TPACK. In terms of age effects, that study found that younger teachers turned out to be better in terms of pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge, while more experienced teachers scored higher in terms of technological knowledge and pedagogical knowledge.…”

Views of primary Thai teachers toward STREAM education

“…It will be sustainable education, if teachers ready to change their mindset and teaching role by non-focused theory. Classroom environments should challenge students in the way of creatively learning and solvable problem classroom through integration [27], and teachers have to pay their lesson design by incorporating pedagogy to fit with content or pedagogical content knowledge [28][29][30]. However, technology may be referred to communication and tools for creating which need to be discussed by different school practices.…”