What the .... is TPACK?

Lately in the world I'm living in the word TPACK has been thrown around a lot. It's an interesting concept detailing the knowledge teachers need in order to become 21st century professionals. For those of you who do not know what TPACK is in this first post about it I will try to explain in my words what is TPACK.

If we look at teachers in classrooms we can see that they need a lot of knowledge to function and that the amount of knowledge they need is always increasing. This calls for help, help for the teachers to understand what they need to know in order to be good teachers. According to Punya Mishra and Mathew J. Koehler teachers need 3 forms of knowledge. First of all, they need to know what they are talking about, teachers need content knowledge (C). Secondly teachers will need to know how to teach it. What pedagogies are most effective and how to apply these in their teaching (P). And in a 21st century environment teachers will need to know about technology. What is out there and how we can use this in order to support the learning of their students (T).

Now note how I've been assigning letters. If one looks carefully these letters are in the word TPACK as well. This is because TPACK aims to not see these three elements separately from each other but rather integrate them. In order for teachers to become good practitioners they require Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK!).

But having this knowledge is not good enough. In order for the types of knowledge to have meaning the knowledge has to be integrated. Technological Knowledge should be linked with Content Knowledge (TCK). Pedagogical Knowledge linked with Technological Knowledge (TPK) and off course Content Knowledge with Pedagogical knowledge (PCK). And in the end they should all come together so a teacher becomes TPACK proficient. Teachers should not only know the separate fields of knowledge but should also know how these different aspects work together in harmony.

All of this does not makes sense however if it is placed out of context. Teachers do not function in ideal situations but rather work in a classroom with ever changing variables such as student demand, parental demand and pressure from governments, boards and other people that think they know better than teachers what they should do.  Therefore the different types of knowledge the teachers have, should always be applicable to their surroundings.

Included here at the bottom is an illustration of how these different elements would look when put into a model. One can see how the different types of knowledge flow together within the context of a situation and how they finally come together to form a TPACK confident teacher. This final step is both the most critical and the hardest and in future posts I will be looking at how we can achieve this.