This paper was presented at the Society for Information Technology in Teachers Education In New Orleans (Louisiana) USA. An international conference held from 25th to 29th March 2013.
TPACK development in teacher design teams: assessing the perceived and observed teachers' knowledge
1. TPACK development in teacher design teams:
Assessing the teachers’ perceived and observed
knowledge
Ayoub Kafyulilo,
Dar es salaam University College of Education,
Petra Fisser and Joke Voogt
University of Twente.
2. Introduction
This study was conducted with the in-service science
teachers in Tanzania.
It adopted design teams as professional development
arrangement to develop teachers’ technology
integration knowledge and skills.
TPACK was used as a framework for describing the
teachers’ knowledge requirements for integrating
technology in science teaching
3. The Intervention
The study comprised of four intervention activities
The workshop
Lesson design in design teams
Lesson implementation in the classroom
Mostly a projector and a laptop were used in teaching
Reflection with peers (peer appraisal)
5. An example of a classroom set up with a projector, laptop
and a projection screen
6. Research questions
What is the in-service science teachers’ perceived
TPACK before and after intervention?
What are the observed in-service science teachers’
TPACK before and after intervention?
7. Participants
The study adopted a case study design
Design teams were study cases
Individual teachers were the units of analysis.
12 in-service science teachers participated in the
study.
The 12 teachers formed three design teams (each
with 4 teachers)
8. Instrument
Six data collection instrument were used in this study
to collect self-reported and observed data.
Self reported data were collected through;
TPACK survey,
Reflection survey,
Focus group discussion and
Interview
Observation data were collected through;
Classroom observation checklist,
Researcher’s logbook
9. TPACK Survey (pre and post-intervention)
The TPACK survey was used before and after the
intervention
The instrument was adopted from Schmidt et al (2009)
and Graham et al (2009) and used a 5 point Likert
scale
The reliability was 0.93 Cronbach’s alpha
10. Observation checklist
The observation checklist was administered before and
during the intervention
The items had a 3 point Likert scale: “No” = absence,
“No/Yes” = partial existence, and “Yes” = presence of
the behavior
Two people rated the observation checklist and the
inter-rater reliability was 0.87 Cohen Kappa.
11. The reflection survey
The reflection survey was administered at the end of
the intervention to assess the teachers’ opinions about
learning technology in design teams
The overall reliability for items related to TPACK was
0.68 Cronbach’s alpha.
12. Researcher’s logbook
The researchers’ logbook was used to maintain a
record of activities and events occurring during the
intervention process.
The researcher’s logbook was used during peer
appraisal, TPACK training and lesson design.
Data collected through the researchers logbook were
important in describing the interventions processes.
13. Teachers’ interview
The interview was administered at the end of the
intervention to asses the effectiveness of design teams
in teachers’ development of TPACK
An example of the interview question was:
What technology integration knowledge and skills did you
develop from design teams?
Four randomly selected interviews out of12 interviewees
were coded by a second person.
The inter-coder reliability was 0.83 Cohen Kappa.
14. Focus group discussion
A focus group discussion was administered at the end
of the intervention
An example of the question asked in FGD was:
How do you evaluate the results of your discussion in design
teams; in terms of the products you made, decisions in the
team, new ideas and innovations
Two randomly selected FGD were coded by a second
person.
The inter-coder reliability was 0.92 Cohen Kappa.
15. Results: Teachers’ perceived TPACK before and after the
intervention
Before intervention, teachers perceived their CK, PK and
PCK as high, and TK, TCK, TPK and TPCK were low.
After intervention, all TPACK components were perceived
high.
A Wilcoxon signed ranks test for two related samples
showed that TK, PK, TCK, TPK and TPACK were significant
at p ≤ 0.01 whereas CK and PCK were significant at p ≤
0.05
Results from the reflection survey showed that teachers’
developed TPACK through their participation in design
teams.
16. Results (Teachers’ observed TPACK)
Findings from teachers observation showed a
significant difference between pre- and post-
intervention results.
Pre-intervention results showed a low teachers’ TK,
TCK, TPK, and TPACK (M < 1.5, SD ≤ 0.17) in a three
points Likert scale
However, in the post-intervention results, all TPACK
components were high (P ≤ 0.05).
17. Conclusions
The triangulation of the findings from self-reported and
observed data showed;
A limited teachers’ TK, TPK, TCK and TPACK before
intervention,
After intervention all the TPACK components were high
In this study, self-reported data comply with the
observed data
This differs from the findings of Alayyar (2011) and
Kafyulilo et al (2011) which showed a difference
between the observed and perceived TPACK
18. Conclusions
Probably this has something to do with
The instrument,
The culture and
The level of the teachers.
Findings from both observed and self-reported data
indicate that teachers’ PK, CK and PCK were high
before and after intervention.
This may suggest that in the context of Tanzania,
technology integration efforts need to focus more on
technology related components of TPACK rather than
the whole TPACK.