A study of the development of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) in pre-service secondary mathematics teachers

Abstract

The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework is a relatively new construct that offers a useful perspective from which to understand the development of pre-service teachers' abilities in teaching with technology. It is grounded in the understanding that if teachers are to effectively integrate technology into their instruction, they need to integrate their knowledge of content, pedagogy and technology, instead of viewing these components as separate entities. Current efforts to develop TPACK in pre-service teachers have tended to focus on experiences in either a methods course or an educational technology course. It is admittedly difficult to adequately address technology, pedagogy and content in a single college course. Therefore, this study proposes using three courses that are offered in collaboration, a mathematics teaching methods course, a technology-intensive content-rich mathematical modeling course, and a practicum course, to study the development of connections between technology, content and pedagogy. For this multiple case study, TPACK changes in five pre-service teachers were tracked during a period of about 15 weeks. Data were collected using a TPACK survey, teaching philosophy statements, lesson plans, student teaching episodes, and weekly instructor meeting notes. A detailed analysis of the results demonstrates that the development of pre-service teachers' mathematics TPACK is complex, and there are a number of factors that are at play, such as the pre-service teachers' prior experiences with technology, their mathematical backgrounds and their beliefs about the use of technology in mathematics instruction. Assessing the development of TPACK in pre-service teachers is complicated by the fact that the available model for mathematics teachers' TPACK was developed using observations of in-service mathematics teachers.