in discussions of learning technologies, you may have heard the acronym
TPCK
or TPACK
TPACK stands for
technological pedagogical
and content knowledge
so to understand what this is we first need to draw a few circles
let's start with
a green circle and call this technology
technology represents technical knowledge so the ability to use software
the ability to use a computer and so forth
there other domains of knowledge as well
like for instance
content knowledge
we'll put a C for content knowledge this includes
if you're a high school language arts teacher, language arts, it includes science
social studies and so forth so what you as a teacher trying to convey to your
students
and also working off Shulman's idea
here's an idea of
pedagogical knowledge as well
so this is how to teach
so for instance though you may be an expert in quantum physics you may not
know how to teach quantum physics
or if you're an expert in Shakespeare you may not know how to teach Shakespeare
similarly
there is a subdomain of knowledge called PCK
which is where pedagogical knowledge of the subject and content knowledge meet
to allow you to effectively teach that specific content knowledge
similarly
the authors of TPACK
propose that there are other subdomains as well like for instance
technological content knowledge area
in which you know the technology and how it relates to your content knowledge so
again if you teach social studies you know how to use technology to support
research in that field
or study that field
similarly
there's technological pedagogical knowledge
in which you know how to use technology to support teaching
now the whole idea of TPACK is to get at something we failed at getting at
learning technologies for many years
that's the central idea here
this is how
all three of these technology pedagogy and content knowledge work together
in very complicated way to support good teaching
now
TPACK has been under some attack
because it does propose to be an entire package or the full view
of technological integration and part of the response that the TPACk authors have
come up with
for defending TPACK
has been to put a dotted
circle around everything
that they say is context
so
if you're in an elementary school for instance
the way TPACK looks will be very different than if you're in higher education
if you were in the corporate sector this would be very different as well
so ultimately though TPACK tries to get at at understanding how these three domains
of knowledge interact with one another in creating sub domains that are
essential to understand
to support
effective technological integration