TPACK in 3 Minutes

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