Differentiating TPACK-based Learning Materials for Preservice and Inservice Teachers

Teacher educators have long noted differences between preservice and inservice teachers’ knowledge, practice, and professional learning. A small number of studies have compared novice and experienced teachers’ technology integration knowledge, attitudes, and intentions, with mixed results. Most TPACK research has examined preservice and inservice teachers separately. How should TPACK development be differentiated for preservice and inservice teachers? We sought experienced teachers’ perceptions and recommendations about how an online short course that was developed for novice teachers should be changed so that it can facilitate experienced teachers’ professional learning. Data generated and analyzed were focus group interviews, demographics, and written suggestions for changes to the short course’s modules. The participating teachers’ animated and detailed recommendations highlighted the need for differentiated content, sequencing, illustrations of practice, and engagement techniques. Designing well-integrated, curriculum-based learning experiences that leverage digital tools and resources can be a challenge for both novice and experienced teachers. The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK/TPACK) framework suggests that effective technology integration requires teachers to draw on multiple domains of knowledge and their intersections in practice (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). Abundant scholarship has been generated in the twelve years since the framework’s introduction that helps us better understand how this knowledge develops and is enacted in classroom teaching. While this literature base is broad and varied, there is considerably more work within it that explores approaches to help preservice teachers to develop their TPACK than inservice teachers. Teacher educators have published and shared textbooks, case studies, learning activities, and a range of curricular materials to help novice teachers develop their TPACK. Comparatively fewer resources have been developed and shared for experienced teachers. How, if at all, should TPACK development approaches be differentiated for preservice and inservice teachers? How might the materials designed for novice teachers be modified to meet the needs of experienced teachers? Comparing Technology Integration Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices To answer these questions, it is necessary to understand the nature of preservice and inservice teachers’ technology integration knowledge, including their TPACK, and the ways in which that knowledge is applied in the classroom. If preservice and inservice teachers’ knowledge and practice are more similar than different, then similar professional learning materials and approaches might be used effectively with both groups. To whatever extent they are different, however, the ways in which the development and enacting of preservice and inservice teachers’ TPACK should diverge. While considerable research has analyzed preservice and inservice teachers’ TPACK during the past dozen years, it has done so primarily separately (Dong, Chai, Sang, Koh, & Tsai, 2015). In a rare comparison study, Dong and colleagues found preservice teachers in China to be less knowledgeable and confident in all aspects of their TPACK (and also their beliefs about instructional design and constructivism) than inservice teachers, based upon factor analyses and structural equation modeling of their survey responses. These results follow a pattern that is similar to an early synthesis of research about preservice and inservice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Novice and experienced teachers’ PCK was found to be different only (and markedly) in degree of development and assimilation. Novice teachers’ PCK expanded and became less segmented over time and with increasing teaching experience (Cochran, King & DeRuiter, 1991). In contrast, however, several studies reported significantly different attitudes toward technology integration, with preservice teachers reporting more positive perceptions and expectations, and more confidence in their abilities to integrate technology effectively than inservice teachers (Russell, Bebell, O'Dwyer, & O'Connor, 2003; Spaulding, 2010; Thomas & O’Bannon, 2015). How are these self-perceptions operationalized in practice? Interestingly, other research has discovered that despite differences in attitudes toward technology integration, experienced teachers tend to integrate a larger variety of educational technologies into their teaching; they do so more often than novice teachers (Wetzel, Zambo & Ryan, 2007); and they make better-quality instructional decisions about technology integration overall (Palacio-Cayetano, Schmier, Dexter, & Stevens, 2002). Inservice teachers’ greater expertise, formed during more years of classroom experience, and probably PCK-based, is said to explain these implementation differences. What is the nature of those differences? In analyzing and evaluating preservice and inservice teachers’ independent responses to video-based cases that tested the teachers’ technology integration knowledge and instructional choices, Greenhow, Dexter and Hughes (2008) found that the two groups performed similarly when making decisions regarding educational technology use. However, inservice teachers outperformed preservice teachers in the depth, breadth, and specificity of their practical, contextual, and pedagogical content knowledge. The authors characterized these differences by saying: . the rationales upon which preservice teachers based their instructional decisions were more superficial, uncritical, and relied largely on consideration of students and [the] classroom-related facts of the case, compared to inservice teachers' responses, which were more detailed, better elaborated, more interpretive, and critical of the school context. The rationales upon which inservice teachers based their decisions also mentioned a wider range of classroom, school, and district-level factors as influential. (p. 21) As Greenhow, et al. (2008) recommended while discussing possible implications for practice discerned from their comparison of preservice and inservice teachers’ applied TPACK, there is ". a need for teacher educators to teach planning and decision-making, especially emphasizing the importance of identifying and weighing options and articulating a well-justified instructional plan" (p. 22) that integrates the curriculum-based use of educational technologies in judicious, meaningful ways. This is precisely what our learning activity types materials and instructional planning approach (e.g., Harris & Hofer, 2009, 2011; Harris, Hofer, Blanchard, Grandgenett, Schmidt, van Olphen & Young, 2010; Hofer & Harris, 2010; 2016) seek to assist teachers in doing, within the realities of classrooms, schools, and school districts. Prior to 2016, teaching teachers how to use this approach to building and applying their TPACK while planning curriculum-based, technologically supported learning experiences for their students was done in university courses, schooland district-based professional development offerings, and publications for teachers, all supported by freely available and shareable professional materials (e.g., learning activity types taxonomies and assessment instruments) that are Creative Commons-licensed and available online (http://activitytypes.wm.edu). Conversations with other teacher educators who were using the learning activity types taxonomies helped us to become aware, however, of the need for a more scaffolded way to help teachers to build their TPACK using this particular approach to instructional planning, and as part of their workplace learning. A TPACK-based Short Course for Preservice Teachers In Spring 2016, we designed, produced, and shared a Creative Commons-licensed, self-paced online short course for preservice teachers' TPACK development. The content and design for the course are based upon our research about leveraging learning activity types (LATs) to help preservice teachers to develop their TPACK through a scaffolded instructional design experience (Hofer & Harris, 2016). The short course comprises nine modules: