Facilitating preservice teachers' development of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK)

TLDR

Teacher education programs prioritize preparing preservice teachers for ICT integration in classrooms. The study investigates preservice teachers’ perceived development of technological, pedagogical, content, and integrated TPACK. A validated questionnaire based on Schmidt et al. (2009) was used to assess preservice teachers’ TPACK perceptions before and after an ICT course.

Abstract

Preparing preservice teachers for ICT integration in the classrooms is a key focus for many teacher education institutes. This paper examines the perceived development of preservice teachers in terms of their technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, content knowledge and the synthesis of such knowledge, i.e., the technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK). A questionnaire adapted from Schmidt, Baran, Thompson, Mishra, Koehler, and Shin (2009) was validated using factor analyses and the preservice teachers' TPACK perceptions before and after their ICT course were examined. The results reveal statistical significant gains with good effect sizes. Regression analysis further reveals that technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge are all significant predictors of preservice teachers' TPACK, with pedagogical knowledge having the largest impact. Implications for designing the ICT instruction of preservice teachers are discussed.