Probing in-service elementary school teachers’ perceptions of TPACK for games, attitudes towards games, and actual teaching usage: a study of their structural models and teaching experiences

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate differences in junior and senior (categorised by their years of teaching experience) elementary school teachers’ perceptions of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge – Games (TPACK-G), attitudes towards game, and actual teaching usage. It also aimed to probe how each of the two groups’ TPACK-G perceptions predicted their attitudes towards games and actual teaching usage. 376 in-service teachers in Taiwan filled out the questionnaire consisting of game knowledge (GK), game pedagogical knowledge (GPK), game content knowledge (GCK), game pedagogical content knowledge (GPCK), attitudes towards games (AT), and actual teaching usage (AU). The results showed that junior teachers tended to have higher GK, GCK and GPCK than the seniors. GK alone might not be sufficient to predict the teachers’ actual teaching usage. To predict teachers’ actual teaching usage, the junior teachers might rely on their GPCK, whereas the senior teachers might rely on their GPK.