and Pedagogical Knowledge in Learning Design: A Case Study in Teacher Training on. Technology Enhanced Learning. Kyparisia A. Papanikolaou, School of ...
International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence Volume 7 • Issue 1 • January-March 2016
Synthesizing Technological and Pedagogical Knowledge in Learning Design:
A Case Study in Teacher Training on Technology Enhanced Learning Kyparisia A. Papanikolaou, School of Pedagogical and Technological Education, Athens, Greece Katerina Makrh, School of Pedagogical and Technological Education, Athens, Greece George D. Magoulas, Birkbeck College, University of London, London, UK Dionisia Chinou, School of Pedagogical and Technological Education, Athens, Greece Athanasios Georgalas, School of Pedagogical and Technological Education, Athens, Greece Petros Roussos, Department of Psychology, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
ABSTRACT Based on a design rational for constructivist pre-service teacher training on Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL), in this paper the authors consider teachers as designers of innovative digital educational content. Under this lens, the selection of appropriate technologies is considered as a threefold process that concerns the availability of technological tools for implementing a virtual classroom that facilitates communication, collaboration, and administration, the enabling technologies for serving specific learning purposes, and the technologies or tools that support trainees to design effective TEL-based courses. A number of questions emerge as the authors are looking for the most appropriate technologies for cultivating certain competences related to class operation, learning design and student engagement in a constructive manner. As a first step, in this paper, they investigate how trainees combine particular technologies with pedagogical tools to cultivate specific competences i.e. certain types of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Lastly, factors that trainees perceive as influential when adopting TEL tools in practice are revealed by their study. Keywords Learning Design, Teacher Training on Technology Enhanced Learning, Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK)
1. INTRODUCTION Integrating technology in teaching offers many opportunities for engaging learners and strengthening the learning process. However, it also introduces constraints on functions that particular technologies can serve as well as on actions or activities that can be performed in real educational contexts (AACTE, 2008). An important issue in this process is understanding how teaching and learning are transformed when particular technologies are adopted to encourage specific learner behavior. In that respect, the pedagogical affordances and constraints for a range of technologies within specific contexts (involving parameters such as discipline, target group, location) need to be carefully considered. When it comes DOI: 10.4018/IJDLDC.2016010102 Copyright © 2016, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited.
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International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence Volume 7 • Issue 1 • January-March 2016
to teacher training, in particular, where frameworks such as TPACK-the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Mishra and Koehler, 2006) are adopted, constant interplay between teachers’ understanding of technologies and pedagogical content knowledge is required to create effective technology-enhanced learning. In this context, the main challenge is to engage teachers in activities that will lead to new experiences in classrooms, such as learning through virtual worlds, Web 2.0 technologies or other digital environments that many of the teachers had never experienced as students. Other challenges in this respect involve bridging the gap between technology and pedagogy, areas that are traditionally ruled by different specialties. To this end, it is important to prepare teachers for designing learner-centered courses that integrate technologies appropriate for their subject matter as well as for using technologies that support processes, such as communication, collaboration, class interaction, and administration. To address these challenges, we design blended learning teacher training courses that build on the concept of learning design. Trainees are presented with appropriate technological and pedagogical tools in order to work collaboratively (synchronously and asynchronously) in the field of their expertise towards the development of a tangible and usable learning design, effectively addressing the needs of their future students. In this paper, we focus on the main features of the technologies required to support blended learning in teacher training contexts. We specifically examine how specific technologies can support various types of learning outcomes and relevant types of activities, and consequently how technological knowledge may interact with pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. Furthermore, we investigate teacher trainees’ perceptions on the various types of knowledge that they develop during training. Our analysis is based on quantitative and qualitative data collected from training sessions with teachers studying towards a postgraduate certificate in education. Lastly, factors that trainees perceive as influential for the adoption of these Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) tools in real educational contexts are identified. 2. TECHNOLOGICAL KNOWLEDGE IN TEACHER TRAINING The selection of appropriate technologies for a teacher training course looks like a problem-solving task. In this context, technology is perceived as a three-dimensional scheme: it provides trainees the means for designing a course that exploits TEL, the means for implementing a virtual classroom enabling communication, collaboration, and administration processes, and the enabling technology applications for serving particular learning purposes. In Papanikolaou, Gouli & Makri (2014) we have proposed a design rational for constructivist pre-service teacher training on TEL, based on a view of teachers as designers of innovative content working individually and collaboratively, discussing and interacting with the instructor and their peers. This rational is based on a combination of TPACK with Communities of Inquiry (CoI) (Garrison and Vaughan, 2008). TPACK is used as the basis for designing the curriculum and content of the course in the form of learning design activities for trainees. CoI is used as the basis for designing interaction in the context of f-2-f and asynchronous discussions/collaboration, teacher support and learning activities that promote higher levels of learning in a blended learning context (Makri, Papanikolaou, Tsakiri & Karkanis, 2014). Technologies involved in such a course should also empower class operation in a constructivist manner, allowing various modalities of online interaction and supporting trainees’ engagement in learning design activities. In this context, aspects that worth exploring further are how particular technologies can be combined with pedagogical tools to cultivate specific types of TPACK knowledge and what are trainees’ perceptions of the factors influencing the adoption or reuse of specific technologies in real contexts. In particular, TPACK is a useful framework for thinking about what knowledge teachers should have to integrate technology into teaching and how they might develop this knowledge (Mishra and Koehler, 2006). TPACK acknowledges three interdependent components of teachers’ knowledge, namely technological knowledge (TK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), and content knowledge (CK), 20
International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence Volume 7 • Issue 1 • January-March 2016
as well as their intersections reflecting teachers’ understanding of teaching content with appropriate pedagogical methods and technologies such as pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), technological content knowledge (TCK), and technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK). All these types of knowledge form the so-called technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). Following TPACK, the Technological Knowledge (TK) involves the skills required to use particular technologies for designing, implementing and enabling learning. In our case, the technological knowledge (Mishra and Koehler, 2006), that we aim at cultivating, based on the design rational of constructivist teacher training courses, refers to the following types of educational technologies (see Table 1): 1. Virtual classroom environment that enables real class processes 2. Digital tools for learning, such as Web 2.0 tools for graphical representations, digital storytelling, and assessment, and for information seeking, evaluation and sharing of web resources and repositories of learning objects, 3. Learning design/authoring tools for individual and/or collaborative development of learning designs. 2.1. The Virtual Classroom The virtual classroom technologies include online environments that support synchronous and asynchronous activities in a teacher training context. We compared several LMSs for designing and authoring digital courses such as Claroline (http://www.claroline.net/), ILIAS (http://www.ilias.de), Moodle (http://moodle.org), Open eClass (http://www.openeclass.org), Sakai (http://sakaiproject.org) and Atutor (http://atutor.ca), along three dimensions that are considered important for the particular teacher training course (Papanikolaou, Makri, Gouli, Georgalas, Chinou, Magoulas & Grigoriadou, 2014): (a) support for blended learning that combines face-to-face with synchronous and asynchronous communication/collaboration, (b) support for the design of activity-based content for teachers, (c) support for classroom management. Based on the above dimensions, the Moodle platform has been considered as the most appropriate meeting space for organizing virtual classes and as the basic e-learning infrastructure in line with the rationale and goals of the particular training course (Papanikolaou, Makri, Gouli, Georgalas, Chinou, Magoulas & Grigoriadou, 2014). In addition, Moodle possesses several useful features covering the requirements of function and management of blended learning courses, like usability Table 1. Specific types of technologies that aim at cultivating various learning design and digital literacy skills Technology
Tasks
Virtual classroom
• Meeting point of classroom • Classroom administration: student registration, announcements, content delivery • Assignment submission/feedback provision • Asynchronous Group Collaboration • Asynchronous reflection on specific topics
Digital tools for learning
• Develop artefacts using specific tools such as Prezi, Glogster, Pixton, video authoring, to be included in learning activities. • Find, evaluate, share digital learning objects such as presentations, simulations, multimedia content, repositories.
Learning Design and Course Authoring tools
• Design a technology enhanced and learner-centered course • Evaluate the design of a technology enhanced and learner-centered course • Author a technology enhanced course on a web-based platform
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International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence Volume 7 • Issue 1 • January-March 2016
and user friendliness, a constructivist theoretical background allowing authors to design technology enhanced activities, offers flexibility for further expansion though open source code, the potential of reusing materials and activities throughout different courses, the potential for managing classes and providing usage reports and the support for Greek language. Lastly, Moodle is supported by a vivid Greek online community of educators and developers. Complementary to Moodle, the Big Blue Button (BBB) synchronous learning platform has selected for real-time communication -whenever predicted in the blended learning scenarios. 2.2. Digital Tools for Learning The use of Web 2.0 tools has, to a great degree, infiltrated the arena of education, among others (Anderson, 2007). Official EU educational policy documents underline the added value of Web 2.0 for lifelong learning, enabling individuals to share digital objects, develop their own micro content online and form digital communities (Commission Staff working document, 2008). Web 2.0 tools are a subject of study due to both their generic characteristics and rationale guiding their use, and the specific pedagogical aims that they afford to support. Emphasis is put on Web 2.0 tools with potential for multimodal presentation of educational materials through the creation of learning objects that support multiple representations of learning content, like interactive digital posters, dynamic presentations, comics and animation, timelines and word clouds. The pedagogical aims of the teacher training course align with the following Web 2.0 categories, defined on the basis of a task-based approach; types of activities with a personal meaning for trainees themselves, or types of designed activities potentially meaningful for their (future) students (Papanikolaou, Makri, Gouli, Georgalas, Chinou, Magoulas & Grigoriadou, 2014): • • • • •
Expression of ideas - writing tools (including collaborative authoring of digital texts): blogs, microblogging, Wikis Knowledge representation (timelines, concept/mind maps, word clouds) Digital storytelling (tools for creating comics, sketches, animations, dynamic presentations and for editing video) Multimedia sharing (tools for sharing graphics, images, video, slides and sketches) Assessment and evaluation (tools allowing for open and closed types of evaluation)
2.3. Learning Design and Course Authoring Tools Learning design tools support teacher’s design process when planning, implementing, orchestrating and sharing pedagogical ideas. Course authoring tools further enable secondary authoring of educational content and its online publication. Lately, a range of software tools supporting learning design and/or authoring has appeared. In particular, we compared several tools for designing and authoring digital courses such as LAMS, ΙNSPIREus, Learning Designer, Udutu, CourseLab, Articulate Storyline and Smartbuilder on the basis of the following criteria (Papanikolaou, Makri, Gouli, Georgalas, Chinou, Magoulas & Grigoriadou, 2014): • • •
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General Characteristics: Making the tools appropriate for educational use (for example, the free or open source status of the tool, Greek language support, the multilingual environment, the extraction in SCORM & AICC), Technical Characteristics: Facilitating lesson design with regards to usability and breadth of choices in the designer’s repertoire (for example, potential for creating interactive content, screen capturing, content library - reusability, testing facilities, interaction opportunities) and Learning Design-Related Characteristics: Facilitating learning design and supporting teachers to design and reflect on a pedagogical theoretical background (for example, collaborative content creation, peer review facilities, interaction visualisation – reflection opportunities, personalisation).
International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence Volume 7 • Issue 1 • January-March 2016
Given that we consider trainees as learning designers, the third criterion is particularly important in our research. Thus, the tools chosen should equip the trainee teacher with design thinking tools, and at the same time they should offer technical characteristics that make the content authoring process simple and easy. Lastly, other factors considered are free disposal, the potential for online editing of learning designs and the support of the Greek language. The tools covering the range of the above specifications are ΙNSPIREus, Learning Designer and LAMS. In the case study described in this paper, trainee teachers use ΙNSPIREus to author learning scenarios for their students and then the Learning Designer for transferring and evaluating these learning scenarios. This way we aimed at encouraging trainees to reflect on specific issues of the design process and self-evaluate their courses. Below we briefly present both environments. INSPIREus (Papanikolaou, 2014), the latest version of INSPIRE (Papanikolaou, Grigoriadou, Kornilakis & Magoulas, 2003), is an adaptive hypermedia educational system that enables flexible authoring, empowering learners to act as content authors who adopt pedagogical principles for the development of personalized courses. To this end, INSPIREus provides several tools and forms that support authors through the different stages of content creation for an Adaptive Educational Hypermedia system and especially for structuring the domain model and the hyperspace, based on a learning design prototype method and implementing a personalisation algorithm that matches learners’ varying needs and styles. Through the authoring cycle, content authors reflect on various learning design issues in order to create pedagogically and technologically sound artifacts, such as how to structure the content based on a particular learning theory or taxonomy of learning outcomes, how to design effective assessment, how to develop content for a variety of student profiles. The Learning Designer (LD) (Charlton, Magoulas, Laurillard, 2012; Laurillard Charlton, Craft, Dimakopoulos, Ljubojevic, Magoulas, Masterman, Pujadas, Whitley & Whittlestone, 2013), is an innovative software whose design was motivated by the need to support lecturers and teachers in capturing their pedagogic ideas, testing them out, reworking them, allowing them to build on what others have learnt, and share their results with their community. The LD promotes the concept of lecturers or teachers as designers, in that they use what is already known in order to keep improving their practice, to innovate, and to articulate and share that practice with others. The software allows users to upload existing learning scenarios, or lesson plans, or create new ones, it analyses them and helps teachers recognize how much content or how many activities in their learning designs are dedicated to particular pedagogic practices, such as acquisition, reflection, practice, collaboration and production (Laurillard, 2012). 3. RESEARCH DESIGN: PRINCIPLES FOR THE INTEGRATION OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN TEACHER TRAINING ON TEL DESIGN In this section, we analyze the design principles guiding the use of the aforementioned technologies in a teacher training course. It is acknowledged that TEL design by trainee teachers is inherently challenging. Ideally, a TEL design course “for beginners” should aim at synthesizing different areas of teacher knowledge. The pedagogical engineering underlying the course design rationale targets complex, synthetic fields of knowledge, such as TPK and TPACK instead of focusing on simpler, separate constituents (such as TK, PK, CK). More specifically, in this course TPK and TPACK were cultivated synchronously, with f-2-f meetings, and asynchronously, with specific forum activities. Participants worked individually and in small groups sharing their ideas about the educational potential of digital technologies, designing activities with specific pedagogical specifications and associating them with technologies of their choice, participating in peer evaluation activities and finally, designing gradually a full lesson using a dedicated tool for authoring online activities and content. Emphasis was given on collaborative development of technology-enhanced lessons (learning designs) in successive cycles, gradually integrating elements into a more generic lesson structure. The above activities are considered ill23
International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence Volume 7 • Issue 1 • January-March 2016
structured and demanding design problems as they require the synthesis of two or three knowledge areas (technological, pedagogical, content). Individual work as a triggering event had a limited duration and aimed at allowing participants to appropriate themselves with the online environment; it gave its place, at an early stage, to collaboration in small groups. Asynchronous participation in forums served a dual purpose: first, it allowed participants to experience different forms of online interaction such as: inter-group, intra-group, group-to-whole class, group-tutor, tutor-to-group, tutor-to-whole class. Second, it allowed the gradual transcription of the evolution of each group’s design choices through asynchronous intra-group forum communication. 3.1. Social Orchestration of Interaction for Acquiring TPK and TPACK Interaction among participants was promoted through the following modalities: 1. Asynchronous individual work, aiming at cultivating TPK: trainees contribute with their posts in a whole class structured forum discussion moderated by the instructors. For example, in one of the forums, trainees worked individually towards designing a simple learning activity related to their domain of expertise for a chosen student age group, in which they: a. Selected their theme, taking in mind areas and subjects suggested by the Greek national curriculum b. Defined expected learning aims and outcomes c. Selected appropriate Web 2.0 tools to integrate in their learning activity d. Developed digital learning objects with the above tools e. Connected the objects with knowledge processes, using the New Learning (Kalantzis and Cope, 2012) framework, and matching their learning aims and outcomes f. Presented the activity to the rest of the class through the forum g. Received feedback from their peers and from the instructors h. Made changes to their activity according to feedback received 2. Synchronous and asynchronous collaborative work, aiming at cultivating TPACK. For example, in the main task, trainees were prompted to design an educational scenario using a dedicated authoring tool. The scenario included discrete learning activities. Each activity was pedagogically documented with appropriate teaching techniques, suggested tools and resources, interactions and roles of those to participate. 3.2. Supporting Trainees Acquisition of PCK and TPACK PCK is considered as equally important to TPK for this particular research audience as the majority of trainees possess a homogenous disciplinary background (the field of Informatics). Matching technological tools with relevant pedagogy is considering challenging for this type of audience. In order to support participants to make connections of their subject area with basic pedagogical concepts, the research team compiled a pedagogical awareness enhancement mechanism, including two typologies: a) a typology of activities and b) a typology of knowledge processes. Our main hypothesis was that trainees’ efforts in combining the use of technology with learning activities and knowledge processes would bring to the fore their content knowledge and contribute to the acquisition of both PCK and TPACK. The typology of activities proposed gave trainees ideas about various types of interactions that may take place during an activity by adopting the pedagogical taxonomy for learning activities in the Learning Designer tool: read watch listen, discussion, collaboration, investigation, practice and production (Laurillard, 2012). In addition, the “New Learning” framework (Kalantzis and Cope, 2012) was used as the pedagogical background for designing activities that deploy specific knowledge processes, aiming to 24
International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence Volume 7 • Issue 1 • January-March 2016
enable communication among teachers during the co-construction of learning designs enhanced with technology. This framework uses eight knowledge processes (i.e. types of activities): (i) Experiencing the known, (ii) Experiencing the new, (iii) Conceptualizing by naming, (iv) Conceptualizing with theory, (v) Analyzing functionally, (vi) Analyzing critically, (vii) Applying appropriately, and (viii) Applying creatively. Cultivating the range of knowledge processes through a course was intended to foster higher order thinking skills. 4. DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS The study was performed in the context of a TEL course that is part of a one-year postgraduate programme offered to graduates of a variety of disciplines. The programme leads to a Postgraduate Certificate in Education which is awarded by the Higher School of Pedagogical and Technological Education (ASPETE), Greece. A group of 55 trainees, mainly graduates of Computer Science Departments, participated in the study. The Moodle VLE was used for class administration, content delivery, and communication/collaboration beyond the regular f-2-f meetings/workshops. 4.1. Data Collection and Analysis Throughout the course trainees worked individually and in groups. Groups were formed based on trainees’ individual characteristics such as personality traits (based on the five-factor personality model), and other psychological variables, such as self-efficacy, anxiety and attitudes (17 groups of 3 members and 2 groups of 2 members) (Kounenou, Roussos & Yotsidi, 2014). During the course, trainees participated in asynchronous discussions and collaboratively designed and authored an educational scenario in INSPIREus. The particular scenario consisted of learning activities enhanced with digital tools and resources like Web 2.0 learning objects, educational software and web resources. Then they authored the particular scenario as a design in the Learning Designer in order to self-assess their work. At the end of this phase the students completed (a) the TPACK instrument measuring pre-service teachers’ self-assessment of the seven knowledge domains included within TPACK (Schmidt, Baran, Thompson, Mishra, Koehler & Shin, 2009), (b) a questionnaire assessing the factors that they considered important for the adoption of TEL tools in their daily practice (Papanikolaou, Makri, Roussos, Tzelepi, Grigoriadou, Magoulas, Chinou, Georgalas, Tountopoulou, Kounenou & Yotsidi, 2015). As far as the TPACK instrument is concerned, this has been adapted to the outcomes of the particular course since it was originally developed for pre-service teachers majoring in elementary or early childhood education. In particular, the questions assessing technological and pedagogical knowledge have been extended to include the particular technological and pedagogical tools provided. The study focused on the following research questions: RQ1: How do teacher trainees combine technological with pedagogical knowledge when developing learning designs? PQ2: What are teacher trainees’ perceptions of their TK, TPK and TPACK? RQ3: Which are the factors that trainees perceive as important for the adoption of TEL tools in their daily practice? The data collected include nineteen (19) collaborative designs developed by trainees (with their documentation) as well as their completed questionnaires. In particular, we analyzed trainees’ designs in order to explore how the groups integrated specific technological tools in various types of learning activities, didactic techniques and knowledge processes (RQ1). Furthermore, we statistically analyzed their answers to both questionnaires in order to explore trainees’ perceptions about their abilities in adopting TEL approaches (RQ2, RQ3). 25
International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence Volume 7 • Issue 1 • January-March 2016
4.2. Findings RQ1: How do teacher trainees combine technological with pedagogical knowledge when developing learning designs? The combination of technological and pedagogical knowledge is examined through the study of trainees’ choices of particular technologies to support specific pedagogies in the designs that they collaboratively create. With regards to the kinds of technological tools selected and used by participants in their learning designs, we can identify three categories: Web 2.0 tools, tools of the authoring environment (INSPIREus) and standalone tools. It is interesting to report that 79% of the learning designs contain Web 2.0 tools, 100% reuse tools of the authoring environment, 16% contain standalone tools and only 10.5% include tools from all three categories. With regards to the number of tools selected, 58% of the learning designs contain at least two Web 2.0 tools, 95% contain all the tools of the authoring environment, 10.5% contain one standalone tool, and only 5.3% contain three different types of tools. To study the ways TK is interweaved with TPK and TPACK, we focus specifically on the category of Web 2.0 tools and the ways they were combined with knowledge processes (see Table 2) and activity types (see Table 3). With regards to knowledge processes, it is interesting to note that the process mostly supported by a range of tools is that of analysis. Participants associate it with representation tools such as concept maps and word clouds, but also with storytelling tools for making comics and animation. Analysis is also supported by presentation (Prezi) and programming tools (Scratch). Application seems equally popular, supported by representation, presentation, programming and multimedia tools. Experience and Conceptualization are less popular choices, and they are linked with tools, such as representation and storytelling. Evaluation is only matched with a tool once (for testing). With regards to the tools’ popularity as design choices, participants show a preference towards presentation and representation tools (WordClouds and Prezi), followed by comics and programming. The activity type most pursued by participants is acquisition. Preference towards presentation tools was expected, as they are certainly related to this type of activity by affordance; however, word clouds and comics are also linked to acquisition, though they have a more open-ended character and could be used to support more open activity types. The activity type less pursued is collaboration. Table 2. Use of Web 2.0 tools per knowledge process Tools Web 2.0 tools
Knowledge processes Experience
Conceptualize
Analyse
WordClouds
5
7
1
Prezi
2
6
2
Timeline Comic
2 3
Apply 1 1
2
Glogster
5 1
Concept maps
2
Scratch
1
GoAnimate
1
4
Hotpotatoes Total 26
Evaluate
1 10
16
9
12
1
International Journal of Digital Literacy and Digital Competence Volume 7 • Issue 1 • January-March 2016
Table 3. Use of Web 2.0 tools per activity type Tools
Activity types Acquisition
Investigation
WordClouds
4
Prezi
8
Web 2.0 tools
Timeline Comic
Collaboration
Discus-sion
Production
Practice
2
2
1
4
2
1
1
3
2
2
2
3
Glogster
5 1
Concept maps
1
1
Scratch
2
GoAnimate
1
2
1 2
Hotpotatoes Total
3
1 1
14
7
3
9
12
13
For the particular audience, coming from a centralized educational system and having been nurtured, to a great degree, with a “show and tell” rationale during their school years, it seems a natural choice to tend towards the known: much acquisition, little collaboration. RQ2: What are teacher trainees’ perceptions of their TK, TPK and TPACK? The trainees’ perceptions of their TK, TPK and TPACK is examined through their answers to the TPACK questionnaire (Schmidt, Baran, Thompson, Mishra, Koehler & Shin, 2009) focusing on the particular domains that reflect technological knowledge. Initially we examine the scores of the whole class and then, since the scores appear quite high and similar among the domains of TK, TPK and TPACK, we further elaborate on qualitative differentiations of the technological knowledge of the trainees focusing on their knowledge of the three tool types (virtual classroom, digital tools and learning design). In particular, we analyze quantitative data such as the TPACK instrument (Schmidt, Baran, Thompson, Mishra, Koehler & Shin, 2009) reflecting pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their knowledge within the TPACK framework. However, in this paper we focus on domains that reflect technological knowledge as well as its interaction with pedagogy, i.e. TK, TPK and TPACK. Trainees as a class appear to have developed high levels of TK (Mean=4.15), TPK (Mean=4.10) and TPACK (Mean=4.08) as average values are over 4 with maximum 5. Aiming to further explore whether trainees have managed to equally develop their technological knowledge of the three tool types (virtual classroom, digital tools and learning design) we search the technological knowledge data for clusters, i.e. groups of students with similar values. Thus, as a first step we isolate questions of the technological knowledge (TK) field of the TPACK questionnaire (Schmidt, Baran, Thompson, Mishra, Koehler & Shin, 2009) that correspond to the three types of tools. Then, the best solution to an agglomerative, hierarchical cluster analysis of the trainees’ scores on questions about their knowledge on the use of the virtual classroom, digital tools and learning design, identified two distinct clusters, i.e. cluster ‘1’ and cluster ‘2’ (see in Table 4, lines ‘TK-Virtual Classroom’, ‘TK-Digital Tools’, ‘TK-Learning Design’ and Column ‘Cluster’). This solution has been selected because it gives a small number of clusters of roughly equal size. There are no serious competitors to the solution that we present. A k-Means cluster analysis was run on the 51 cases, 27
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producing two clusters, between which the variables were significantly different in the main. The first cluster is predominant and characterized by high scores on all three variables (see in Table 4, lines ‘TK-Virtual Classroom’, ‘TK-Digital Tools’, ‘TK-Learning Design’, column ‘Cluster’ - value ‘1’, column ‘Means’). The second cluster has rather over average positions on the three variables (see in Table 4, lines ‘TK-Virtual Classroom’, ‘TK-Digital Tools’, ‘TK-Learning Design’ and column ‘Cluster’ - value ‘2’, column ‘Means’). On average, trainees who belong to the first cluster demonstrate higher mean scores on all variables than those who belong to the second cluster. Thus, trainees seem to belong to two different groups based on their perceptions about the knowledge they had developed through the course on the three types of tools, although differences on the scores are quite slight. Independent samples t-tests were performed on the means and revealed significant differences between the two clusters on the three categories of the technological tools (see in Table 4, lines ‘TK-Virtual Classroom’, ‘TK-Digital Tools’, ‘TK-Learning Design’ and last column with p
