Integrating TPACK Framework into Coursework and its Effect on Changes in TPACK of Pre-Service Special Education Teachers Irina Lyublinskaya and Nelly Tournaki College of Staten Island – The City University of New York United States of America
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Abstract: The present study focuses on the development of Technological Pedagogical And Content Knowledge (TPACK) in mathematics and science of pre-service special education teachers via one course. This course provides an introduction to a variety of strategies and techniques for using instructional technology in teaching concepts in science and mathematics to children with learning and behavior disabilities. The TPACK Levels Rubric developed by Lyublinskaya and Tournaki (2011) was used to assess participants’ lesson plans created as part of the required course work at the beginning and at the end of the semester. The t-test revealed that upon completion of the course requirements, the participants’ TPACK scores increased significantly between lesson plan 1 and 2, but still the highest level of TPACK remained quite low, i.e. with the score of 2 out of 5. Implications for teacher education programs are discussed.
Education programs in the U.S. are committed to prepare teachers with the technology skills needed for today’s technologically-based society while millions of dollars are spent for the purchase of technological equipment for the classrooms, “but the hardware is worthless if teachers are unfamiliar with the function and educational application of the technology” (Albe, 2003, p. 1). As a result of the infiltration of technology into education, over the last two decades, many government agencies have set up relevant curriculum standards to direct the implementation of educational technology (ISTE, 2008); while, non-government organizations such as the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education (http://site.aace.org/), promote research and practice in the use of technology in teacher education. There is ongoing debate regarding how teacher education programs can effectively prepare teachers to incorporate technology into teaching. More specifically, Kay (2006) has completed a meta-analysis of 68 refereed journal articles and found that one of the ways to teach technology is delivering a single technology course. These courses used to be, and in some cases still are, independent of content or pedagogy courses (Graham, Culatta, Pratt, & West, 2004; Hargrave & Hsu, 2000; Willis & Mehlinger, 1996). More recent studies demonstrated that offering one such course is not enough to prepare teachers teach with technology (Hsu & Sharma, 2006; Mishra, Koehler, & Kereluik, 2009; Steketee, 2005). We need courses that integrate the teaching of all the components of teacher knowledge that is, content knowledge on a subject matter, pedagogy skills, and technology skills (Angeli & Valanides, 2005; Chai, Koh, & Tsai, 2010; Jonassen, Howland, Marra, & Crismond, 2008; Mishra & Khoeler, 2006). Mishra and Khoeler (2006) have clearly articulated a theoretical framework of teacher knowledge and refer to this integrated form of contextualized knowledge as Technological Pedagogical And Content Knowledge (TPACK). TPACK describes the teachers’ body of knowledge needed for teaching with technology in their content area and grade level. TPACK is identified with knowledge that relies on the interconnection and intersection of content, pedagogy (teaching and student learning), and technology (Margerum-Leys, & Marx, 2002; Mishra, & Koehler, 2006; Niess, 2005; Pierson, 2001; Zhao, 2003). The framework must be viewed as constituting more than a set of multiple domains of knowledge and skills that teachers require for teaching their students particular subjects at specific grade levels. Rather, TPACK defines a way of thinking that integrates the multiple domains of knowledge of subject matter, pedagogy and technology. In the last decade, the TPACK framework of teacher knowledge has influenced professionals and as a result it has led them to re-think and re-design teacher preparation programs nationally and internationally (Burns, 2007; Chai, Koh, & Tsai, 2010; Niess, 2005; Niess, 2007; Shoffner, 2007) but all reported cases have been applied to programs preparing general education teachers. This study examined TPACK development of special education preservice teachers since research has been lacking in applying this framework to special education teachers. The study took place at a public institution of higher education in New York City. The college’s graduate program in special
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education requires completion of the course Integrating Technology in Math and Science Instruction in Special Education and Inclusive Classrooms. This course provides an introduction to a variety of strategies and techniques for using instructional technology in teaching concepts in science and mathematics to children with learning and behavior disabilities. Therefore, the purpose of the current study was to assess whether the completion of this course is associated with significant gains in pre-service special education teachers’ TPACK in mathematics and science as measured by the TPACK Levels Rubric developed by Lyublinskaya and Tournaki (2011). The rubric was used to assess participants’ lesson plans created as part of the required course work at the beginning and at the end of the semester.
Assessment of TPACK through lesson plans Teaching artifacts used for TPACK assessment include lesson plans, curriculum materials, transcripts of implemented lessons, recordings of lessons, etc. Koehler, Mishra, and Yahya (2007) used content analysis techniques for examining teaching artifacts. They developed a coding protocol that identified the knowledge domains of the TPACK framework. The authors acknowledged the limitations of the analysis, including the possibility of subjectivity and bias in coding. Further, Groth, Spickler, Bergner, and Bardzell (2009) conducted a qualitative study in which they used teaching artifacts to develop a model for assessing teachers’ TPACK. The first quantitative measure of TPACK for lesson plans was developed by Harris, Grandgenett & Hofer (2010) who modified the Technology Integration Assessment Instrument (TIAI) developed by Britten and Cassady (2005). This valid instrument measures Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK); Technological Content Knowledge (TCK); and Technological, Pedagogical, And Content Knowledge (TPACK). Finally, Lyublinskaya and Tournaki (2011) developed the TPACK Levels Rubric, also a validated quantitative instrument that assesses TPACK in its development through five progressive levels [Recognizing (1), Accepting (2), Adapting (3), Exploring (4), and Advancing (5)] as identified by Niess (2011) in her TPACK Development model.
Methods Context
The study was conducted in one of the colleges of the City University of New York. There were two sections of the course given in the same semester that met weekly for 15 two-hour sessions; both sections had the same instructor who has used TPACK as the organizing framework for developing the course content and the activities. Seven sessions were devoted to specific technology tools (e.g. interactive whiteboards, data collection technology, calculators, web 2.0 tools, spreadsheets and word processors, presentation software, and subject specific educational software). During these sessions pre-service teachers learned about each technology tool and its uses in mathematics and science classrooms for teachers and students. They then developed a mathematics or science activity that utilized each specific technology tool and instructional notes on how to use the activity in inclusion classroom. Instructional notes included description of objectives, assessment, and adaptations for learners with special needs. In addition, five sessions were specifically dedicated to the analysis of various models and strategies for technologyinfused lessons with special emphasis on the analysis of the principles for the effective use of technology (Goldberg, 2000). Throughout the course, discussions addressed adaptations of technology to students with special needs, differentiated instruction, and assessment with technology. Completion of all activities in class followed by small group or whole class discussions of the topic in the context of using technology intended to help students develop conceptual understanding of key ideas of each subject. The key assignments of the course included two lesson plans, one in mathematics and one in science, for the technology-infused inquiry based lessons (one during the 5th week of the semester and one during the 12th week of the semester), that they had to teach to students with special needs. Preservice teachers had the opportunity to make multiple revisions of their lesson plans based on peer and instructor’s feedback, and then reflect on their teaching experience and analyze their lessons against the principles of the effective use of technology (Goldberg, 2000). Thus the course focused on the development of the knowledge related specifically to effective integration of instructional technology into mathematics and science teaching and learning as introduced in the TPACK Development model of Niess (2011).
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Participants The 43 participants were students enrolled in a Master’s program in special education (grades 1 – 8) at the College of Staten Island. The students were enrolled in two sections of a required 3-credit graduate course titled Integrating Technology in Math and Science Instruction in Special Education and Inclusive Classrooms during one semester. Out of 25 students enrolled in each section, 22 agreed to participate from one section and 21 from the other. Males comprised 7% of the group and females comprised 93%. The majority of participants (65%) were between the ages of 23 and 26 years old, 2% were between the ages of 18 and22, 21% between the age of 26 and 32, and 12% of the group were 33 years of old or older. Half of the participants held a childhood teaching license, 12% an early childhood license, 5% an adolescence English license, and 33% an adolescence Social Studies license. Instrument The TPACK Levels Rubric, constructed by Lyublinskaya and Tournaki (2011) was used to assess lesson plans developed by the pre-service teachers. The structure of the rubric is based on the TPACK framework for teacher growth for technology integration in the classroom through five progressive levels [Recognizing (1), Accepting (2), Adapting (3), Exploring (4), and Advancing (5)] in each of the four components of TPACK as identified by Niess (2011): 1. An overarching conception about the purposes for incorporating technology in teaching subject matter topics. This component deals with what teachers know and believe about the nature of the subject such as mathematics, what is important for students to learn, and how technology supports learning. The concept serves as a basis for instructional decisions. 2. Knowledge of student understanding, thinking, and learning in subject matter topics with technology. In this component, teachers rely on and operate from their knowledge and beliefs about student understanding and thinking with technologies in specific topics. 3. Knowledge of curriculum and curricular materials that integrate technology in learning and teaching subject matter topics. With respect to the curriculum, teachers discuss and implement various technologies for teaching specific topics. In addition, they examine how mathematical or scientific concepts and processes within the context of a technology-enhanced environment are organized, structured, and assessed throughout the curriculum. 4. Knowledge of instructional strategies and representations for teaching and learning subject matter topics with technologies. Teachers adapt their teaching to guiding students in learning about specific technologies at the same time as they are used in learning mathematics or science. Two technology specific performance indicators have been developed for each level of each component consistent with qualitative descriptors developed by Niess (2011) and the principles for effective use of technology (Goldberg, 2000). The following scoring procedure is applied when using the rubric. The possible range of scores for each component is 0 – 5, where the component score can be an integer (both performance indicators are met) or half-integer (one out of two performance indicators are met). The score is assigned for each component independently. In order to achieve a particular level of TPACK, teacher must meet both indicators of that level for each component. Thus, the teacher’s TPACK level is determined by the lowest score across all four components. The rubric was tested for reliability and validity with in-service mathematics teachers using TI-Nspire technology (Lyublinskaya & Tournaki, 2011). Content validity was ensured by employing two TPACK experts researchers who were involved in the initial development of the TPACK conceptual framework for mathematics educators. They reviewed the rubric and provided written comments in response to three specific free-response questions about the rubric. We revised some of the rubric’s items according to the experts’ feedback. In order to test for inter-rater reliability, we asked two different experts in the field to use the revised rubric to score 45 documents. The range of correlations between the scores of two experts on the same components was from r = 0.613 to r = 0.679 p < .01. Correlations that examined whether there was a relationship among the four components of the rubric for each expert were also found statistically significant, i.e., the range of correlations for Expert 1 was from r = .85 to r = .94 p < .01 and for Expert 2 was from r = .93 to .97 p < .01. The significant correlations between the four components of TPACK could mean that teachers move to a higher TPACK level only after they achieve the previous level on all four components. Of course, caution has to be used with such an interpretive statement. Since the introduction of the four components of PCK by Grossman in 1989 there has been an absence of research in order to empirically validate
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their existence. These components have been adopted in the field and many researchers accepted them at face value (e.g., Niess, 2005). Our interpretation of high correlations among the four components of the TPACK rubric is based on the assumption that the four components are independent of one another. To the best of our knowledge, factor analysis has not been performed in the studies that used Grossman’s four components of PCK. Thus we completed a Factor Analysis using varimax rotation with Kaiser normalization to confirm the construct validity of the rubric when applied to pre-service special education teachers. The procedure was performed on a total of 86 lesson plans collected during the semester. For this sample size Stevens (2002) suggests that the loadings greater than 0.512 can be considered significant, thus all values less than 0.590 were suppressed. The procedure confirmed four factors corresponding to the four components of PCK for each set of lesson plans (see Table 1). Lesson Plan 1 1 Instruction
2
3
Lesson Plan 2 4
.800
Curriculum
1
2
3
4
.859 .800
Students
.846 .673
Conception
.871 .663
.594
Table 1: Results of Factor Analysis In the present study the scoring of the lesson plans through the use of the TPACK Levels Rubric was conducted by a doctoral candidate in Mathematics Education who was trained by one of the researchers that constructed the rubric.
Data Analysis and Results Descriptive statistics performed on the first and second lesson plans, that were completed seven weeks apart, indicate that the participants’ TPACK scores increased in all components by the second lesson. The total TPACK mean score for the first lesson plan was 1.93 (SD = .93) indicating that after four weeks of instruction participants achieved the first level of TPACK, that of Recognizing (1). The TPACK mean score for the second lesson plan was 2.38 (SD = 0.80) indicating that participants raised their TPACK level to Accepting (2). A paired samples t-test was used to compare the mean scores of the two lesson plans and it revealed a t(42) = -2.62, p < 0.05 (see Table 2 for description of all levels of TPACK). Table 2 further indicates that large effect sizes (between .51 and 0.63; Cohen, 1969) were found for all factors.
Conception Students Curriculum Instruction Total
Lesson Plan 1 Mean SD 2.10 1.07 2.05 .962 2.60 .783 2.31 .958 1.93 .930
Lesson Plan 2 Mean SD 2.72 .915 2.50 .794 3.02 .639 2.86 .774 2.38 .801
N 43 43 43 43 43
Sig (2-tailed) .005 .019 .011 .004 .012
Cohen’s d 0.62 0.51 0.59 0.63 0.52
Table 2: Descriptive Statistics and Paired t-test Results for All Levels of TPACK
Discussion Given that knowledge about technology has become an essential component of teaching, teacher preparation programs are making efforts to graduate teachers with adequate knowledge of technology in the content area they will be teaching (Albe, 2003). This study examined pre-service special education teachers’ TPACK development while completing a course that integrated technology into teaching and learning mathematics and science. The
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course assessed TPACK development of pre-service teachers by assessing the participants’ lesson plans, developed as part of the course requirements. Two lesson plans were assessed using the TPACK Levels Rubric (Lyublinskaya & Tournaki, 2011) and results indicated that participants’ scores significantly improved from the first to the second lesson plan in each component and overall. In addition to significant differences between the scores on the lesson plans, large effect sizes in all the components of TPACK indicate that the mean difference between the TPACK levels of the two lesson plans is large. Examination of mean scores indicated that after four weeks of instructions pre-service teachers were on average at the Recognizing (1) level. After 13 weeks of instruction they moved to the Accepting (2) level. The fact that preservice teachers who were attending a graduate course began at Level (1) indicates that previous courses, at the undergraduate and graduate level, failed to prepare them to teach mathematics and science with technology. Further, the fact that within seven weeks teachers’ TPACK scores increased by one level indicates improvement in their skill but also underscores that integrating technology into teaching is a complex and long process. The fact that in this limited amount of time pre-service teachers did not get to higher TPACK levels is consistent with results shown by general education in-service teachers (Lyublinskaya & Tournaki, 2011). After a short introduction to technology the teachers can only accept teaching and learning mathematics and science with technology and start replacing traditional approaches with technology. The transition to higher, more advanced, levels of TPACK requires teachers to envision on their own how curriculum might be taught with the technology. At the highest, Advancing level, teachers actually challenge the traditional curriculum by engaging students in learning quite different topics using the technology, at the same time eliminating some of the topics traditionally taught. At this level, teachers recognize that perhaps learning mathematics and science in the traditional way may be skeptically confronted, and that important novel topics may be presented using the newly available tools (Niess, 2011). Overall, significant change of TPACK scores indicates that the course objectives of developing TPACK necessary to select and implement appropriate technology effectively in teaching mathematics and science in special education and inclusive classrooms were met but the scores also reveal that one semester course is not sufficient to fully prepare teachers to use technology effectively in the classroom.. This speaks to the need of integrating technology in more courses than one in a teacher preparation program. It is unrealistic to expect that pre-service teachers would achieve a high level of TPACK within the constraints of a single course. Historically, teacher education programs started by including one technology course, independent of subject matter, in their curriculum (Graham, Culatta, Pratt, & West, 2004; Hargrave & Hsu, 2000; Willis & Mehlinger, 1996); more recently they are changing that to courses similar to the one we described in this study – courses that focus on TPACK not just technology (Angeli & Valanides, 2005; Chai, Koh, & Tsai, 2010; Jonassen, Howland, Marra, & Crismond, 2008; Mishra & Khoeler, 2006). Our finding suggests that in the future, programs need to include more than one course that incorporates the TPACK framework into their curricula. Otherwise the millions of dollars spent for the purchase of technological equipment for today' s classrooms, will be worthless if teachers are unfamiliar with the function and educational application of the technology (Albe, 2003) A limitation of the present study is that it examined TPACK development in a course that integrated technology only in mathematics and science. Such courses should be developed and tested in other content areas e.g., literacy, social studies. Further, the sample size of the present study was relatively small therefore studies with larger samples are needed. In conclusion, the significance of this study is that it is the first one that examined the development of TPACK addressing integrating technology into teaching and learning of special education pre-service teachers. Further, teachers’ TPACK was assessed not through self-reports but through teaching artifacts, namely lesson plans – such artifacts are considered more objective measures of TPACK than surveys which just reflect the opinions of the participants. In addition to the best of our knowledge this study is the first one that confirmed the four components of TPACK as identified by Niess (2011) through factor analysis. The overall results are consistent with findings from studies conducted nationally and internationally with general education pre-service and in-service teachers (e.g., Brown & Warschauer, 2006; Chai, Koh, & Tsai, 2010; Lyublinskaya, & Tournaki, 2011) but further explorations are needed on how the TPACK theoretical framework and TPACK assessment appear in practice. Based on these results we can encourage the educational community to adopt similar courses in their special education teacher preparation programs in which TPACK is built in and taught in a systematic way to better prepare pre-service teachers for teaching learners with special needs in a technology-infused school environment.
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