Using TPACK as a design model (Lesson design with TPACK - part 1)

In one of my former posts, I noted that the TPACK model from Koehler and Mishra is a descriptive model. Now however, I want to tell you in the next couple of lines about the challenge of using it as a model for designing a lesson.

Our group assignment for the course ”Pedagogies for flexible learning supported by technology” was to design a lesson based on the TPACK framework. Different groups had different starting points (one of the TPACK circles). Our starting point was a technological one. We had to design a lesson using a social community as technology. The assignment consisted of four parts in total:

• designing a lesson in detail (activities before, during and after the lesson)
• describing the context in which the lesson takes place (school, curriculum, grade, etc.)
• describing how instructor-support is organized
• describing the implementation process

This post is the first of five posts reflecting on my experience with designing a lesson on the basis of the TPACK model.

I was pretty much at my wits end at the beginning. The main problem was that the TPACK model does not give any design guidelines. One does not know which steps to take and what the design implications are. Another crux was that the TPACK model is about the teacher knowledge, not about the technology, content and pedagogy itself. For the lesson design, we will however have to start there.

After realizing this, we automatically arrived at using the model as a tool for making decisions. With this perspective, I could recognize some remarkable advantages of using the TPACK model as the design model so that I can conclude “The TPACK model is not meant to be prescriptive, but, yes, it can be used as a design model”. Those advantages are for example: making decisions explicit that were formerly implicit, arriving at new insights broadening the own perspective via the TCK-, TPK-, PCK- and TPACK-combinations and focusing on an effective integration and not on autonomous parts. The later one is especially important for the use of technology in education. Unfortunately, technology is often used as an add-on, not integrated into teaching but somehow fit in the traditional way of giving instruction. Using the TPACK model for designing lessons makes clear that technology puts restrictions on content and pedagogy and also provides new possibilities.

I would really like to hear your opinion on the way we have used the TPACK model for designing. What do you think about our approach?