Examining Graduate Students’ Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge Using a Wiki During an Online Course
Objectives
Based on years of observing teachers, graduate students enter educational programs with preconceptions about how to teach with technology (Ertmer, 2005; Angeli & Valanides, 2008). Their observations might not have contributed to their understanding of how to integrate technology because teaching is a “highly complicated form of problem-solving and problem seeking” (Koehler & Mishra, 2008, p. 3) involving several interacting forms of knowledge. The results of a study that examined the development of graduate students’ knowledge of what technology is available, where technology can be used in the curriculum, and how to teach with it will be shared. This analysis is important as graduate students’ evolving pedagogy has the potential to transform content learning for diverse learners (Rose & Meyer, 2002; Angeli et al., 2008).
Conceptual Framework
Two conceptual frameworks informed this qualitative study: 1.) TPaCK known as technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (Koehler & Mishra, 2008); and 2.) Sociocultural Theory. TPaCK is the intersection of three bases of knowledge: technology, pedagogy and content (2008). Sociocultural theory was used because the graduate students’ mediated actions were anchored in the milieu of all their learning experiences (Wertsch, 1993).
Methodology
Two questions guided this one-year study with eighteen graduate students during an advanced, online, educational technology course: 1.) how do graduate students interpret the use of technological tools that have the potential to support pedagogical strategies presented in the context of a university technology course? 2.) in what ways, if any, does the use of a wiki affect the development of a graduate students’ technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge? Data Sources Three sources of data were collected from each graduate student: 1.) a technology-infused lesson plan; 2.) a self-reflection of the lesson taught in an asynchronous manner to a teaching partner; and 3.) feedback provided to his or her teaching partner about their lesson using sentence starters to encourage collaborative talk about TPaCK.
Results
Findings demonstrated the pedagogical potential of using a wiki to facilitate the co-construction of TPaCK in an online course. Lesson plans, reflections and feedback data revealed that graduate students were able to identify many affordances and constraints of the technologies they used which led to their development of technological pedagogical knowledge but not their technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge. This might have been caused by their lack of teaching experience and/or their observations of inadequate teaching with technology. Data suggested that they did not understand what made the concepts they were teaching difficult or easy for the grade level designated for their lesson
Scholarly Significance
The asynchronous nature of the wiki gave the graduate students time to read and think about the pedagogical moves written in their teaching partner’s lesson plan and respond to the feedback given to them at their own pace. This work demonstrates that the use of a wiki, an innovative pedagogical practice, is not just a medium that can transmit information, but it can also be used as a “cognitive partner” (Angeli et al., 2008) to support the co-construction of knowledge.
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