I must admit I found a bit hard at first, since I had to use different words from the ones my colleages had used and deeply understand the matter to be able to express it by myself. But that helped me to comprehend this topic better, as well as to reflect upon it.
Without further ado, here you have my part for this week:
1. Five core terms of this week:
- TPACK
(Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge)
Teachers might
find some difficulties to use digital technologies in the classroom, since
their use can be wider and not as simple as, let’s say, text-books. In
addition, most teachers haven’t been properly taught how technologies could be
used to improve learning, so they simply don’t take technologies into account (Koehler
& Mishra, 2009). Nowadays, technology plays an important role in every
aspect of our lives, including education. That is why learning how to
incorporate technology into our teaching and classroom activities will be a key
factor for us in the future. Here’s where TPACK comes in.
TPACK, which
stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge, is a framework that
tries to explain the knowledge a teacher needs to possess to teach effectively,
integrating technology into their teaching at the same time (Koehler & Mishra,
2009).
TPACK revolves
around three main components: content knowledge (knowledge the teacher has
about the subject matter he/she is to teach), pedagogy knowledge (knowledge the
teacher has about how the learning processes work in their students, as well as
methodologies) and technology knowledge (which allows teachers to use
technologies to fulfill tasks), being these three fundamental for teachers’
effectiveness. That being said, possessing knowledge about these three areas is
not enough; all of them need to be interconnected in order to be applied
successfully in the classroom environment (Koehler & Mishra, 2009).
Let’s use an
example: a teacher might be skillful with computers, but he/she won’t be able
to use that knowledge in the classroom if he/she doesn’t know how to use
technology to support what they teach (Technological Content Knowledge) or how
technology can influence and improve teaching and learning (Technological
Pedagogical Knowledge). Likewise, it is not enough for a teacher to know a lot
about a subject if he/she doesn’t know the best way to transmit and teach those
concepts to students (Pedagogical Content Knowledge).
The combination of all the 3 areas results in Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Koehler & Mishra, 2009).
In conclusion, TPACK’s purpose is to help teachers integrate technology into the classroom to reach the highest effectiveness (Koehler & Mishra, 2009).
- ACAD (Activity-centred analysis and design)
ACAD
(Activity-centred analysis and design) is an approach for analysing and
designing learning environments, that places the most importance in activity
(that is,
learning through doing things), but it should also be taken into account that
activity cannot be fully designed. Instead, activity is determined by external
elements that we can try to shape (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014).
In other words, we cannot control exactly what emergent activities will turn out to be, but what we can do is influence them through design, taking into account three main components: tasks (epistemic design), structures of place (set design) and organizational forms (social design) (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014).
By influencing the three dimensions of design (epistemic, set and social), we can get closer to achieving our intended learning outcomes (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014).
- Set design
Learning always
takes place somewhere: in classroom, online… Set design is basically the
planning of how the physical environment for learning will be organized. That
includes the space (like the classroom), but also the tools, resources and
artifacts. For example, the board, tables, books, computers… All of them
contribute to physically establish the activity and obviously have an effect on
how the learning will develop (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014).
- Epistemic design
Epistemic design is the part of design that consists of suggesting tasks to the students. In order to design these tasks, teachers research, plan and must make several decisions, suchs as selecting what will be told to the students about the task, deciding the order and time in which the content should be presented to the student and so on. The epistemic dimension relates to knowledge-oriented structures of the learning process (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014).
- Social design
Social design is the dimension of design that focuses on organizing the social structures that will exist during the activity, or put another way: whether students will work alone, in groups, teams; which roles will be given to each participant; who will be do each part of the activity (work division)… It is all about the distribution of people (Goodyear & Carvalho, 2014).
2. Question:
a) Are there any weak points in these two frameworks (TPACK and ACAD)?
TPACK:
- When talking about TPACK, it is usually represented with 3 circles, each one for a domain of knowledge: technology, content and pedagogy. The 3 circles overlap, creating other areas. But in real life, in a practical classroom situation, it is not always so easy to differentiate aspects for each area, especially the ones that are combinations of others (Technological Content Knowledge, f.e.). Put in another way: it is simple to define the combination areas, but not as easy to identify them in a practical environment.
- The technology, pedagogy and content knowledge are seen as separate or isolated domains, when reality is much more complex. It is like an obsession to categorize everything.
- Another important point, which could be seen as a big limitation of this framework, is that it doesn't take into account an important agent of the teaching-learning process: the student. It just focuses on knowledge the teacher must possess, which isn't the only aspect that determines the effectivity of using technology in the classroom; the context should also be taken into account (the school environment, the students' characteristics…). The TPACK framework might be seen as too teacher-centred.
ACAD:
- One of the critiques of ACAD used to be that it didn't consider the context in which the activity took place, so the authors later added this concept to the framework by drawing a dotted line.
- The fact that activity is seen as the center of the learning process might not work for every type of student. Working through activities has definitely its advantages, but I don't think it should be the only way. Students might feel lost at time, because an activity-centred approach puts the students in a situation where they must take decisions continuously about everything, and for some ages it could too much to handle.
b) And how could they be best implemented into a practical environment?
It is easy to talk about all these concepts and ideas theoretically, but what can actually be done to apply all of this into a practical environment?
As for TPACK, the main proposal could be to implement technological education applied to the field and to pedagogy in the education of future teachers, so that they will be perfectly capable to use technologies in the classroom with no problem and not being afraid of them, as it has been the case for years.
Regarding ACAD, teachers should be made aware of the importance of planning and design for lessons, helping them identify through which aspects they can best influence the activities in the classroom. They should think about what set design best fits the activity, what task could be better for the activity they want and what social design (working alone, in groups) is more appropriate for the activity in question.
As for my experience with my colleagues this first week, it has been a pleasure to work with them. It was a little complicated at first to organize the work, since we are nine people (that's a really big group), but things are getting better and I can't wait to see what the future holds for us!
See you around!!🤩😎
References:
Goodyear, P., & Carvalho, L. (2014). Framing the analysis of
learning network architectures. In L. Carvahlo & P. Goodyear (Eds.), The Architecture of Productive Learning
Networks (pp. 48-70). New York. NY: Routledge.
Koehler, M. J.,
& Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and
Teacher Education, 9(1), 60-70.
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