Pedagogical Technologies in Teaching Activities.

1. Pedagogical Technologies in Teaching Activities.

2. Pedagogical Technologies in Teaching Activities. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is a framework to understand and describe the kinds of knowledge needed by a teacher for effective pedagogical practice in a technology enhanced learning environment. The idea of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) was first described by Lee Shulman (Shulman 1986) and TPACK builds on those core ideas through the inclusion of technology. Punya Mishra, full professor, and Matthew J. Koehler, associate professor, both at Michigan State University, have done extensive work in constructing the TPACK framework (Koehler & Mishra 2008, Mishra & Koehler 2006).

3. Pedagogical Technologies in Teaching Activities. • The TPACK framework argues that effective technology integration for teaching specific content or subject matter requires understanding and negotiating the relationships between these three components: Technology, Pedagogy, and Content. A teacher capable of negotiating these relationships represents a form of expertise different from, and (perhaps) broader than, the knowledge of a disciplinary expert (say a scientist or a musician or sociologist), a technology expert (a computer engineer) or an expert at teaching/pedagogy (an experienced educator). • The TPACK framework highlights complex relationships that exist between content, pedagogy and technology knowledge areas and may be a useful organizational structure for defining what it is that teachers need to know to integrate technology effectively (Archambault & Crippen, 2009).

6. Pedagogical Technologies in Teaching Activities. • TPACK consists of 7 different knowledge areas: (i) Content Knowledge (CK), (ii) Pedagogical Knowledge (PK), (iii) Technology Knowledge (TK), (iv) Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), (v) Technological Content Knowledge (TCK), (vi) Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK), and (vii) Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK). All of these knowledge areas are considered within a particular contextual framework.

7. Pedagogical Technologies in Teaching Activities. • Technology knowledge, within the context of technology integration in schools, appears to most often refer to digital technologies such as laptops, the Internet, and software applications. TK does however go beyond digital literacy to having knowledge of how to change the purpose of existing technologies (e.g. wikis) so that they can be used in a technology enhanced learning environment (Harris, 2008).

9. Pedagogical Technologies in Teaching Activities. • Content knowledge may be defined as “a thorough grounding in college-level subject matter” or “command of the subject” (American Council on Education, 1999). It may also include knowledge of concepts, theories, conceptual frameworks as well as knowledge about accepted ways of developing knowledge (Shulman, 1986).

10. Pedagogical Technologies in Teaching Activities. • Pedagogical knowledge includes generic knowledge about how students learn, teaching approaches, methods of assessment and knowledge of different theories about learning (Harris et al., 2009; Shulman, 1986). This knowledge alone is necessary but insufficient for teaching purposes. In addition a teacher requires content knowledge.

11. Pedagogical Technologies in Teaching Activities. • Pedagogical content knowledge is knowledge about how to combine pedagogy and content effectively (Shulman, 1986). This is knowledge about how to make a subject understandable to learners. Archambault and Crippen (2009) report that PCK includes knowledge of what makes a subject difficult or easy to learn, as well as knowledge of common misconceptions and likely preconceptions students bring with them to the classroom.

13. Pedagogical Technologies in Teaching Activities. • Technological content knowledge refers to knowledge about how technology may be used to provide new ways of teaching content(Niess, 2005). For example, digital animation makes it possible for students to conceptualize how electrons are shared between atoms when chemical compounds are formed.

14. Pedagogical Technologies in Teaching Activities. • Technological pedagogical knowledge refers to the affordances and constraints of technology as an enabler of different teaching approaches (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). For example online collaboration tools may facilitate social learning for geographically separated learners.

15. Pedagogical Technologies in Teaching Activities. • Technological pedagogical content knowledge refers to the knowledge and understanding of the interplay between CK, PK and TK when using technology for teaching and learning (Schmidt, Thompson, Koehler, Shin, & Mishra, 2009). It includes an understanding of the complexity of relationships between students, teachers, content, practices and technologies (Archambault & Crippen, 2009).

16. Context • Teachers are limited by what they are able to do within their own environment. For example, teachers with limited access to technology are unable to use Web 2.0 tools available to students in schools that have ubiquitous access to the Internet. Time, training, and the nature of assessment in schools also impacts on how technology may be used in classrooms.

17. The TPACK framework is becoming increasingly popular as an organizing frame for the development of educational technology professional development programs for teachers. The use of TPACK in this way has created a need to be able to measure teacher TPACK. Research in this field is currently ongoing as it is proving to be difficult to define the boundaries of the different TPACK knowledge areas (Archambault & Crippen, 2009). • TPACK framework does not necessarily mean that new technologies must be introduced, but instead relating creative ideas to using the technologies already available to educators. Each component: Technology, Pedagogy, and Content must all be within a given contextual framework.

18. The student has knowledge and experience about education, instruction and teaching methods; recognizes and understands the importance of social interaction in a child's learning; has knowledge about a child's development and learning; is consciously aware of the teacher's role in the learning process of child; has an understanding of music therapy to help children with difficulties.

20. Our teaching has a history, too. Traditional pedagogical approaches emphasized the teacher as knowledge broker and the student as receiver of knowledge. The work was about content mastery. The "new" pedagogy - some refer to it as critical pedagogy, others as social constructivism - emphasizes the student as learner in a social context and knowledge as produced within a social context. This student-centred pedagogy seems to have been more thoroughly adopted at the elementary level where teachers are working to accommodate individual differences and build social systems. It is our argument that the pedagogy that characterizes much of the teaching at the post- secondary level is presently inadequate for evaluating the opportunities and the dangers of educational technology. Insights from student-centred elementary contexts along with ground-breaking work with educational technology at the post-secondary level provide the basis for our insistence that in considering educational technology, pedagogical concerns and support for professional development should receive top priority.

21. Technology in the World - Promises and Paranoia • The introduction of new technologies on a mass scale in North America has relied upon a widespread and systematic marketing campaign, one that equates the adoption of new technology with achievement (or increasingly, retention) of the "good life", and ties the failure to adopt new technology with dire individual and social consequences. Historically, a utopian vision has ushered in technological change. It is not until we find ourselves virtually enslaved to it (Mander, 1991) cites the examples of the automobile and the telephone) that we start to identify the wide range of implications, intended and unintended, of its use. The same corporations are using the same marketing plan to urge post-secondary educators to adopt educational technologies - promises and paranoia. There are promises that inadequate pedagogy will be made good by the technology; there is paranoia that without technology societal slippage in international trade will continue, and lowered standards of living will be the consequence for post-secondary graduates who will not have the skills necessary for decent employment.

22. We are told that North American economies are becoming less competitive internationally. Declining trade advantages are supposedly behind the deficit and the accompanying cuts in social spending. The "good life" is threatened. The only way to revive it is through technological advances. Rising unemployment is blamed on a lack of job related training, and computer skills are portrayed as the means by which individuals can participate in the technological revolution. For this economic revival, we are told we must re-tool our educational institutions to produce a highly skilled workforce. • This marketing strategy ignores the fact that jobless growth has been one consequence of new technologies the introduction of which has been accompanied by the globalization of capital, the internationalization of work, and the downsizing of government. • Rather than delivering the "good life," the impact of computer technology on the economies of the industrialized world has been dehumanizing. Jeremy Rifkin documents the grim story in his book, The End of Work - The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post Market Era. Between 1989 and `93, more than 1.8 million workers in the manufacturing sector in the United States lost their jobs. The steel industry cut its workforce in half in fifteen years. In 1850, 60 per cent of the working population of the United States was employed in agriculture; today it is less than 2.7%. The numbers from Germany, Finland, Canada and Japan are equally sobering.

23. If you think these workers have landed on their feet in new technologies jobs, or in the expanding service sector, Rifkin suggests you think again. Of the 1.8 million displaced manufacturing workers, one third found new jobs in service, but at a 20 per cent drop in pay. These low-paying jobs are often part-time, and without benefits. Guy Standing refers to the trend of replacing well-paying permanent blue-collar jobs with poorly paying, part-time, temporary, service jobs as the "feminization of labour" (Standing, 1989, pp. 1077-1095). This change in the nature of work has enabled major corporations to pay $22 million less in wages over the decade of the 1980s. • The jobs that haven't been automated out of existence in the industrialized countries have been moved out of reach of their incumbent workers moved off shore to poor countries where poor wages and poor working conditions put more pressure on the remaining workers in Canada and the US to keep their expectations low. This movement has itself been facilitated by the automation of financial work and the virtual world of banking supported by technology. • Promises of the "good life" via the computer revolution have not been realized for most people. The winners of this revolution are referred to by Rifkin as "the new cosmopolitans," as he records the fact that in 1953 executive compensation was 22 per cent of corporate profits; in 1987, 61 per cent. In 1979 the CEO earned 20 times the wage of the average manufacturing worker; in 1988, the CEO took home 93 times as many dollars as her/his employee. And in some macabre sense of balance, the number of people living in poverty has grown remarkably, too. In 1989, 31.5 million Americans lived in poverty, in 1991 it was 35.78 million, in 1992, up to 36.9 million (Rifkin, 1995).

24. Technology has definitely delivered on its promise of efficiency and productivity growth. Market forces and globalization have turned these productivity gains into handsome profits for a very small sector of society. We have to wonder what substance lies behind the promises associated with emerging technologies in education, and whether the distribution of advantage will be as uneven as it has been in the manufacturing sector. • The silicon snake-oil sellers (Stoll, 1995) do not draw to our attention the dangerous consequences of technology. The same automobile that promised freedom and adventure has fouled the neighbourhood, snarled our adventure with congestion, threatened our supply of fossil fuels, made a mockery of "rush" hour, and killed many of our citizens. Chernobyl, the greenhouse effect, PCBs in breast milk, the Love Canal, and asbestos come to mind as we reflect on our technological "progress". • The naive view of technology as value neutral has been challenged by scholars who have demonstrated that technology is conceived and constructed within specific social circumstances and has implications for social relations. Ursula Franklin makes a distinction between holistic technologies and prescriptive technologies, the former being technologies that enable egalitarian relationships by their use, the latter being technologies that are founded on hierarchical relationships.

25. Holistic technologies are normally associated with the notion of craft. Artisans, be they potters, weavers, metal- smiths, or cooks, control the process of their own work from beginning to finish. (Franklin, 1990, p. 18) • In contrast, prescriptive technologies entail a division of labour whereby "the making or doing of something is broken down into clearly identifiable steps" (Franklin, 1990, p. 24). A worker or group of workers carries out each step in isolation from other workers performing different steps. It is this very combination of the division of labour and atomism of tasks that necessitates a supervisory relationship. The distinction between prescriptive and holistic technologies is one between control-related and work-related production processes. • Franklin counsels us to attend not only to what technology enables, but also to what it prevents. The efficiency and potential for precision associated with prescriptive technologies have produced products that have raised our standards of living while at the same time creating a "culture of compliance" through inappropriate application of this model to virtually every sphere. She warns of the danger of imposing a prescriptive model on education, for example: • If there ever was a growth process, a process that cannot be divided into rigid predetermined steps, it is education. (Franklin, 1990, p. 29)

26. Postman notes that "the uses made of any technology are largely determined by the structure of the technology itself... functions follow from its form" (Postman, 1993, p. 7). Encoded within the technology are criteria for social relationships. • Just as technologies, or specific uses of technologies can separate bosses from workers, they can create insiders and outsiders in other ways. Rifkin's data speaks to the winners and losers of the technologically restructured economy. Postman identifies the insiders who "can do" when he observes, "those who cultivate competence in the use of a new technology become an elite group that are granted undeserved authority and prestige by those who have no such competence" (Postman, 1993, p. 9). Insider and outsider status along gender lines is documented by Wajcman who notes, "As with science, the very language of technology, its symbolism, is masculine" (Wajcman, 1991, p. 156). The earliest contacts children have with computers leave a masculinist imprint - from the home-computer usually purchased for the boys in the family to the harassment of girls in schools by boys monopolizing computers, from the war-game based video games and software culture to the association of computing with mathematics rather than language. Girls are either denied access to this sphere or not encouraged to become involved in it the way that (especially middle-class) boys are (Hickling-Hudson, 1992, pp. 1-21). In the world of work, the kind of contact women have with computers tends to reinforce women's marginalization. Computer technology reflects and reinforces existing relations of power in society.

27. Postman has special concerns about the impact that technology in the classroom can have on social relationships. • In introducing the personal computer to the classroom, we shall be breaking a four-hundred-year-old truce between the gregariousness and openness fostered by orality and the introspection and isolation fostered by the printed word. Orality stresses group learning, cooperation, and a sense of social responsibility ... Now comes the computer, carrying anew the banner of private learning and individual problem-solving. Will the widespread use of computers in the classroom defeat once and for all the claims of communal speech? (Postman, 1993, p. 17)

28. The Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) project in the United States, launched ten years ago to study the productive use of technology in schools reported recently that "What happens in the classroom is largely the responsibility of the teacher. More or better technology isn't enough" (Fisher et al, 1996, p. 215). Fisher et al concluded that the problems holding back the use of technology in schools are social, not technological (1996, p. 219). If technology alone could improve teaching and learning, their research would have documented improvements in student learning in all subject areas, improvements they say were simply not to be found. They cautioned schools against the rush to "glittery application", recommending instead "technology use ... grounded firmly in curriculum goals, incorporated in sound instructional process, and deeply integrated with subject-matter content" (Fisher et al, 1996, p. 200) • At the post secondary level, too, researchers are cautious about crediting technology with educational improvement. Schierman and Jones acknowledge that there is an assumption that technology is de facto beneficial to educational endeavors. However, they conclude from comprehensive, large-scale analyses of reports of benefit (e.g. Wilkenson 1980; Clark 1983) "that claims of large gains in achievement are not warranted and, indeed, that the attribution of measurable gains in achievement to the use of any educational technology should be viewed with caution, since factors other than those cited as the cause of achievement gains may be responsible" (Schierman and Jones, 1996, p. 65).

29. Nonetheless, the technology has its champions who say that achievements online are equal or superior to those generated in face-to-face situations (Harasim et al, 1996, p. 27). Harasim and her colleagues argue that the primary goals of the virtual classroom are to improve both the access to educational opportunities, and the quality of the educational process itself. They claim that in the majority of cases, these goals were achieved (Harasim et al, 1996, p. 88). • Furthermore, they argue that, "Active learning is a major outcome of learning networks" (Harasim et al, 1996, p. 29). Indeed, they seem to claim that because of technology, learning environments are more democratic, teachers and students are more respectful of group knowledge, interaction is increased, and is of better quality (Harasim et al, 1996, p. 28). • Chris Dede is another who extols the virtues of virtual education claiming that, • The innovative pedagogies empowered by these emerging media, messages, and experiences make possible an evolution ...into an alternative instructional paradigm: distributed learning. In particular, advances in computer- supported collaborative learning, multi-media/hypermedia, and experiential simulation offer the potential to create shared 'learning-through-doing environments' available any place and any time. (Dede, 1996, p. 4)