Reflection on designing a professional development based on TPACK

The final assignment of the course ‘Pedagogies for Flexible Learning Supported by Technology’ was to design a professional development based on TPACK for primary education teachers. In this blog I will reflect on this process by looking at three different parts. First I will reflect on the design process as an educational designer. Then I will reflect on working with TPACK and last I will give my ideas about how to stimulate teachers to integrate technology.

1.       The process of designing a course or professional development as an educational designer

Designing a professional development

 For our final assessment we had the opportunity to choose between to design a lesson based on the TPACK framework or to design a professional development based on the TPACK framework. First, with my background as a primary teacher, I preferred the first one, because this is more in line with things I did before this course, during teaching training. On the other hand, the second one was more challenging for me, because I never did something like this before and this is why I thought I could learn more from this assessment. With this in my mind, I eventually chose to design a professional development course for primary education teachers, based on the TPACK framework.

Theoretical framework as guidelines

With our group we started with a brainstorm session and we came up with a lot of ideas. I immediately became very enthusiastic but all these ideas also brought up the question what kind of design ideas is actually good or effective.

This is why we first looked at some literature, before we went to the next step of actually putting the ideas into a design. We found very good articles of Garet, Porter, Desimone, Briman and Yoon (2001) and Penuel, Fishman, Yamaguchi and Gallagher (2007) about effective professional development. This combined with the article of Voogt, Fisser and Tondeur (2010) about the development of TPACK, gave us a theoretical framework for our design. This theoretical framework was a good support, for designing our professional development. Because of this I got ideas that I would never have come up with otherwise. For example, Penuel et al (2007) describes that it is good to identify possible barriers to provide good support.  The theoretical framework also helped me to make based decisions for designing. I’m inclined to think and work with a very practical view and this theoretical framework helped me to work from a theoretical view and not just act intuitively. I think that, as a good educational designer, you always have to think about why you make your decisions and a very good start for this is looking for guidelines from theory or research is. I believe, you can’t just make something based on feeling and see if it works.

Designing with a practical background

While working on our design, I noticed that it is very nice to have a practical background. In addition to the theory, it is good to take a practical look into the design. For example, I know from the practice that teachers have to do a lot of things besides teaching and often complain about time pressure. Teachers are not always waiting for a time consuming course. Furthermore, for teachers who can sometimes be very stubborn, it is also important that they get to see why a course or change in education is important. How do they and their students benefit from this? We have tried to take this into account by choosing for a less time consuming course starting with a course day and meetings they can plan themselves and by letting teachers experience what they can do with technologies during the workshops.

Evaluation as a design part

I believe, it is also important in the process of designing a professional development for teachers, you also think about how to evaluate this. The goal as an educational designer is not just to design a course or a program, but to let the design work. You can find this out by evaluation the program and thinking about this phase before implementing the program. By doing this I learned about different evaluation forms to measure TPACK.

2.       Working with TPACK

The overall goal of the professional development program was to let teachers learn how to integrate technology into the classroom practice by developing and using TPACK. Teachers can also just use technology without developing TPACK, so why should they actually learn TPACK? I think developing TPACK is very important because it helps teachers to look at technology in a different way. With developing TPACK teachers not only learn how to use a technology, but also learn about how their pedagogy or content can change because of technology and they learn about how the technology can support their pedagogy and content. Teachers can also use different starting points for designing their lessons based on TPACK. I think nowadays many teachers still use technology from the technological angle, but when teachers will start to think from the pedagogical or content angle, about how technology can support their pedagogy and or content, they hopefully will use more technology in their education. In my opinion, developing TPACK can really help teachers to become better teachers and TPACK will help them and their education to use technologies in a more effective and efficient way. As a primary teacher myself, I have been enthusiastic about technologies since I was little. Starting teacher training I automatically became enthusiastic about using technologies in education, but I have never learned something about how technologies could improve or support my teaching skills. So, for me TPACK can be a powerful tool because it helps me think more and differently about how to combine my own technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge and learning about TPACK helped me to become a better educational designer in the future.   

3.       Ideas about how to stimulate teachers to integrate (not just use!) technology in education..

During designing the professional development, besides forming an opinion about TPACK I also thought about some ideas to stimulate teachers to integrate technology in education.

I have to notice that the difference between using and integrating technologies is that teachers not using technologies several times because for instance they have to, but that teachers integrate technology in their everyday practice. It should become automatically for teachers to use and to think about their use of technology in education in an effective way.

-          Give them time!

-          Let them experience first!

-          Don’t push it!

I think it is obvious, that stimulating teachers to integrate technology will be much more effort than just give teachers some technologies to work with, like an interactive whiteboard. Integrating technology will take time. Unfortunately not every teacher is motivated to use technology. To stimulate teachers it is important that teachers get time to get used to using technologies. I think if they can experience with the technology first, without pressure, it will be better than when teachers just have to use technology when they feel they are not ready yet.

-          Begin with enthusiastic teachers!

 I think it is also a good start to begin with teachers who are already enthusiastic about technologies. In this way, teachers can stimulate each other.  If this teachers explain the other teachers how they can integrate technologies teachers are hopefully more willing to accept this.

-          Show them practical examples of technology use!

-          Let them see the benefits!

Teachers have a practical view. If you want to stimulate teachers to integrate technology then keep that in mind. I think teachers can be motivated by showing them practical examples of technology use. For example let them visit in other classrooms to observe some technology lessons. In this way teachers can see what the technology can mean for their education practice and hopefully see the benefits of using technology.

-          Give them support!

If teachers have had enough time to experience with technologies and had enough time to observe others and if they hopefully have seen the benefits of it, support is needed. Teachers need help if to develop their technological skills and knowledge. If teachers feel that they will be supported to grow I think it would be easier for them to integrate technology in their education. By collaboration teachers can support each other and learn from each other by giving each other feedback or sharing ideas.

-          Keep on going!

Keep in mind that working with technology is not something teachers only have to learn once. Education is constantly changing and also new technologies will be constantly developed. This is why integrating technology in education is not an isolated process but ongoing. This is why most of above points must be repeated once in a while. We must continue to give  teachers time and support for integrating technologies.

Conclusion
First, looking back at working on this assignment, I’m glad I did choose the challenge of designing a professional development instead of the obvious choice of designing a lesson. I think I learned a lot from this, like starting with a good theoretical framework as guidelines to design, keeping the practical view in mind too and using different evaluation forms for measuring TPACK.
Then, I have learned that working with TPACK can be very valuable for teachers. Knowledge of this model is also important for educational designers because they are directly involved when they design something for teachers. And finally I have thought of some ideas to stimulate teachers to integrate technology in education, from which the main important ideas are to give teachers enough time and support.