The concept of PCK has had tremendous influence in educational research. And more recently, TPACK has emerged as a new concept. As your posts emphasized in this forum, PCK suggests that educators have (or ought to inspire to have) a specialized knowledge base that goes beyond content or disciplinary knowledge or knowledge about how to teach. As shared earlier, Shulman calls the knowledge of a teacher an “amalgam.” The amalgam includes the two aforementioned knowledge bases plus knowing how to teach particular content (or as some view, what is it about the content that makes this teaching method appropriate). In addition to the techne (or the how we teach particular content or topic areas), Aristotle suggests that we also articulate the value of doing so this way.
The technological domain or (T) put forward this idea that teachers not only need PCK but knowledge of how to teach particular content with particular technologies (TPCK or TPACK). TPACK is a powerful concept that has been reflected in recent dissertations on it. I have written about TPACK in some of my papers (Khan, S. (2011). New pedagogies on teaching science with computer simulations. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 20(3), 215-232).
In a recent conversation with Punya Mishra, I talked with him about the TPACK concept. We discussed how do we best delineate the “interstitial spaces” of this concept. Dr. Mishra shared with me that he is impressed by new questions from students that have taken this concept and attempted to delineate mergers where T meets C, K, and P. What do these look like? Your posts have begun this conversation this week. We shall endeavour in our discussions in Module B and C to think in terms of PCK and TPACK using topics of your interest.
Sincerely,
Samia