Joshua M. Rosenberg

Context and Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK): A Systematic Review

Abstract Context is an important aspect of educational research and the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) framework, but is often missing from TPACK research, or its specific meaning is not clear. To provide a systematic and comprehensive view of the extent to which context is included in such research, and to understand the meaning of context when it is included, we conducted a systematic review of publications about TPACK. Context was included in descriptions, explanations, or operationalizations of TPACK among 36% of the 193 empirical journal articles we examined. When context was included, classroom and school factors and those related to teachers were more likely to be included than those related to students and society. The grounds for context being included among around one-third of the articles and why some contextual factors are examined more than others are discussed. Implications for practice and recommendations for future research focus on investigating the complexity of practice, the development of measures that include context, and aligning TPACK and educational technology research with other disciplines through greater attention to context. (Keywords: TPACK, technology integration, teacher knowledge, context).

An investigation of State Educational Twitter Hashtags (SETHs) as affinity spaces

Affinity spaces are digital or physical spaces in which participants interact with one another around content of shared interest and through a common portal (or platform). Among teachers, some of the largest affinity spaces may be those organized around hashtags on Twitter: These spaces are public, largely unmoderated, and thriving, yet very little is known about them, especially those based in geographical areas such as American states. This paper examines these potential affinity spaces by providing the first large-scale study of them in the form of an examination of 47 State Educational Twitter Hashtags (SETHs). Collecting over 550,000 tweets over 6 months, our analysis focused on who is participating in SETHs, how active participants are, and when participation occurred. We found support for two of Gees tenets of affinity spaces, in particular many interactions through a shared portal. Though the content of tweets were not the focus, this study’s findings lend support to efforts to identify which particular SETHs will be best suited to subsequent analysis of their content and what times subsequent analysis might most productively focus on. We discuss implications for how we conceive of teacher professional development and suggest directions for future research focused on the content of tweets associated with SETHs.

Examining Relationships among Choice, Affect, and Engagement in Summer STEM Programs

Out-of-school time programs focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) have proliferated recently because they are seen as having potential to appeal to youth and enhance STEM interest. Although such programs are not mandatory, youth are not always involved in making the choice about their participation and it is unclear whether youth’s involvement in the choice to attend impacts their program experiences. Using data collected from experience sampling, traditional surveys, and video recordings, we explore relationships among youth’s choice to attend out-of-school time programs (measured through a pre-survey) and their experience of affect (i.e., youth experience sampling ratings of happiness and excitement) and engagement (i.e., youth experience sampling ratings of concentration and effort) during program activities. Data were collected from a racially and ethnically diverse sample of 10–16 year old youth (n = 203; 50% female) enrolled in nine different summer STEM programs targeting underserved youth. Multilevel analysis indicated that choice and affect are independently and positively associated with momentary engagement. Though choice to enroll was a significant predictor of momentary engagement, positive affective experiences during the program may compensate for any decrements to engagement associated with lack of choice. Together, these findings have implications for researchers, parents, and educators and administrators of out-of-school time programming.

For all intents and purposes: Twitter as a foundational technology for teachers:

Twitter is increasingly accepted as an important educational technology and has been shown to serve a range of purposes. In fact, this variety suggests that Twitter has the potential to serve as a foundational technology: one capable of supporting teachers’ learning across multiple formal and informal contexts. To explore this possibility, we examined the purposes that Twitter serves in one educational technology graduate program. We collected over 9000 tweets containing any of 12 program-related hashtags and coded a sample of them to describe the purposes they served. This resulted in six themes: contribute to disciplinary conversation, engage with disciplinary conversation, build community, make connections with other communities, ask for and provide support, and unclear or irrelevant purpose. These themes—and the varied contexts they were associated with—suggest that Twitter serves as a foundational technology in this program and has the potential to do so in other educational communities.

tidyLPA: An R Package to Easily Carry Out Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) Using Open-Source or Commercial Software

Researchers are often interested in identifying homogeneous subgroups within heterogeneous samples on the basis of a set of measures, such as profiles of individuals’ motivation (i.e., their values, competence beliefs, and achievement goals). Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) is a statistical method for identifying such groups, or latent profiles, and is a special case of the general mixture model where all measured variables are continuous (Harring & Hodis, 2016; Pastor, Barron, Miller, & Davis, 2007). The tidyLPA package allows users to specify different models that determine whether and how different parameters (i.e., means, variances, and covariances) are estimated, and to specify and compare different solutions based on the number of profiles extracted.

Introduction to the second edition of the TPACK handbook

In 2005 Koehler and Mishra (2005) introduced the term Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK, currently referred to as TPACK) as a conceptual framework to describe the knowledge base for teachers to effectively teach with technology. Since then TPACK was embraced by many scholars and practitioners. This chapter’s reflections are based on developments in theoretical views on TPACK since its inception. An extensive review of the literature on TPACK (Voogt, Fisser, Pareja Roblin, Tondeur & van Braak, 2013) showed that the widespread use of the TPACK framework also has lead to different interpretations of the framework and questioned some of the underpinnings of TPACK. These different interpretations concern in particular on the way technology is understood and the nature of the knowledge that is communicated in the framework. We first use insights from the philosophy of technology to reflect on the implications of adding technology as a knowledge domain. Because TPACK aims to describe the knowledge base of teaching with technology, understandings on what teacher knowledge is and how this can be developed is addressed next. Finally we elaborate how teaching with technology can be developed, and particularly address learning technology by design.