The Leader of TPACK

The Significant Item:
"(W)hile hundreds of studies claim TPACK as theoretical framing, very little theoretical development of the model has occurred" (Graham, 2011)

(With apologies in advance for this week's entry--I returned "home" from Brazil a few days ago only to find that I don't really have a "home". There was a massive flood in my condo building (Ruptured hot water supply line), and my home sweet home is completely torn apart for repairs. Oddly enough, working on the course was actually easier while I was away than it has been since my return, so this week has been a bit of a scramble, and this may not be my most cogent or substantive contribution! That said, on with the show...)

A theory isn't a theory without theory. As tautological as that may seem, I was having some problems with TPACK, but wasn't quite able to pin down the reason for my discomfort until I read the Graham article. Suddenly, my qualms made sense to me.

With your kind permission, please allow me an anecdotal tangent (or two). I am sufficiently (painfully!) metacognitively aware of my own approach to learning. I simply am not one of those people who can simply plunge headlong into something without a sufficient understanding of "the big picture". I will illustrate with two examples. The first is my recent attempt to learn to play the ukulele. Before I could even pick up the instrument and try to play a single note or chord (practical learning/knowledge), I had to understand to my own satisfaction everything about it on an abstract level. I learned about the history of the instrument--its origins and evolution. I learned about the composition of the instrument--materials, form, and so on. I refreshed my memory about how vibrating strings produce sound. I also refreshed my memory about music theory--the relationships between particular frequencies and so forth. I know this sounds incredibly odd to most people, but until I had done all of that (and more), I literally could not imagine simply picking the thing up and starting to try to play it in a vacuum.

The same applied to my recent experience of studying the become an ESL instructor. The program simply plunged into "how" without (for me) sufficient contextual information about the history and theory of the field. I had to read up on all of that for my own sanity; otherwise I would not have been able to complete the program.

These are, as I said, personal anecdotes (and perhaps illustrations of a rather unusual way of approaching learning), but I find them highly relevant. I simply cannot see how people can, in good conscience, "do" anything without a) building a robust body of theoretical knowledge in their given domain, and b) understanding that body of theoretical knowledge. Yes, 16th Century "doctors" did their best with the limited understanding they had, but we live in a world where we have access to astonishing knowledge, and to "do" education without a sufficient theoretical framework--which practitioners must study before going out into the field to educate--seems akin to some of those 16th Century medical practices!

As Graham says further on, "One intuitively recognizes the importance of integrating knowledge domains related to pedagogy, subject matter, and technology. However, the simplicity of the model hides a deep underlying level of complexity, in part because all of the constructs being integrated are broad and ill-defined." (Graham, 2011)

Graham ultimately concludes that TPACK has "the potential to provide a strong foundation for future technology integration research," but that significant work remains to provide sufficient rigor and robustness to realize this potential. (Graham, 2011)

Graham's position resonates incredibly powerfully with me--not only with respect to TPACK but to much of what I am beginning to learn is the "state of the art" in the realm of educational theory. To borrow a word from last week, I find much of it to be incredibly "squishy". Not only am I personally predisposed to "theory first, then practice" as a general paradigm, but I come from previous educational worlds where theory was crucial (chemistry, film theory, and architectural theory).

Yes, there is something undeniably intuitively seductive about integrating knowledge domains. And something that can be expressed in a simple tripartite Venn diagram, as TPACK frequently is, seems elegantly simple and, again, seductive. But I remain leery. As I said, I had vague and undefined qualms, which have only been amplified by reading the Graham article.

The obvious implication of all of this for both practice and future investigation is that I agree with Graham that much more work needs to be done for it to have convincing validity. I understand the sense of urgency in a world that is evolving so rapidly, but I would prefer to create robust theories and models, with strong theoretical foundations, rather than lurch from fad to fad.

Reference:
Graham, C. R. (2011). Theoretical considerations for understanding technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). Computers & Education, 57(3), 1953-1960.