Teachers, technologies and the concept of integration

The integration of digital technologies in educational settings has not been simple. While technologies themselves are often credited with potential for increasing student engagement in learning, the integration of technologies with teaching practice continues to be problematic in some settings. Levels of technology uptake, or integration with teaching practice, have attracted a great deal of research attention, with significant attention paid to the range of barriers likely to impact teacher use of technologies including, in particular, teacher attitudes towards technologies (e.g. Ertmer, 2005). More recently, the study of barriers in terms of teacher attitudes or skills in using technologies has begun to take a more nuanced approach. Research now considers how integration can be supported by relating knowledge about technologies to pedagogical and content knowledge. Thus, the popularity of the concept of “TPACK” (Koehler & Mishra, 2009) in education has risen. Research now also considers teachers’ understandings, perspectives and personal orientation to technology use in education and in supporting and fostering the learning of their students. This issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education takes a focus on pre-service educators’ and in-service teachers’ use of technologies and the relationship these technologies hold to their identities as teachers, use of technologies as a teacher, and the role of design processes in fostering the use of TPACK as a pedagogical construct for understanding technology integration in teachers’ classrooms. The journal opens with a contribution from Koh, Chai and Tsai. This paper considers the extent to which the concept of TPACK aligns with Singaporean teachers’ capacities for lesson design dispositions and lesson design practices. They present an argument by which TPACK itself is not considered the predominant vehicle for fostering technology integration in classrooms. Rather, the relationship between TPACK and teachers’ design dispositions and lesson design practices are situated as an aspect of technology integration. This paper reports the development of a survey instrument intended to measure the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of TPACK, their design dispositions and lesson design practices. TPACK alone is characterised as an insufficient basis for supporting technology integration by teachers. Koh et al., therefore, argue that greater attention should be paid to how teachers engage in design dispositions and lesson design practices when using technologies to support student learning. Two further papers, both from Turkey, also engage with TPACK. For example, Tokmak’s work with pre-service early childhood educators illustrates how developing and designing games for use by young children increased early childhood educators’ understandings of TPACK. Tokmak argues that increased understandings of TPACK form a basis for teachers’ use of technologies in early childhood settings. Meanwhile, Cengiz’s paper considers the interface between physical education provision and the concept of TPACK, also with pre-service educators. This paper focuses on fostering the capacity of pre-service educators to develop websites dedicated to explaining planned and enacted physical education practices, including the development of resources related to a range of physical skills. This study suggests that TPACK should not be excluded as a concept for Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 2015 Vol. 43, No. 5, 375–377, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1359866X.2015.1074817