Developing a Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) survey for university teachers

Abstract

Existing Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) surveys target pre-service or K-12 teachers, whereas none have been specifically adapted for university teachers. To adequately measure TPACK-competences of university teachers, the specific characteristics of teaching in a university context need to be taken into account. Survey items that are not contextualized to the target participants increase the risk of measurement error and bias. Therefore, we adapted existing TPACK surveys to specifically measure university teachers’ competences for teaching with technology. We shortlisted five existing TPACK surveys and scrutinized their respective subscales and items. We then adapted these items to more adequately capture context-specific experiences for university teachers to ensure construct validity. We collected two waves of data to test our adapted TPACK survey, which comprises 31 items distributed across seven subscales, among teachers from various disciplines in a large university. With confirmatory factor analysis, we confirmed the seven-factor structure of the adapted TPACK survey in both data waves. Moreover, the seven subscales showed adequate internal consistency. An exploration of TPACK competences among teachers from different disciplines showed both similarities as well as dissimilarities. An example of similarities is that university teachers from all disciplines felt most competent in CK and PCK, while they reported relatively low competence ratings for TPCK and TPK. Besides, an example of dissimilarities is PK; teachers from the discipline of science and engineering reported the highest score compared to other disciplines in the prior wave, while they evaluated themselves third lowest in the latter wave.