Exploring the Relationships Between In-Service Preschool Teachers’ Perceptions of Classroom Authority and Their TPACK

Abstract

Contemporary preschool teachers should be considered to have the abilities required to integrate technology into their teaching. Hence, how to integrate technology into preschool teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge is an important issue. The current study hypothesizes that preschool teachers’ perceptions of classroom authority could be one of the important factors affecting their technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). The purpose of this study was to explore the relationships between preschool teachers’ perceptions of classroom authority and their TPACK. Two questionnaires, the Preschool Teacher Authority Scale (PTAS) and the TPACK survey, were administered to 303 in-service preschool teachers in Taiwan. The cluster analyses revealed that the preschool teachers were characterized into four distinct clusters of teacher authority according to their responses on the PTAS, which were labelled as the clusters of Low engagement, Surface constructivist, Teacher dominance and High commitment. The ANOVA analyses showed that the preschool teachers in the Teacher dominance and High commitment clusters had greater agreement than other teachers with teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. In addition, for all the technological related knowledge (TCK, TPK and TPACK), the preschool teachers in the High commitment cluster perceived technology-related knowledge as having greater importance than did other teachers.