Teachers' TPACK enactment in a Community of Practice

Abstract

This study sought to understand secondary school teachers’ pedagogical adoption of digital technology. The literature review indicated that, while numerous adoption-diffusion models had been used as the basis to understand technology adoption in different populations, the particular contexts in which secondary school teachers work means that adoption-diffusion models do not adequately address the complexity of teachers’ workplaces. A popular way of exploring teachers’ use of digital technologies has been the technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). While TPACK has been often used as a framework to measure teachers’ knowledge and to explain teachers’ use and non-use of digital technologies, little attention had been paid to the ways in which in-service teachers develop their TPACK. This research focusses on the contextual influences that shape teachers’ TPACK development and enactment in their workplace settings by examining teachers’ TPACK enactment through a situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) lens, in particular, Wenger’s (1998) conceptualisation of Communities of Practice. To understand the relationship between Communities of Practice and TPACK, this research was driven by a single research question: How are teachers’ TPACK enactments influenced in a Community of Practice? A case study methodology generated cases of four teachers in one Australian school around their enactment of TPACK. The cases also drew on data from their colleagues who had been invited by the teachers to participate in the study as their key professional learning colleagues. In total, ten participants contributed to the four cases reported in this investigation. While all the cases were located in the same physical context, the ways in which the participants enacted their TPACK were very different and explorations of participants’ practices and identity development helped to explain teachers’ TPACK enactment. The findings from this thesis support six propositions regarding the influence of Communities of Practice on in-service teachers’ TPACK enactment: (1) Processes of identity development and practice constitute aspects of context in which an individual enacts their TPACK; (2) Membership of a CoP is more complex than newcomers and old-timers and includes near-peers and liminal members; (3) The enactment of TPACK among teachers in a CoP is not always consensual or coherent; (4) Challenges to the assumptions of consensus implicit in concepts such as joint enterprise, mutual engagement and shared repertoire, are revealed in communal negotiations involving TPACK enactment and reification. As such, the reification of practice is influenced by professionals’ perceptions of power and authority; (5) A CoP can have multiple, simultaneous and context-specific joint enterprises which can challenge the relationships between the forms of knowledge underpinning TPACK enactment; (6) Mutual engagement reveals TPACK as knowledge in the making. The thesis outlines three implications for teachers’ TPACK enactment in a CoP along with a number of recommendations for future research.