Knowledge-Building Communities

Inservice teacher preparation must balance theory with practical experiences to support teachers for integrating their theoretical knowledge into their teaching practice. Online instruction provides the potential for practical education experiences but questions how classroom observations might be conducted in the teachers' classroom practices, particularly where teachers are geographically dispersed. This chapter describes a research-based application of a teacher education course framed by the online TPACK learning trajectory using the systems pedagogical approach and guided active participation for blending online and practical experiences in a course directed toward enhancing teachers' TPACK. This multiple case descriptive study of an online analogue to traditional classroom observations examines the use of the Scoop Notebook for gathering classrooms observations. The online observation technique gathers the inservice teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), more specifically their TPACK-of-practice. The Scoop Electronic Portfolio development process describes teachers' active engagement in their classrooms, transitioning their scholarly theoretical knowledge to practical knowledge accompanied with in-depth, rich reflections on classroom actions and artifacts. The course blends their practical experiences through the Scoop process with asynchronous community of learners' explorations and discourse around instructional strategies for integrating technologies. The benefits of this blended work with the Scoop Electronic Portfolio with an online community of learners' collaboration and inquiry about instructional strategies demonstrates the participants' thinking about teaching with technologies in ways that transformed their TPACK. The results describe the teachers as engaged in action research using Scoop artifacts as objects to think with for ultimately transforming their TPACK-of-practice.

Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age

Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) is a dynamic theoretical description of teachers' knowledge for designing, implementing, and evaluating curriculum and instruction with digital technologies. TPACK portrays the complex interaction among content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and technological knowledge for guiding all teachers (K-12 and higher education faculty) in the strategic thinking of when, where, and how to direct students' learning with technologies. Teacher educators' and educational researchers' acceptance of the TPACK construct mirrors the acceptance of its parent construct of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). The importance of teachers' continued practice in integrating technologies is essential for extending and enhancing their TPACK. Connections with the knowledge-of-practice construct suggest calling TPACK TPACK-of-practice to more accurately describe the process of the knowledge development efforts for guiding inservice and preservice teachers in gaining, developing, and transforming their knowledge for teaching as new and more powerful technologies emerge for integration in education. Ultimately, the very nature of the TPACK construct describes a transformation of teachers' knowledge for teaching in the 21st century – a century reframed by robust and advanced technologies that have been integrated into the fabric of a more complex social, cultural, and educational environment.

Developing the Knowledge for Integrating Digital Technologies

Program leaders at Oregon State University proposed the development of an online Master of Science degree program for transforming K-12 inservice teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) for integrating 21st century technologies. The challenge was to identify instructional strategies for an online professional development environment dominated by asynchronous connections. The instructional team identified recommendations in transformative adult learning theory through the combination of key educational experiences with discourse and critical reflection toward transforming adults' thinking and understanding. This chapter presents an examination of the combination using spreadsheets as the technology integrated in science and mathematics instruction. The technology-infused learning experiences modeled inquiry tasks for engaging participants as students learning about and with spreadsheets followed by thinking and designing plans to integrate spreadsheets in the curriculum. The participants engaged in inquiry, communication and collaboration in these spreadsheet explorations. Discourse in small groups, communities of learners, and individual critical reflections revealed transformation in their thinking as identified through the four TPACK components. The discourse engagements also demonstrated that this shared knowledge supported the participants' individual knowledge development. Their reflections displayed transformations in their thinking that identified the use of spreadsheets as algebraic reasoning tools in the science/mathematics curriculum. The results provided direction for using this combination of strategies in the design of the online, graduate level, MS program with the goal of identifying best instructional practices for online, technology-infused instruction towards cognitive gains that enhanced the participants' TPACK transformations.

Online Continued Learning for All Educators

The design and empirical support for the online TPACK learning trajectory emerged through a multi-year research process that provided a thorough, in-depth description of how the tools (community of learners and reflection) and processes (shared/individual knowledge development and inquiry) support the scaffolding of systems pedagogical reasoning approach for integrating TPACK content of subject matter content, pedagogy, and technologies, thus modeling the knowledge teachers need for teaching with technology. The learning, involving a research-based trajectory and framed within a social metacognitive constructivist lens, engaged inservice teachers in knowledge-building communities using inquiry-based, problem-based learning, guiding them in reframing their knowledge for designing student-directed, problem-based learning with the integration of technologies. Limitations and future research extended the understanding of TPACK through online teacher education continued learning in graduate programs and other professional development programs designed to support teachers in rethinking and reframing their knowledge for teaching with technologies. Guided active participation and systems pedagogical reasoning provided key ideas for engaging the online TPACK learning trajectory to guide the thinking about and implementing online teacher education professional development. Multiple factors framed the thinking about future designs for these online programs aimed at transforming inservice teachers' TPACK. Future challenges include whether and how online programs might be designed for developing all teachers' TPACK transformations – preservice, inservice, and higher education faculty.

Scaffolding Instructional Practices in Online Problem-Based Inquiry Instructional Design

The systems pedagogical approach enhances teachers' pedagogical reasoning for integrating multiple technologies in inquiry, communication, and collaboration. However, inservice teachers must rely on educational experiences for learning to incorporate the systems thinking with their current TPACK understanding. The systems pedagogical approach supports the TPACK online learning trajectory through technological pedagogical thinking and reasoning as teacher educators design opportunities for transforming teachers' TPACK. The research in this chapter focuses on the impact of this systems approach on teachers' technological pedagogical reasoning as they learn about integrating multiple technologies in their classrooms. The course design takes advantage of knowledge-building communities through the application of the online TPACK learning trajectory. This research-based application highlights how the systems pedagogical scaffolding approach supports problem-based inquiry learning for reframing teachers' TPACK towards integrating digital image and video technologies with 21st century inquiry thinking skills: critical thinking, creative thinking, communicating, and collaborating. Through such designed key experiences, teachers gain experiences with multiple instructional strategies for collaboration, communication, and inquiry in designing problem-based online inquiry learning. The process guides them in refining their mental models for integrating multiple technologies in teaching that relies on an increasingly complex technological pedagogical understanding as they learn about the technologies and teaching with those technologies. Participants' products, interactions, and reflections demonstrate their engagement in high levels of thinking and learning with digital image and video technologies. Such a systems pedagogical understanding is at the core of teachers' development of the technological pedagogical reasoning for supporting the transformation of their TPACK.

Problem-Based Online Learning Instructional Design

Compiling the information from the research efforts for establishing knowledge-building communities through the application of the online TPACK learning trajectory, the research effort proceeded to implement and examine instructional design for scaffolding problem-based online learning experiences for transforming teachers' technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). This chapter focused on active learning methods including collaboration, cooperative learning, and problem-based inquiry learning that emphasized guided active participation for engaging both participants and instructors. A multiple case, descriptive study provided the research insights to illuminate the incorporation of the tools and processes in the online TPACK learning trajectory situated in a social metacognitive constructivist instructional framework for graduate coursework. In one course in the program, inservice K-12 teachers were directed toward rethinking and redefining teaching and learning, in a 21st century literacy for taking advantage of multiple digital technologies. The research identified insights about the incorporation of the key tools (community of learners and reflection) and processes (shared/individual knowledge development and inquiry) in the online learning trajectory for reframing teachers' TPACK through guided active participation. Three themes revealed how the online learning trajectory incorporated these tools and processes to enhance the participants' learning: the tools and processes are needed for constructing knowledge, for transitioning the participant's thinking as a student to that of a teacher, and for recognizing the importance of guided active participation for problem-based learning with technologies.

Tools and Processes for Online Knowledge-Building Communities

Knowledge-building communities exploit the combination of inquiry experiences, discourse, and critical reflections. They facilitate learning through collaborative explorations and investigations where the explorations might involve using new and more robust digital technologies as learning tools. Such communities have the potential for supporting teachers in transforming their technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) as they explore new technology-infused experiences. The challenge for this researcher team was to identify and implement a plan for establishing knowledge-building communities that effectively transformed inservice teachers' TPACK through online instruction. Using a design-based research methodology, a social metacognitive constructivist instructional lens was used to frame the online learning trajectory for organizing the course content and experiences by interweaving descriptive inquiry tasks with specific pedagogical strategies. These strategies included discourse and critical reflections for encouraging a transformation in teachers' knowledge through experiences in knowledge-building communities. The resulting trajectory provided a dynamic interaction of key tools and instructional processes for scaffolding the content for transforming TPACK understanding. The resulting researcher-conjectured, empirically supported online TPACK learning trajectory provided guidelines for teacher educators in the design of new online coursework for guiding teachers towards understanding the pedagogical challenges involved in orchestrating and managing knowledge-building communities as they integrate multiple technologies in their classroom instruction.