Contextualizing Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) for School Leaders' Instructional Leadership for a New Culture of Learning

• In Event: 14.039 - Addressing the Complexity of Teaching With Technology: Context and Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Abstract

Effective school leadership today is defined beyond the principal’s competence in administrative and operational duties. Increasingly, the involvement of principals in aspects of teaching and learning has been given greater emphasis. It has also created an important agenda for research and educational reforms related to effective technology implementation in schools. Within educational research, studies focusing on building teachers’ competency for technology integration abound. A notable area is the use of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework for characterizing teachers’ competency for technology integration. It is widely acknowledged that many TPACK studies centre on preservice and inservice teachers (such as Angeli & Valanides, 2013; Kramarski & Michalsky, 2010; Chai, Koh, Ho & Tsai, 2012). In this paper, we put forward our argument on the need to develop TPACK for principals with the goal of developing them as instructional leaders.

While principals cannot ignore their administrative and operational duties, their role as an instructional leader is paramount in rethinking learning in the digital age. New media has shaped the learning environments of our learners and led to an emergent culture of learning whereby the ethos of learning are notably different from the dominant culture of learning observed in many school practices. The emergent culture of learning necessitates a new TPACK for principals who play a significant role in designing schools fit for the 21st century. TPACK is a form of situated knowledge creation grounded in context (Porras-Hernández & Salinas-Amescua, 2013). In this paper, we present our working framework for TPACK for principals as instructional leaders in the fluid context of the emergent culture of learning. Our suggested TPACK framework draws on Bronfenbrenner’s (2005) five levels of ecological context on the ground that TPACK is better understood as a multilevel construct. Unlike many TPACK studies, we focus on principals as instructional leaders and our framework is posited beyond the micro level, which is associated with the classroom in many TPACK studies on teachers. Using a case study of planning and implementing a TPACK course for principals, we explain our notion of collaborative TPACK as an interlocking multi-level construct. It is our intent to further dialogues on how TPACK may be instrumental in empowering school leaders who are keen on appropriating the emergent culture of learning for formal learning as they gear their schools into the 21st century learning.

Authors

• Ching Sing Chai, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University

• Joyce Hwee Ling Koh, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University

• Lynde Tan, National Institute of Education - Nanyang Technological University

• Chin-Chung Tsai, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology