How pre-service English teachers enact TPACK in the context of web-conferencing teaching: A design thinking approach

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is a teacher knowledge construct in relation to integrating technology into teaching. However, whether this theoretical concept exists in practice remains contentious. To ascertain the nature of TPACK, the present study aimed to understand how six pre-service English teachers enacted various forms of TPACK through design thinking while considering contextual problems that impacted on their web-conferencing teaching over the course of 14 weeks. This study examined the design conversations in which six distance teachers discussed ways to design online teaching materials and activities as well as to solve any contextual problems encountered. Through quantitative content analysis of coded post-teaching discussions and qualitative analysis of interviews, it was found that while the teachers’ discussions conspicuously displayed an orientation towards Pedagogical Content Knowledge, as opposed to technology-based knowledge, their discussions were particularly not associated with Technological Pedagogical Knowledge. In addition, two contextual factors were found to influence their web-conferencing teaching: technical problems related to sound quality were identified as a micro-level contextual factor while the teachers’ concerns about their students’ prior knowledge and short attention spans were viewed as a student-centric contextual factor. These findings provide insights into how individual TPACK subdomains were enacted through design thinking that enabled the teachers to overcome contextual problems. The present study contributes to our understanding of how TPACK enactment is mediated by the context, empirically validating TPACK construct in practice through design thinking.