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The TPACK framework has been developed to help educators, researchers, and policy makers better understand teacher knowledge across three components: Content (CK), Pedagogy (PK), and Technology (TK) (Mishra, et al., 2011). Although widely used across education technology, TPACK has yet to be widely applied to support metacognitive programs (even ones delivered and dependent upon technology). As such, TPACK provides a familiar yet unique theoretical lens to better understand teacher success and challenges across a wide variety of school settings.
Specifically, TPACK addresses three components:
· Technological knowledge (the means): teachers’ knowledge of the online Learner Portfolio platform and other chosen lesson delivery tools
· Pedagogical knowledge (the how): teachers’ understanding of metacognition, dispositions and the Project Zero Thinking Routines (Ritchhart & Church, 2020)
· Content knowledge (the what): teachers’ understanding of the curriculum area being taught.
When applied to the current metacognitive efforts, TPACK provides a framework for separating the various components of program implementation for understanding the relationships created when areas overlap:
· TCK (Technological Content Knowledge): Describes the reciprocal relationship between technology and content.
· PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge): How specific pedagogical practices relate to the content taught.
· TPK (Technological Pedagogical Knowledge): How technology can constrain and afford pedagogical practices.
A larger multi-year, mixed methods study was designed to examine the implementation and outcomes of a new metacognitive project across a diverse, international sample of G2-G8 classrooms. To inform implementation efforts and landscape of teacher beliefs and practices, baseline survey data was collected and analyzed from participating and non-participating classroom teachers at program launch (Spring 2024).
A second teacher survey was conducted in the same classrooms in Fall 2024 providing an updated measure of teacher practices and beliefs. Data from across both survey administrations is analyzed within the scope of the TPACK framework, looking specifically at how teachers’ technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge relates to their early-level implementation of metacognitive practices and emerging student outcomes.
Data Sources:
As part of a larger, private education organization with a central mission, all schools volunteered to be part of the research. The 29 participating schools span 13 countries and focus on students ages 8 and 14 years old.
As part of the multi-year IRB-approved study, a pre-post teacher survey measured teacher beliefs toward metacognition, their experience with metacognitive practices, and their students’ progress in metacognition and other skills. Teachers were provided active consent to include their anonymized responses in the study, resulting in 387 completed responses from 21 schools. To provide broader perspective and control, an additional 331 teacher surveys were solicited across 56 schools not participating in the program, but affiliated with the same central school organization.
All data cleaning, analyses, and summaries were conducted using R v. 4.3.3. Figures were created using ggplot2 package while psych package was employed for factor analysis.
Using the initial baseline teacher survey responses, the research team reviewed all survey items to identify 23 questions directly related to teachers’ baseline knowledge, readiness, and beliefs towards the newly introduced metacognition project. The team then assigned each question to one of the TPACK components: technological knowledge (TK),
pedagogical knowledge (PK), or content knowledge (CK), such that a total of 7 TK, 11 PK, and 5 CK questions were initially identified.
Three TPACK-aligned factors (TK, PK, CK) were calculated using standardized z-scores for each teacher, with mean values imputed for missing responses. The resulting distributions showed PK scores with near-normal distribution, while TK was slightly negatively skewed and CK positively skewed. Weak correlations among the three factors, with the highest being .07 between CK and TK, confirm that each factor represents a distinct construct of teacher knowledge, generally supporting the TPACK model's applicability in this investigation of metacognition program implementation.
Teacher background/demographics:
Despite a large amount of observed variance across the baseline sample, there was fairly limited variation in teachers TPACK knowledge and beliefs across demographic variables, suggesting that TPACK knowledge was not overtly related to the grade level and subject specialty of teachers at the onset of the metacognition program. Similarly, only small differences across TPACK knowledge were related to teachers’ personal demographic data, such as their gender or the number of years they have taught throughout their career and in their current school setting.
The analysis explored how teachers’ TK, PK, and CK varied within and across each of the different school settings. Specifically, using the TPACK framework to
calculate average factor scores for each participating school (with ≥10 teacher survey responses), the researchers found there was significant variation observed in baseline teacher knowledge across the 12 participating schools with an adequately large number of survey responses.
Collectively, there was greater variance and more pronounced patterns in teachers’ CK, PK, and TK levels across individual participating schools than across teachers’ grade level, subject specialty, or teaching tenure. Simply put, the patterns of CK, PK, and TK levels demonstrate how each school’s unique history,
mission, culture and community contribute to a myriad of baseline conditions associated with teacher readiness for the metacognition project at the time of the baseline survey. The second administration of the teacher survey provides additional data exploring how demographic and school-associated factors shifted, and where, during the first year of the metacognition program.
Teachers’ emerging use of metacognitive practices:
Looking across the baseline teachers' intention to “use the lesson delivery platform” from the metacognition project, a strong positive slope/correlation was observed for TK indicating teachers with increased technological knowledge were much more likely to use the lesson delivery platform then teachers who rated weaker in TK. In other words, teachers' self-assessment of their technology knowledge was positively related to teacher's intention to use the metacognitive resources and program with their class. For this same sample of teachers at the beginning of program launch, PK and CK exhibited a slightly negative relationship with teachers' use of the lesson delivery platform. Given the metacognition lesson platform is technology-based and delivered through an online platform, the sharp contrast between the TK scales and the PK and CK scales underscore the importance of observing different teacher strengths at the program's onset.
Exploring teacher knowledge scales and emerging metacognitive practices, the analysis also explored
specific examples of teachers' likelihood to use the metacognition project to have students “capture of evidence of learning”. Here, both CK and TK scales exhibited somewhat negative associations with teachers’ use of the Learner Portfolio for “student capture of evidence of learning”, such that teachers with increased CK and TK were somewhat less likely to engage in this type of intended program use. Teacher PK exhibited a slight, but positive relationship with their intended use of the program for “student capture of evidence of learning”, across the baseline sample.
Emerging student disposition outcomes:
Concluding this investigation into teachers’ baseline knowledge and experiences, the relationship between teachers’ calculated TK, PK, and CK levels was explored across two student disposition outcome factors: Factor 1: Relationship between teacher TPACK knowledge and students' current dispositions (16% of variance) and Factor 2: Relationship between teacher TPACK knowledge and recent changes in students' dispositions (35% of variance).
Looking collectively across the baseline TPACK models, TK was found to be the most notable predictor. For many teachers in the baseline conditions and emerging settings, technology serves as the most pronounced obstacle (or enabler) to the metacognition project and resources. These results facilitate a deeper discussion on the challenges and opportunities for incorporating a metacognitive program and practices into existing curriculum and support new opportunities for global schools in leveraging technology to address a broader range of personal, social, and academic goals.
In addition, this inquiry offers a promising application of the TPACK framework to help stakeholders better understand and incorporate metacognitive practices in developing a broader range of students' personal, social, and academic success. Specifically, the study found the TPACK framework provides 1) increased insight and understanding into teacher practices/beliefs and 2) opportunities for increasing participating teachers' strength/fidelity of implementation of the metacognition project through a useful and potentially familiar framework.
In addition to demonstrating new international models for implementing metacognitive practices and tools across primary and secondary classrooms around the world, the results highlight the importance and value of using TPACK as a framework to better comprehend how a teacher's technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge relate to their baseline and early-level implementation of metacognitive practices and emerging student outcomes.
The results showcase the power of using TPACK as a theoretical model to inform early implementation of initiatives within schools and enable teachers and senior leaders to uncover actionable insights that can be used to support new projects. For example, baseline results consistently found teacher attitudes towards educational technology played a more significant role in teachers likelihood to leverage metacognitive practices than their pedagogical or content knowledge. As such, these results underscore the importance of technology as a critical component of any new educational approach and reminds researchers, educators, and school leaders the importance of teachers’ technological knowledge. Finally, this study showcases the vital importance of school culture and values during early adoption of a new program.
Mishra, P., Koehler, M. J., & Henriksen, D. (2011). The Seven Trans-Disciplinary Habits of Mind: Extending the TPACK Framework Towards 21st Century Learning. Educational Technology, 51(2), 22–28. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44429913
Ritchhart, R. & Church, M. (2020). The power of making thinking visible: Practices to engage and empower all learners. John Wiley & Sons.
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