Technological pedagogical content knowledge in pre-service teacher education: Research in progress

Abstract

The Israeli Ministry of Education launched the IT National Initiative Program (ITNIP) in 2011, with the objective of transforming teacher education in order to meet the demands of the twenty-first century [1, 2]. The ITNIP program emphasizes the need to develop required skills among students, including ICT literacy, critical thinking, inquiry and problem solving, communicating and teamwork, self-oriented learning and ethics and cyber awareness. The initiative focuses on teachers as agents of change, on the need to teach them how to integrate ICT wisely into teaching and how to develop innovative pedagogy that will enhance learning and teaching processes. Implementation of the ITNIP began in the 2011–2012 school year. The present study focuses on two colleges of education that participate in the ITNIP: a large college located in the center of Israel and a small college from the northern part of Israel. The study examines the ability of pre-service teachers to integrate technological knowledge with pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) in their teaching. The participants are 280 pre-service teachers from the large college and 200 pre-service teachers from the small college. Jewish as well as Arab pre-service teachers study at both colleges. The study compares the integration of TPACK in the large college to its integration in the small college. The study will try to determine whether demographic variables (gender, ethnicity, age) influence the integration of TPACK by the pre-service teachers.