Capturing student teachers’ TPACK by using T-CoRe and video-annotation as self-reflective tools for flexible learning in teacher education

ABSTRACT

The aim was to investigate how a reflective tool, the T-CoRe, in combination with annotated self-recorded videos and reflective writing, could be used to capture student teachers’ knowledge of digital technology use in their teaching. The authors used both a quantitative and a qualitative method to explore how 87 secondary science student teachers demonstrate their use of digital technologies in their teaching. The student teachers’ video annotations, alongside a written reflection of critical incidents in their teaching, constituted data for the analysis. The analysis identified technology knowledge-dependent components in relation to the TPACK framework. The outcomes suggest that providing student teachers with a reflective tool such as the T-CoRe in combination with annotated self-recorded videos has the potential to make visible aspects of their TPACK. This research proposes a method for teacher education that works to improve the way that student teachers are prepared for using digital technology.

KEYWORDS:

• T-CoRe
• digital technologies
• TPACK
• self-reflection
• teacher education

Introduction

Over recent decades there has been a growing focus on teaching and learning with digital technologies. In the context of teacher education, Tondeur et al. (2013) raised the need to address how student teachers are being prepared to use and integrate technology into their programmes. Further, among teacher communities it is expressed that the growing number of digital technologies puts high demands on teachers’ competence to support students’ learning of science. Therefore, teacher education is emphasised as crucial for preparing teachers (both pre-service and in-service) to be able to use digital technologies in meaningful ways in their professional science teaching activities. To support student teachers’ professional learning, a large amount of research on teacher education focuses on the relationship between different knowledge domains and how they are captured and understood during the teacher education programme (Hume & Berry, 2013; Loughran et al., 2004; Nilsson & Karlsson, 2019). Furthermore, to conceptualise the relationship between technology and teaching, Mishra and Koehler (2006) introduced a theoretical framework involving Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK). This framework for teachers’ knowledge about technology integration in teaching is based on the understanding that teaching is a highly complex activity that draws on many kinds of knowledge domains.

Developing teachers’ TPACK has become a major feature of teacher education and in-service teacher professional development programmes globally (Yeh et al., 2021). As such, TPACK is a complex framework that needs to be unpacked in ways that can be used to support student teachers to use technologies in teaching. This article intends to meet this need and investigates how student teachers are prepared to use and integrate technology into their teaching across different subject areas. However, to merely make use of a digital tool in prevalent instructional practices does not bring out the full potential of this technology for educational purposes. Therefore, for student teachers to appropriately incorporate technology into their teaching, they need pedagogical tools to recognise the ways that digital technology can enhance their teaching. In the article, we describe the use of a pedagogical tool for student teachers’ planning of and self-reflection on their use of digital technology, which we have named Technological Content Representation (T-CoRe).

How to use digital technology to best promote teaching and learning of a specific topic is a challenge for the educational system and especially for teacher education (Wang et al., 2019). In their study of adapting the TPACK framework for online teaching within higher education, Ouyang and Scharber (2018) ‘stress that understanding the synergies between content, pedagogy and technology and mastering ways to use these knowledges in creative, dynamic, and open ways within online teaching are vital in supporting meaningful, technology-enhanced learning’. In a synthesis of prevalent literature of preservice teachers’ TPACK development, Wang et al. (2019) concluded that future research needs to ‘improve how preservice teachers are prepared and how they actually use technology in a variety of teaching and learning contexts within their own teacher preparation program and, ultimately, in their future classrooms’ (p. 253). The authors emphasised that it is critical for teacher educators to model pre-service teachers’ use of technology in classroom situations and expand their skills to plan and execute good lessons in field experiences to develop their TPACK.

There is a need to address how student teachers are being prepared to use and integrate technology into their teacher education programmes to support new ways of teaching, rather than focusing on how to use the technology per se (Tondeur et al., 2013). In a study of Greek primary student teachers’ knowledge and skills with regards to the integration of technology in their teaching, Roussinos and Jimoyiannis (2019) found that the teachers had difficulties in combining their existing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and technological knowledge (TK) into a comprehensive body of TPACK.

To understand the use of technology in education, more knowledge is needed about the teacher–technology relationship and how student teachers give meaning to and use technologies in teaching and learning and what their motives and expectations are. ‘Quality teaching requires developing a nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between technology, content, and pedagogy, and using this understanding to develop appropriate, context-specific strategies and representations’ (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, p. 1029). In our research, we argue for the importance of student teachers’ reflections on their teaching with digital tools, and that student teachers themselves identify the need for expansion or modification of their planning for, and teaching of, a particular content.

In this article, we describe a framework to recognise and support student teachers’ self-reflection on the use of digital technology in their teaching of a specific topic. With the goal of capturing and promoting student teachers in their use of digital technology during their school-based practice, we have constructed a guiding framework for reflection on the use of digital technologies in science teaching that is supported by web-based technologies.

The framework involves three successive stages: (1) the use of a reflective tool, Technological Content Representation (T-CoRe), for planning and reflecting; (2) annotated video-recorded lessons; (3) written self-reflections on their teaching performance. A previous study of a framework for studying student teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) showed that a guiding framework that provides a reflective tool as well as analysis of video-recorded teaching is essential for a self-reflective process to become effective (Karlsson & Nilsson, 2019). Such a way of organising student teachers’ reflective work during their in-service training represents a transition from traditional approaches to more web-based systems for developing student teachers’ professional knowledge of practice.

This approach contributes to the understanding of student teachers’ technology-dependent domains in the TPACK framework and, as such, improves a crucial component of teacher education. Having student teachers explicitly articulate their reasoning of a plan-teach-reflect cycle is considered important for: a) describing the types of knowledge used in these teaching practices and b) observing how student teachers reflect on aspects of their teaching likely to influence their professional knowledge.

The aim of this research was to investigate how an adapted CoRe (Hume & Berry, 2011; Loughran et al., 2004; Nilsson & Karlsson, 2019), a T-CoRe as a reflective tool – in combination with annotated self-recorded videos and reflective writing – might contribute to capturing aspects of student teachers’ TPACK.

The research question that pertains to the data analysis is:

Which aspects of the student teachers’ knowledge of technology integration – as expressed in the TPACK framework – were captured and integrated in their self-reflections?

Technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK)

The special amalgam of knowledge that a teacher needs to possess to be an excellent teacher was first described by Shulman (1987) as pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). The concept of PCK has since then constituted the major academic construct for conceptualising the professional knowledge needed for teaching a specific topic. To capture and analyse science teachers’ PCK, Magnusson et al. (1999) proposed a commonly used model, where PCK involves four knowledge components: knowledge of science curricula, knowledge of students’ understanding of science, knowledge of assessment of scientific literacy and knowledge of instructional strategies. A special feature of PCK is that it is topic specific, unique to each science teacher, and can only be gained through teaching practice (Loughran et al., 2004). Since its introduction, PCK has been widely accepted as a useful construct for understanding the unique nature and development of teacher knowledge. Several scholars have further developed conceptualisations of PCK (e.g., Gess-Newsome, 2015; Nilsson, 2014; Nilsson & Karlsson, 2019; Park & Chen, 2012; Van Driel & Berry, 2012) as an academic construct representing specialist knowledge of practice.

While PCK integrates subject domain knowledge and pedagogical knowledge into an understanding of how particular aspects of subject matter can be organised, adapted and represented for instruction (Shulman, 1987), the conception of TPACK (Koehler & Mishra, 2005; Mishra & Koehler, 2006) adds technological knowledge that has to blend in with content and pedagogical knowledge. The integration of technology into the PCK framework has been of high interest since Koehler and Mishra introduced the concept in 2005, and the TPACK framework is used in several studies (e.g., Niess, 2005; Wang et al., 2019). Mishra and Koehler (2006) used a Venn diagram to illustrate their conceptual framework for capturing essential qualities of teacher knowledge required for technology integration in teaching (Figure 1). In this framework, knowledge of technology is involved in three technology dependent domains: Technological Knowledge (TK), Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (TPK) and Technological Content Knowledge (TCK).

Figure 1. The TPACK model image. Source http://tpack.org.

These three knowledge domains can succinctly be described as knowledge of:

• TK – what kinds of technological resources are available and how to use them;

• TPK – where and how a technology can be used to enhance pedagogical strategies for a particular task;

• TCK – how technology can make available a new form of representation for a particular content that was not available prior to this technology.

T-CoRe as a tool for reflection

A guiding framework for fostering self-reflection on video-recorded teaching performance is considered crucial by many researchers for student teachers to make systematic and in- depth self-reflection on their practice (e.g., Kong et al., 2009). To facilitate student teachers to structure their teaching with digital tools and to study their TPACK, we used a tool called Technological Content Representation (T-CoRe) (Appendix 1). T-CoRe is an adapted form of the pedagogical tool Content Representation (CoRe), which was originally introduced by Loughran et al. (2004) for developing awareness of, and capturing, teachers’ PCK. The CoRe prompts the student teacher to articulate ‘Big Ideas’ relating to questions that include what students should learn about each big idea; why it is important for students to know these ideas; students’ difficulties with learning the ideas; and how these ideas fit in with the knowledge the teacher holds about that content.

Compared to the original CoRe (Loughran et al., 2004) in our adapted T-CoRe, one question has been modified and another has been added to focus on the use of digital tools in science teaching. The one that has been modified reads as follows: ‘What digital teaching procedures will you use and what are the particular reasons for using these to engage with this idea?’ and one that has been added reads: ‘What opportunities and challenges might the use of digital technologies provide for your teaching and students’ learning of this idea?’ These questions aim to problematise the use of digital tools in the teaching of a particular science content. By prompting these questions and urging the student teachers to formulate Big Ideas, the T-CoRe has the potential of stimulating student teachers to reflect on how to use digital tools, in their teaching, in the best possible way.

Video and annotation practice

Video-stimulated reflection can be a useful way of helping student teachers to produce cautious reflection on their teaching and contribute to the development of their PCK as a process of transformation (Nilsson, 2008, 2014). For this to occur, however, Nilsson (2008) concludes that it is crucial to pinpoint instances that are critical for subsequent reflection. Locating specific instances also enables student teachers to connect captured examples of teaching instances with theoretical issues and support self-reflection (Rich & Hannafin, 2009).

In a study of several video annotation tools in a teacher preparation programme, Rich and Hannafin (2009) found that video annotations enable student teachers to capture examples of teaching episodes and connect them with theoretical issues. They also established that such tools have the potential to support and transform their reflection and offer the ability to see as well as to analyse and refine teaching practice. Finding and annotating critical incidents might designate the way a teacher looks at a situation and interprets its significance for the teaching practice (Tripp, 2012). As such, helping pre-service science teachers to identify critical incidents that shape their TPACK will contribute to new insights into their professional development.

Written reflections on video-recorded teaching episodes make it possible to engage in dialogue with a tutor and to advance the process of self-reflection. This strategy is particularly useful in teacher educational programmes where student teachers develop their teaching skills in a shorter period than what is considered normal (Coffey, 2014). It is not enough just to provide opportunities for student teachers to develop their reflection skills. Instead, such opportunities need to be very purposeful to facilitate the development of these skills.

The student teachers were introduced to a video annotation tool to support their self-reflection by locating and making evident such instances that can be seen as critical in a teaching sequence. This tool was used to scaffold and structure the student teachers’ reflection-on-action on their filmed teaching. To assist the student teachers to recognise events of teaching concerns they were told to identify critical incidents (Tripp, 2012) within their teaching in relation to their completed T-CoRe (i.e., the relation between the intended and the enacted teaching). To specify such episodes the student teachers had to pinpoint the critical incidents that they wished to focus on in their analysis by annotating their video. An example of an annotated incident is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. A frame from an annotated video where John reflects on his teaching.

Research design

This research was designed around three cohorts including 87 student teachers, hence spanning over three different years. They followed a two-year supplementary teacher education programme for becoming science teachers in upper secondary school. All 87 surveyed student teachers, representing all students following the programme, volunteered to participate in the study and to share their written reflections with the researchers. Before entering the programme, all student teachers had at least two years of studies in one or two science subjects. Most of them had several years of professional experience in their respective fields (engineering, biology, chemistry, etc.), spanning a wide range of ages. By the time of this study, they were in their last semester, following a five-week school practicum including an extramural course where they should develop their professional knowledge of use of digital tools. The overarching purpose of this course was to develop the student teachers’ TPACK of teaching science topics in secondary school.

Study process

The course was introduced at campus where the student teachers were instructed about the concept of PCK and TPACK. They also had an introduction of T-CoRe and how to use this pedagogical tool to stimulate their reflection on what, why and how to teach science with the use of digital tools. They were instructed about resources for organising use of digital technology in science education and were presented with examples of use of such tools. The student teachers were also instructed about how to use the video-based method for self-reflection. Such initiatives are important to increase student teachers’ interest in and willingness to practise a video-based system (Kong et al., 2009).

Back in their schools, the student teachers had to set up their own T-CoRe for a chosen topic. In the T-CoRe they formulated ‘big ideas’ around the topic and reflected on the prompts in the T-CoRe, which included: what students should learn about each big idea; why it is important for students to know these ideas; students’ possible difficulties with learning the ideas; and how these ideas fit in with the knowledge the teacher holds about that content. They then had to video-record at least one of their lessons where they were teaching the topic and the particular big ideas. The student teachers also had to produce a written reflection of each annotated critical incident where they had to discuss the following:

1. What is happening in the incident?

2. Why have they chosen this particular moment?

3. Why is this a critical incident in relation to their T-CoRe?

4. Which implications of their self-reflections do they see for their future educational actions?

To sum up, the self-reflection involved the participants in four successive stages:

a) Setting up a T-CoRe for teaching of a subject area content.

b) Video-recording a lesson where they were teaching this subject area content.

c) Pinpointing critical incidents in the video with annotations.

d) Producing a written reflection on their teaching in relation to their T-CoRe.

Each student teacher then had to submit their T-CoRe, an annotated video of their teaching and a written reflection on the annotated incidents in the video. The student teachers’ T-CoRes, annotated videos together with their written reflections produced valuable data which allowed the review of their planning, enacted teaching and their reflections on specific incidents. Thus, the empirical data consisted of the student teachers’ T-CoRes, their annotated video-recorded lesson and their written reflection on their teaching in relation to their T-CoRes.

Data analysis

The annotated video clips and the 87 student teachers’ written reflections were used as data for further analysis. The analysis included both a qualitative and a quantitative analysis.

Qualitative analysis

Firstly, the data were analysed through content analysis, QCA (Schreier, 2014), which is ‘systematic, flexible and reduces data’ (p. 5) and which limits the analysis to ‘those aspects that are relevant with a view to your research questions’ (p 7). In this part of the analysis, we identified the technology knowledge-dependent components in the TPACK framework. Thus, we probed for instances within the episodes that captured knowledge domains of technological knowledge (TK), technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK) and technological content knowledge (TCK) as described by Mishra and Koehler (2006, pp. 1027–2028). For each student, we noted which domains of knowledge were demonstrated. The identified knowledge domains were compared and discussed between the two authors, and any disagreement were discussed until a consensus was reached.

Secondly, episodes were selected within the data that indicated how the T-CoRe in combination with the student teachers’ reflections on their video-recorded teaching could be used to describe the technology-related components in the TPACK framework. Again, the identified knowledge domains were compared between the two authors until a consensus was reached. These episodes formed the basis for the vignettes. Vignettes are short stories that capture critical incidents/events and processes that comprise elements of the teaching as experienced by the student teachers. They are written in a form that creates opportunities for the reader to reflect on the events to extract new learning and reconsider the situation(s) in new ways. (Corrigan & Loughran, 2007). In such way, vignettes were created that indicated both the different knowledge domains (TK, TPK and TCK) and how they were integrated within student teachers’ reflections-on-action.

According to Newton and Burgess (2008), the primary forms of validity for knowledge-based research are outcome and process validity. In the analysis, the main action to ensure outcome and process validity was the critical and reflective dialogue between the two researchers, i.e., the authors when identifying and comparing the different knowledge domains. Further, through the study the implementation of method, analysis of data and documentation of results have been discussed and reflected upon by both researchers and the involvement by both researchers in the categorisation of student teachers’ reflections also adds to strengthen the outcome validity.

For illustration of our results, we have selected six student teachers’ reflections which are illustrated in the form of vignettes in the results section. The vignettes document the student teachers’ reconstructed thought processes planned and reflected through their T-CoRes. As such, the vignettes provide a window into their reflection-on-action associated with teaching a science concept using digital technology as an instructional tool.

Quantitative analysis

For a quantitative measurement of how the knowledge domains: TK, TPK and TCK were demonstrated within their reflections, we counted, separately for each student teacher, the frequency of each domain. This provided us with quantitative data, which are presented as frequency of students demonstrating levels of technology integration (Table 1).

Table 1. Technology-dependent domains exhibited by the student teachers.

Demonstrated knowledge domains	Frequency	Percentage
TK and TPK	87	100
TK, TPK and TCK	58	67

Results

In the quantitative analysis of the results, we searched for a measure of which technology-dependent knowledge domains the student teachers demonstrated in their reflections. We found that all 87 student teachers demonstrated both TK and TPK (i.e., 100% of the students) in their reflections. However, only 58 of the student teachers demonstrated all three technology-dependent knowledge domains (TK, TPK and TCK), indicating a percentage level of 67%. The results are presented in Table 1.

Demonstrations of TPACK

In the qualitative analysis, episodes within the data were selected that indicated how the student teachers’ construction of their T-CoRe were associated with reflections on their video-recorded teaching. We also analysed in what way the student teachers made explicit how technology-dependent knowledge domains were integrated in their teaching of a subject. To illustrate rich examples of data, we have selected six student teachers’ reflections which are presented below as six vignettes with transcripts. The vignettes comprise descriptions of critical incidents that these six student teachers identified and how these incidents were related to Big Ideas in their T-CoRes. These six data sets were selected from the material of the 87 student teachers as they represented profiles that provided rich illustrations of how student teachers identified critical incidents and reflected on these incidents in relation to their T-CoRe. The first two vignettes represent student teachers (Sandra and Martin) demonstrating knowledge of TK and TPK, and the remaining four represent student teachers (John, Hilda, Carol and David) demonstrating knowledge of all three technology-dependent domains (TK, TPK and TCK). To guarantee confidentiality, all names are pseudonyms.

Vignette 1

Sandra teaches about scientific methods where she demonstrates TK and TPK

Sandra’s aim is to develop the ability for her students in year 9 (15 years old) to plan, implement and evaluate laboratory work. She will teach about solubility in water, and she formulates a Big Idea saying that: ‘Various substances have dissimilar solubility in water.’ On the T-CoRe question about what she intends her students to learn about this idea, she writes that she wishes them to understand the importance of planning and documenting their experiments to be able to confirm their conclusions about why different substances are dissolved in water. On the T-CoRe prompt about what digital teaching strategies she will use, she writes that she will show her students a YouTube video about scientific methods and have them answer net-based quizzes about fundamental concepts such as solubility, etc.

In one of Sandra’s chosen sequences, her students have watched the YouTube video and she introduces how to carry out an experiment about solubility in water. She explains in her written reflection that:

The sequence begins with an instruction where the students have to think about 2–3 things which they think are important to consider when making an experiment that answers the question ‘Which of the two substances has the highest solubility in water?’ My goal was to have an interactive lesson that would create discussions in the classroom. They paid attention to what to consider when planning a scientific experiment. Another positive thing was that several students who used to be quiet spoke during the lesson. They used the concept of solubility and showed understanding of the concept.

Sandra uses a YouTube video and internet-based quizzes to instruct her students about how to perform scientific work, thereby demonstrating knowledge about what kinds of technological resources are available and how to use them (TK). According to the T-CoRe prompt about what she intends her students to learn about this idea, she writes that the video and quizzes should stimulate discussions about how to plan an experiment to investigate solubility of different substances in water. She reflects on the fact that students who usually do not speak during her lessons now participated in discussions and showed understanding of the concept of solubility. In this respect, she used the technology to enhance her teaching and thereby demonstrated knowledge about how a technology can be used to enhance pedagogical strategies for a particular task (TPK).

Vignette 2

Martin teaches about evolutionary history where he demonstrates TK and TPK

Martin teaches a group of students in year 7 (13 years old). He formulates his Big Ideas as: ‘Evolution has taken place during a long time and in many successive steps’, ‘Life on earth has become increasingly complex’ and ‘Human existence on earth is a very recent event.’ On the T-CoRe prompt about what digital teaching procedures he will use and the reasons for using this, he writes that he will use a digital tool called Time Graphics to show the evolution of life on earth. Time Graphics allows his students to mark historical events on a timeline, ranging one billion years back in time. He will present important events in the evolutionary history on the whiteboard and his students must find the time of these events, using their iPads and mark them on the timeline in Time Graphics. Martin comments on an incident occurring five minutes into his video:

A segment that I think works very well. I write down several events on the whiteboard and they must search for information on their iPads what life on earth looked like then. Then they must place the events on the timeline. Here my students can get an understanding of what happened on earth, and how the evolution influenced life. In my T-CoRe, I wanted my students to understand the evolution and that human existence on earth is very recent and like a blip at a radar screen. The exercise enables the students to use digital resources to put the timeline for life on earth in order.

In this episode, Martin’s students use the internet to search for information about life on earth in different time periods and to use the digital tool Time Graphics. By this he demonstrates knowledge of what kinds of technological resources are available and how to use them (TK). Having his students search for information on the internet with their laptops facilitates their information search. His students can access the information and construct the required timeline for life on earth for their understanding of evolution. He thereby used the technology to enhance his teaching and thereby demonstrated knowledge about how the technology can be used to enhance pedagogical strategies for a particular task (TPK).

Vignette 3

John teaches about programming where he demonstrates TK, TPK and TCK

The subject for John’s lesson is programming a robot. His students, in year 9 (15 years old), will program robots with the use of Lego Mindstorms and Google Apps (GAFE). In the T-CoRe prompt about what digital teaching procedures he will use, John writes that his students would connect a robot to their computers which will allow them to see the results of their programming in real time. On the T-CoRe prompt about what opportunities and challenges the use of digital technologies might provide for his teaching, he writes that it will give them instant feedback which will motivate them in their work with programming and how to operate their robots. In his introduction, John explains what he believes will be the role of robots in the future and the importance of being able to program robots. He reflects on this incident that:

The sequence that initiates the video introduces the lesson that deals with programming. Students are introduced to programming, what the future labour market might look like and how technological development can affect future control systems. The students are then introduced to how they can navigate an object with programming in GAFE, in this case a robot (Big Idea C in T-CoRe).

Reflecting on his introduction, John refers to his Big Idea where he intends his students to learn about programming and steering a robot. Here, John demonstrates his knowledge about what kinds of digital tools are available and how to use them (TK).

In the last 50 minutes of the lesson, his students work with programming and operating their robots, and John reflects that:

The students have their robots plugged into their computers and start working. They test their programming. I give them feedback on their work. They also receive direct feedback on their programming, as the robot is directly connected into the computer. They are forced to identify problems, find solutions and reflect on how they should proceed to solve the task. They can test their scripts and have direct feedback from me, which I think motivated them to get on with their work.

John here demonstrates that he has integrated his knowledge of available digital tools and how to use them to enhance his teaching (TPK). By applying the digital technology to enable his students to program and steer a robot in real time, John has made available a new form of representation for programming that was not available prior to this technology and thereby demonstrates TCK.

Vignette 4

Hilda teaches about ecology where she demonstrates TK, TPK and TCK

Hilda teaches a group of students in year 8 (14 years old). She wants the students to learn what is happening when a species decreases in number or becomes extinct. She has formulated the Big Idea: ‘Species are dependent on the environment and populations in a food chain are affected if some parameters change.’ She writes that she will use a simulation that shows the relation between consumers, producers and decomposers in a food chain. On the T-CoRe prompt about what opportunities the use of this digital tool provides for her students’ learning of this subject, she writes that ‘the simulation offers opportunities to manipulate different parameters such as a fox or a rabbit population’. She also highlights that a visualisation of what happens to the population dynamics will make ecology less abstract and engage her students in discussing ecological interdependence. In an incident that occurs about eight minutes into her lesson, Hilda reflects that:

The students become at once involved in a discussion about the food chain, which I think is positive. They immediately begin to explain what happens. I wanted them to understand that all species are dependent on each other for food and if one species decreases in numbers, it will affect all other species in the ecosystem. This understanding is a prerequisite for my continued teaching in ecology and it is positive that they have so many intuitive thoughts about cause and effect. According to my T-CoRe, I hoped that the simulation would entice the students’ curiosity about how populations in a food chain are affected if some parameters change. The students had many suggestions for what would happen, and the simulation made it possible to visualise these ideas.

In her reflection, Hilda refers to her T-CoRe where she describes how she will use the simulation to entice her students’ curiosity about how a food chain is affected when a parameter is changed. She reflects that the simulation manages to make her students engaged in discussing the food chain. Hereby, she displays her knowledge of what kinds of digital tools are available and how to apply them in her teaching (TK). Hilda has used digital technology to address some of the problems that students face when trying to understand relations in an ecosystem. She applied the simulation to visualise a dynamic process and hereby enhanced her pedagogical strategy (TPK). The simulation allowed her to visualise what happens if some parameters are changed in the food chain. Hilda used the digital technology to represent a food chain in a new way not available prior to this digital tool, demonstrating her TCK.

Vignette 5

Carol teaches about electrical circuits where she demonstrates TK, TPK and TCK

Carol is teaching a group of students in year 7 (13 years old). Her students will work with a PhET interactive simulation that illustrates electrical circuits. In her T-CoRe she has written that she wants her students to learn how electrons move in a conductor and that electrons can only circulate if it is a closed circuit. Carol writes that the simulation with its visualisation of the electron movements of the electrons will give her students the possibility to see how the electrons move in a conductor and that the electrons can only circulate in a closed circuit. Reflecting on her video-recorded lesson where her students work with the simulation, she writes:

The students start working on the task directly and they talk about what they observe, they use concepts in their discussions, and they help each other. The students also get a visualisation of how the electrons circulate in the conductor and that a closed circuit is required for the electrons to circulate in the conductor. They also test conductivity in various materials.

By applying this simulation, Carol demonstrates her knowledge about what kinds of digital resources are available and how to use them (TK). She also enhanced her pedagogical strategies by using the simulation to allow her students to test conductivity in different materials and thereby demonstrated TPK. The simulation also offered the possibility to visualise how the electrons move in a conductor and that the electrons can only circulate in a closed circuit. This enabled her to make available a new a form of representation for electrical circuits that was not available prior to this technology (TCK).

Vignette 6

David teaches about sound where he demonstrates TK, TPK and TCK

David teaches a group of students in year 7 (13 years old) in physics. In his T-CoRe he writes that he wanted his student to learn that: ‘Sound is dependent on frequency and wavelength’, ‘A molecule moves back and forth’ and ‘Molecules are not transported from one point to another.’ David also writes that he would use an interactive eBook that provides simulations of longitudinal waves. On the T-CoRe prompt about what opportunities and challenges the use of digital technologies might provide for his teaching, David writes that he can control the process and go back and forth in the simulation to make his students understand how sound is produced. He reflects on his introduction of the topic:

The lesson starts with my presentation of today’s aims, which I get directly from my T-CoRe, so the actual implementation of the lesson went smoothly once the T-CoRe was made, even though I had to spend quite a bit of time on it. Thanks to the digital tool, I experienced that many students were engaged and wanted to follow the process. It also became easy for me to clarify what compressions and rarefactions are. Now the students might get a picture of it, which is important for weak language learners who might not have heard of the concepts before. These concepts were also central to my Big Idea A, and the digital tool helped me demonstrate this. The students became involved in the events in the simulation where they could see that the molecules swing back and forth even if the wave continues.

David establishes that his T-CoRe assists him in planning and carry out his lesson even though he thinks it is time-consuming. He has demonstrated knowledge of what kinds of resources are available and how to use the digital tool that he assumes will help him achieve his goal for the lesson (TK). David also refers to the T-CoRe prompt where he has described the pedagogical affordances of using this digital tool for instructing about the concepts of compression and rarefaction, thus, showing knowledge about how a technology can be used to enhance his teaching of this topic (TPK). He then reflects on the use of the simulation for demonstrating sound as a physical phenomenon. David describes how the digital tool enables him to, in real time, visualise abstract concepts as compression and rarefaction. In his planning and implementation of teaching, David had used a digital technology to make available a new representation of a concept (TCK).

Discussion

This study has focused on how to prepare student teachers to use and integrate technology into their teaching across different science subject areas. The project builds on the pedagogical tool CoRe (e.g., Hume & Berry, 2011; Loughran et al., 2004) and uses a modified version T-CoRe to approach, explore and articulate TPACK in student teachers’ reflections. The reflective tool (T-CoRe) presented here attempts to frame the various knowledge components which influence enacted practice of using digital technologies in the teaching of science. As presented above, all participants demonstrated the knowledge domains of TK and TPK. The knowledge domain of TCK was observed in a frequency of 67%, which is a high frequency in comparison with other studies (Hsu, 2012; Swan & Hofer, 2011). Thus, the T-CoRe with its specific prompts to formulate motives for their use of a specific digital tool in relation to a Big Idea might have stimulated the student teachers to consider new forms of representations for a particular content and thereby their TCK.

Examples of student teachers demonstrating their domains of TK and TPK are illustrated in vignettes 1 and 2 where Sandra and Martin have formulated their Big Ideas for teaching with digital tools. We can observe that their Big Ideas directed them to identify critical incidents in their video- recorded teaching. Both student teachers described in their Big Ideas what kinds of digital tools they were going to use for their teaching of a particular topic. Thereby, they expressed knowledge of what kinds of technological resources are available and how to use them (TK). In their reflections they described how they enhanced their teaching by using the technology either by quizzes to stimulate discussions about solubility (Sandra, vignette 1) or an internet-based timeline for life on earth (Martin, vignette 2), thereby demonstrating their TPK. However, they have not used the technology to make available a new form of representation that was not available prior to this technology. Hence, Sandra’s (vignette 1) and Martin’s (vignette 2) use of digital technology in their teaching does therefore not demonstrate TCK.

Student teachers demonstrating all three of the technology-dependent domains (TP, TPK and TCK) are illustrated in vignettes 3–6. Apart from TK and TPK they also demonstrated knowledge of how to utilise the digital technology to make available a new form of representation for a particular content that was not available prior to this technology (TCK). In vignettes 3–6 we can observe how the identified Big Ideas directed the student teachers in their search for applications that make new forms of representations available. These were an application for programming to steer a robot in real time (John, vignette 3), a simulation that visualises what happens when parameters change in a food chain (Hilda, vignette 4), a simulation that visualises electron movements in a conductor (Carol, vignette 5) and a simulation that visualises concepts as compression and rarefaction (David, vignette 6).

The student teachers’ self-reflections on their video-recorded teaching in relation to their T-CoRes enabled us as researchers to capture important aspects of their knowledge of integrating technology in their teaching and hence, their TPACK. In line with previous studies of the CoRe as a reflective tool (Karlsson & Nilsson, 2019; Nilsson & Karlsson, 2019), the T-CoRe proved to be successful in capturing aspects important for student teachers’ development of professional knowledge. Consequently, the T-CoRe contributed to capturing technology-dependent aspects of their TPACK, important for their learning to teach science assisted by digital technology.

Our findings suggest that the T-CoRe with its prompts to form Big Ideas helped the student teachers to focus on how to use digital technology in their teaching. The annotated videos supported the student teachers’ self-reflections to analyse and refine practice (Rich & Hannafin, 2009). In this way, digital technology becomes a resource to address teaching of specific topics rather than something that is only generally motivating and engaging students.

Conclusion

This study investigated how T-CoRe – as a reflective tool in combination with annotated self-recorded videos and reflective writing – might contribute to capturing aspects of student teachers’ TPACK through a process of planning-teaching and reflecting on teaching science topics. Providing student teachers with a holistic reflective tool such as the T-CoRe indicated an increased awareness of not only what to teach, but also how and why to use digital technologies in science teaching. The T-CoRe’s potential to stimulate student teachers’ thinking about use of digital technology for teaching science topics through Big Ideas enables them to focus their attention on the role of content in a structured way.

Developing teachers’ TPACK has become a major feature of teacher education and in-service teacher professional development programmes globally (Yeh et al., 2021). Therefore, teacher education programmes must work to better infuse technology throughout the entire teacher education programme and across different subject areas. The dynamic integration between different components of student teachers’ TPACK, shown in the vignettes, entails important implications for teacher education in line with the recommendations of Tondeur et al. (2013). Besides educational courses in which students acquire content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and knowledge about available digital tools for teaching, student teachers should also have the opportunity to apply the interplay between these knowledge components in practical situations (Wang et al., 2019). Teacher education is crucial for preparing teachers to be able to use digital technologies in meaningful ways in their professional activities. Thus, our research proposes a structure for teacher education that might improve the way in which student teachers are prepared for using digital technology in a learning context within their own teacher preparation programme and, ultimately, in their future classrooms. Hence, the practices and processes highlighted in this project might help to inform how to involve student teachers in capturing and developing a knowledge base for using digital technologies in their science teaching.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Göran Karlsson

Göran Karlsson is a docent in educational sciences at Halmstad University, Sweden. His current research focuses on the use of digital technologies in teacher training using TPACK as a theoretical framework. He has worked with activities such as video reflection in combination with self-reflecting tools such as Content Representation (CoRe) and Technological Content Representation (T-CoRe) to stimulate reflection and to help student teachers engage in their own professional learning.

Pernilla Nilsson

Pernilla Nilsson is a professor in science education at Halmstad University, Sweden. She has a strong interest in teacher professional development in different areas. Her research focuses on teachers’ and student teachers’ development of Pedagogical Content Knowledge both in primary and secondary science education. She has worked with different tools and activities such as Content Representations (CoRe), Learning Study, video and digital portfolios to stimulate reflection and to help teachers and student teachers engage in their own professional learning. During the last years she has focused on digital technologies in the teaching and learning of science using TPACK as a framework.

Appendix 1.

The T-CoRe (Technological Content Representation) template

Prompts seven and eight pertain to the use of digital tools.

Table

Content Age of the children	Big idea A	Big idea B	Big idea C
What do you intend students to learn about this idea?
Why is it important for students to know this?
What else do you know about this idea (that you do not intend students to know yet)?
What difficulties/limitations are connected with teaching this idea?
What is your knowledge about students’ thinking which influences your teaching of this idea?
What other factors influence your teaching of this idea?
What digital teaching procedures will you use and what are the particular reasons for using these to engage with this idea?
What opportunities and challenges might the use of digital technologies provide for your teaching and students’ learning of this idea?
What specific ways do you have of ascertaining students’ understanding or confusion around this idea?