Teachers’ pedagogical practices using information and communication technology in an interdisciplinary unit

Abstract

This thesis, which takes the form of a case study, explores pedagogical practices that use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in an interdisciplinary unit in an international secondary school in Hong Kong. Interdisciplinary approaches have been advocated by several educational systems because they offer opportunities for students to tackle complex problems from a number of perspectives, exactly the type of learning encouraged for living in a knowledge society. However, teaching an interdisciplinary unit with ICT may add further complexity for teachers’ pedagogical practices, as it may involve secondary level teachers operating in areas outside their disciplinary expertise. A conceptual framework was developed which viewed technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) as a personal and holistic construct that is impacted by a teacher’s school context and characteristics.

Data for the instrumental case study were collected over 14 weeks in 2014. The seven teachers who taught the interdisciplinary unit were interviewed before and after they taught the unit; and two of each teacher’s lessons were observed. Data collection also included the schemes of learning for the interdisciplinary unit, digital and non-digital learning resources, and Moodle usage data. Through analysis of this set of data, this study aimed to explore how teachers approached teaching the interdisciplinary unit and the ICT pedagogical practices they used to teach it.

Results indicated that an interdisciplinary approach using a correlated model did not add further to the complexity of pedagogical decisions, and teachers tended to use ICT in a similar manner to how they taught their main discipline. More confident ICT-users made greater use of ICT in their teaching; and these teachers tended to value informal opportunities for ICT professional development. Furthermore, more experienced and confident ICT-using teachers tended to want to develop transformative TPACK, whereas less confident teachers were inclined to use ICT less often and were moving their PCK towards TPACK in an integrative manner. This study provides some empirical evidence by using Laurillard’s (2012) learning cycles to classify ICT pedagogical practices. It suggests the possibility of domain general TPACK that can be used for collaborative approaches for designing interdisciplinary teaching and learning activities.