A Case Study of Secondary Pre-service Teachers' Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge Mastery Level

In recent years, researchers reported that effective ICT integration requires teachers to acquire knowledge of technology, content, pedagogy and the intersection of these, known as TPACK (Mishra & Koehler, 2006; Archambault, & Crippen, 2009). This study specifically sought to answer: 1) What are pre-service teachers' perceptions of their TPACK mastery level before and after field experience; and, 2) Is there a significant difference of TPACK after field experience in schools? The TPACK survey instrument was adapted from Schmidt et al. (2009) and Archambault and Crippen (2009) and administered before and after their field experience to 107 pre-service teachers in a research intensive university programme in New Zealand. In addition, three student teachers were interviewed before and after field experience. These pre-service teachers scored highest in Content Knowledge (CK) and lowest in Technology Knowledge (TK) domains within TPACK at both before and after field experience. Paired-sample t-tests showed significant increases in most TPACK domains, namely, TK, PK, PCK, TCK and TPACK. Interviews and observations of three students clarified complex changes in knowledge of TPACK that linked to their experience in schools. The study continues to support the need for field experience while also adding caution to the interpretation of TPACK survey evidence given the strength of the student teachers' perceived knowledge before field experience. Further research is underway with a comparative survey in a programme that prepares teachers for secondary schools in Malaysia. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.