ICT in education: teachers’ competences in a distributed TPACK perspective

This paper investigates the question “What kind of knowledge/competences should a teacher have in order to successfully implement a technology-based activity in the classroom?” It is based on a research that involved more than 400 teachers on the job, implementing an educational activity based on collaborative Digital Storytelling in the classroom. The discussion is framed within the distributed cognition theory and the TPACK (Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge) model. Drawing on the results of an extensive survey and a number of interviews to all the teachers taking part in the program, the research shows that not all the knowledge required in order to run an ICT-based educational activity needs to reside “in just the teacher’s head”. Like distributed cognition says, the necessary competences/knowledge can be distributed in the environment and among the actors involved in the activity. This applies not only to TK (Technology Knowledge), as may be expected, but also, more surprisingly, to CK (Content Knowledge). Acknowledging the distributed nature of TPACK has significant implications for how we think about research, practice, and teacher training.