An Investigation of Early Childhood Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge TPACK in Taiwan

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate technological pedagogical content knowledge TPACK of early childhood teachers in Taiwan. Quantitative Data was collected from a sample of 335 in-service early childhood teachers in Taiwan. The instrument was translated and adapted from Schmidt et al. 2009 TPACK survey instrument with added items to fit the early educational context in Taiwan. Data analysis methods included descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, and MANOVA. Findings from the study were summarized as follows: a The development of early childhood teachers‘ pedagogical knowledge PK , content knowledge CK and pedagogical content knowledge PCK were the best among the seven knowledge sub domains in TPACK. b The number of years of teaching experience was significantly positively correlated with early childhood teachers‘ pedagogical knowledge PK , content knowledge CK and pedagogical content knowledge PCK . Besides, early childhood teachers with over ten years of teaching experience had better self-assessed pedagogical knowledge PK , content knowledge CK and pedagogical content knowledge PCK than those teachers with less than ten years of teaching experience. c A significant positive correlation was found between pedagogical knowledge PK , and pedagogical content knowledge PCK and age; however, a significant negative correlation existed with technology knowledge TK and age. Older early childhood teachers‘ self-assessed pedagogical knowledge PK was better than younger teachers while the young early childhood teachers had a better self-assessed technology knowledge TK d Early childhood teachers with a frequency of using information technology above 20 hours a week had better self-assessed technology knowledge TK and technological content knowledge TCK than those with a frequency under 5 hours a week Recommendations were also provided based on the findings from this study

Keywords

• Teacher education,Early childhood teachers,Technological pedagogical content knowledge TPACK

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