A quantitative study of higher education faculty self-assessments of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (tpack) and technology training

Abstract

Growing use of technology in the 21st century, the age of the millennial learners, has introduced instructional challenges for higher education faculty. Technology deficiency is prevalent among the Baby Boomers and Generation X population. Yet, at a growing rate for the millennial population, technology tools are at the forefront of extracurricular and educational activities. This abundance of technology requires faculty to hone their skills in multifaceted approaches to combat technology skill deficiencies within higher education institutions. As a result, it is projected that faculty across all disciplines will become lifelong learners, not only within their specialization, but also with instructional technology tools geared toward enhancing learning (Wetzel, Foulger, & Williams, 2009). However, this is also an indication that higher education administrators need to provide support initiatives that will encourage faculty to enhance their existing pedagogy through the integration of technology (Lye, 2013). This study assessed the perception of the technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPaCK) of faculty at a southeastern research university using the researcher-developed HE-TPACK instrument (n = 128). HE-TPACK is a valid and reliable revision of the original TPACK instrument that allows the measurement of higher education faculty TPACK. The research described faculty perceptions on each of the eight HE-TPACK domains and determined whether there was a difference in HE-TPACK based on discipline type, gender and academic ranking of the faculty. Descriptive statistics revealed that a majority of all participating faculty agreed with the statements in six domains (technology training, pedagogy knowledge (PK), pedagogy content knowledge (PCK), technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK), technological content knowledge (TCK), and technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPaCK)) and strongly agreed with statements in two domains (technology knowledge (TK) and content knowledge domains (CK)). This finding indicates that faculty perceive they are knowledgeable in seven HE-TPACK domains and that they believe technology training is important. A multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to identify differences in HE-TPACK due to educational discipline types, gender and academic rank. Based on academic rank, results revealed significant differences in the pedagogical knowledge (PK), content knowledge (CK), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), and the technological, pedagogical, content knowledge (TPaCK) domains. There were no differences based on gender and educational discipline types. The findings suggest that future practice should validate the HE-TPaCK scoring through observations and evaluations. Additional validation would strengthen the understanding of technology integration used by faculty. In addition, the findings suggest that future research evaluate the HE-TPaCK differences between tenured and non-tenured faculty. To improve response rate, future research should seek to reduce the number of items on the HE-TPACK survey by removing items from select domains.