So TyPiCKal!

I'm talking about typical debates on quantitative vs qualitative approaches but in the context of TPCK studies :-)

While browsing the websites tagged "TPCK" in Delicious, I came across a blog created by Brooke, a PhD student whose research study was also on Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge ("TPCK"): OER’s, DL’s, Reuse & Culture

The post was about TPCK and its measurement. Brooke made the observation that most of the studies on TPCK so far have been qualitative in nature and went on to explain why she preferred the quantitative approach instead. Her comparison caught my eye:

"and while i do respect and think that qualitative is a perfectly acceptable and respectable way of understanding the world - it’s not the way i’m excited about doing research. i love quantitative measures. there’s a lot of logic there that works for me - rather than being a jumble of a lot of things that i have to put into a logical story that may or may not have clean edges - for me the quantitative measures are puzzle pieces that have to be turned in a very specific way to be able to fit into what is being measured. research becomes a puzzle, a game, rather than chaos."

It is interesting that she likened quantitative measures to "puzzle pieces that have to be turned in a very specific way to be able to fit into what is being measured". Firstly, it seems to suggest that there is a correct way of measuring a construct just as there is one correct way of putting a jigsaw puzzle together so that all the pieces fit together in the way that they were manufactured. Perhaps, quantitative measures are seen as being able to determine the "way things are" such that replicable findings suggest that they are "true" (Guba & Lincoln, 1994, p. 109)?

Brooke also seemed to imply that the qualitative approach leads to "a jumble of a lot of things that i have to put into a logical story that may or may not have clean edges". Would she attribute the possible lack of "clean edges" to a perceived lack in objectivity in qualitative approaches? However, subjective judgments are made in both types of research activities, even in the use of quantitative data notably in how an interpretation model is selected as well as in the process of scoring (Ercikan & Roth, 2006).

In the end, the dichotomy that is so typically drawn between quantitative and qualitative approaches may well be a false one; rather the approaches may be better seen as falling within a continuum. Instead of thinking of research as either quantitative or qualitative, one may instead focus on how research questions shape the mode of inquiry and how researchers may collaborate to integrate the different modes (Ercikan & Roth, 2006). Moreover, both quantitative and qualitative research methods value empirical observations, safeguards against bias and invalidity, and the provision of warranted assertions and may be mixed (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004).

The mode of inquiry one chooses ultimately depends on what research questions one wishes to examine. I see the question of how TPCK may be measured to be closely tied to what TPCK is and how it manifests itself. While I am very often confronted with questions of how TPCK may be measured, I find myself drawn to other aspects of TPCK which emerge to me as particularly problematic or which I wish to problematize. For instance, in the depiction of TPCK as the intersection of three neat overlapping circles representing technology, content, and pedagogy (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) it was not clear whether the areas of overlap such as TPCK, TPK, TCK, PCK are mixtures of the bodies of knowledge or transformed through the interactions of the bodies of knowledge. For example, if I have been teaching a particular topic using a particular pedagogy and one day decide to explore the use of a technological tool, does the introduction of technology change the pedagogy and the content in any way? Gess-Newsome (1999) have described the two different views of teacher cognition as integrative and transformative. To borrow a chemical analogy, the former may be likened to a mixture of two or more elements whereas the latter may be likened to a compound of two or more elements such as the very nature of the compound is different from that of the constituent elements. What does integrative TPCK look and sound like? What does transformative TPCK look and sound like? Does it make sense to ask whether TPCK is either integrative or transformative? Can it be both and if so, are they different stages in the development of TPCK? My gut feeling is that there is something very exciting afoot in the transformative view of TPCK, a creative tension that teachers face when they grapple with technology, content, pedagogy in the design of learning experiences for their pupils. I'm interested in finding out what light could be shed in the context of teachers engaging in a discourse community. Will I get to see the tensions arising from the interplay of T, P, and C? That is what I would like to find out.

References:
Ercikan, K., & Roth, W. M. (2006). What good is polarizing research into qualitative and quantitative? Educational Researcher, 35(5), 14-23.

Gess-Newsome, J. (1999). Pedagogical content knowledge: An introduction and orientation. In J. Gess-Newsome, & N. G. Lederman (Eds.) Examining pedagogical content knowledge. (pp. 3-19). London: Kluwer academic publisher.

Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (Vol. 2, pp. 105-117).

Johnson, R. B., & Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2004). Mixed methods research: A research paradigm whose time has come. Educational Researcher, 33(7), 14-26.

Mishra P., & Koehler. M. J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054.