The HEAD Foundation, in partnership with National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore and Universitas Negeri Jakarta, Indonesia recently conducted an ICT professional development workshop, entitled TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge) in Jakarta, Indonesia between 26 and 28 April, 2017.
The meaningful use of technology to engage students in solving authentic real world problems through active/constructive learning in classrooms is fundamental to 21st century oriented learning. However, there are still widespread concerns about teachers’ ability to integrate technology in classrooms and design lessons that can engage students meaningfully. The Principal Investigators of this project Dr Chai Ching Sing and Dr Joyce Koh from Singapore’s National Institute of Education (NIE), along with Dr Uma Natarajan from The HEAD Foundation, believe that the key to resolving this problem lies in enabling teachers to create Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) for 21st century learning.
There are still widespread concerns about teachers’ ability to integrate technology in classrooms and design lessons that can engage students meaningfully
While laudable efforts have been made in many ASEAN education systems, like Indonesia, in terms of infrastructure and teacher capacity building, there is still lot more to be done to provide enhanced access and high quality learning with technology. In contrast, other countries like Singapore in the region have made excellent ICT infrastructure development and implemented successful initiatives in teacher capacity building. ICT provides opportunities for teachers in developing nations to share digital learning resources, engage in professional development and build a professional learning community.
The TPACK project for building the capacity of teachers in Indonesia is an initiative in which participants were trained to use design thinking for lesson design using ICT. The emergence of TPACK as a theoretical framework to develop educators for the integration of ICT in teaching has transformed education for educational technology. Many education institutes have refocused their educational technology courses towards learning by design where students are tasked to synthesise and transform their technological knowledge.
This workshop is second in a series of the Foundation’s TPACK workshops in Indonesia, following an earlier workshop conducted in Solo in November 2016. The workshop focused on several aspects of TPACK – an introduction to TPACK, meaningful 21st Century learning, adaptation of content and importance of school context, the scaffolded TPACK design model, evaluation of a sample lesson, and designing a lesson based on TPACK.
The hundred Indonesian participants included pre-service and in-service teachers and other higher education educators. At the end of the workshop, all participants produced a TPACK designed lesson that they can take back to use in their respective classrooms. The participants also peer-evaluated others’ lessons, and were surveyed on their knowledge and beliefs about ICT before and after the workshop.
The initial findings from the project have revealed that Indonesian teachers possess strong beliefs that education with technology should move towards the new culture of learning and teachers should be the designers for such learning. Nonetheless, the teachers need to build more on their capacities and efficacies in designing 21st century learning with technology.