Fresh perspectives on TPACK: pre-service teachers’ own appraisal of their challenging and confident TPACK areas

The present study is an extension of studies that measure pre-service teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) confidence. It provides new perspectives on pre-service teachers’ TPACK by shifting the focus to concrete concerns and strengths indicated by pre-service teachers. The target group consists of a cohort of first-year pre-service teachers (N = 86) from a Finnish university. The data used in this study were 86 lesson plans with integrated technology written by first-year pre-service teachers, with a specific section where students outlined their confident and challenging areas in the lesson plan. These sections were analysed quantitatively through the theoretical lens of TPACK. Four TPACK areas were found confident, challenging or both confident and challenging for students. For these first-year pre-service teachers, pedagogical knowledge played the most important role, and the outcomes concretize specific aspects of pedagogical knowledge that can be addressed to develop TPACK in teacher education. The results provide important perspectives on pre-service-teachers’ development of TPACK, revealing the important position of pedagogical knowledge and detailed perspectives on how pre-service teachers view their readiness to use ICT in education.