Why Theory: Or the TPACK story

by | Wednesday, December 07, 2016

Note: There are two key updates / correction to this post

  • The first has to do with a couple of things that I either got wrong, or rushed over. More about that at Update on “The TPACK story” or “Oops!
  • The second has to do with an update to the diagram itself that came in 2018, prompted by identifying a semantic inconsistency in the diagram (particularly around the idea of context). More about that at The TPACK Diagram gets an upgrade.

I was recently invited to speak at the fall Doctoral Research Forum for the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College on the ASU West campus. (A bit more context about the event, from a couple of years ago, can be found in a blog post by my colleague Sherman Dorn titled “Observations from a Doctoral Research Forum“). In speaking with Craig Mertler, who directs the EdD program here, I thought it best to speak about the role of theory in research. This is something that troubles graduate students a lot as they move through the program (and I have posted about it earlier here and here). I contextualized the discussion within the history of the work that Matt Koehler and I did in developing the TPACK framework. This was a fun talk to create and share. I created a narrated video of the slides of the talk, embedded below:

Note: There is an update / correction to this post which
can be found here: Update on “The TPACK story” or “Oops!

A few randomly selected blog posts…

Exploring Organizational Creativity & Mindfulness with Ravi Kudesia

Exploring Organizational Creativity & Mindfulness with Ravi Kudesia

Recently our on-going series on creativity, technology and learning for the journal TechTrends has focused on the relationship between mindfulness and creativity, particularly in educational contexts. Our first article set the stage for a deeper dive into this...

Why math ed sucks (not just in India)

My friend Hartosh Bal (author of A Certain Ambiguity, a mathematical novel) has a piece in Caravan Magazine titled "Why Fields medalists are unlikely to emerge from the Indian educational system." He mentions the fact that of the three winners of the Field's medal...

Pi Day

Pi Day

3.14 looked in a mirror and guess what he saw? Happy Pi(e) day.

Defense against the dark arts in the Sydney Morning Herald

Defense against the dark arts in the Sydney Morning Herald

I was in Sydney recently to present a keynote at the MITE conference. I spoke there about some issues that have been concerning me for a while—what I like to call the "dark arts" of digital technologies. After the conference I had a wide-ranging interview with Jordan...

AACTE Major Forum Presentation

I include below a copy of the AACTE Major Forum presentation (announcement here) that I made at New Orleans on Saturday, February 9. There were other things that I participated in (as listed here) and I will post about them later. Matt was supposed to do this talk (as...

Death & Taxes

I am always on the lookout for new and interesting visual representations of complex data and just discovered Death & Taxes, 2009: "is a representational poster of the federal discretionary budget; the amount of money that is spent at the discretion of your elected...

Coding + Aesthetics: New Journal Article

Coding + Aesthetics: New Journal Article

Does beauty have a role to play in learning to code? Can code aspire to beauty and elegance? In this article, we argue that it does and it should. Read on... Good, J., Keenan, S. & Mishra, P. (2016). Education:=Coding+Aesthetics; Aesthetic Understanding,...

Computerized aesthetics… what’s right with that idea?

I just came across this... Online System Rates Images by Aesthetic Quality Pennsylvania State University (PSU) has launched the Aesthetic Quality Inference Engine (ACQUINE), an online system for determining the aesthetic quality of an image. The online photo-rating...

Guide on the side, the GPS story

People have often argued that digital technologies change the role of teachers from (as it is commonly described) a "sage on the stage" to a "guide on the side." Personally, I have my doubts about this, complicated somewhat by my recent experiences with GPS...

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Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Designing Theory: New article | Talking About Design - […] in memory. I have also given talks about why theories are important (such as this one titled Why Theory?)…
  2. Designing Theory: New article – Punya Mishra's Web - […] in memory. I have also given talks about why theories are important (such as this one titled Why Theory?)…
  3. Theoretical Frameworks: A walk through the forest with my friends - […] Why Theory: Or the TPACK story […]
  4. The TPACK diagram gets an upgrade – Punya Mishra's Web - […] story, full of blind alleys and external factors that guided its evolution. (See this video “Why Theory: The TPACK…
  5. Blurred visions: Another history of TPACK – Punya Mishra's Web - […] I had posted recently a video based on a talk I had given at ASU. In that video I…
  6. Update on “The TPACK story” Or “Oops!” – Punya Mishra's Web - […] had recently posted a video of my talk fall Doctoral Research Forum for the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College on…
  7. Diigo links 12/08/2016 – DrAlb - […] Why Theory: Or the TPACK story […]

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