FROM PROFESSIONAL

LEARNING TO
PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Narrative Inquiry into the Mobilisation and Enactment of Malaysian ESL
Teachers' Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK)

Cynthia James
MPhil in Education (RSLE)
ccj25@cam.ac.uk
 MOBILISATION OF TEACHERS’
TECHNOLOGICAL PEDAGOGICAL
CONTENT KNOWLEDGE FROM

RESEARC TRAINING TO CLASSROOM PRACTICE

H FOCUS ENACTMENT OF TEACHERS’

TECHNOLOGICAL PEDAGOGICAL
CONTENT KNOWLEDGE IN THE ESL
CLASSROOM

AFFORDANCES AND CONSTRAINTS

OF TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION IN THE
ESL CLASSROOMS
 How do Malaysian ESL teachers mobilise their
technological pedagogical content knowledge
(TPACK) from the TPACK-based professional

RESEARCH
learning community to the ESL classrooms?

QUESTION To what extent does the TPACK-based professional

learning community impact how Malaysian ESL
teachers negotiate the interplay among the

S knowledge of technology, pedagogy and content in

their practices in the ESL classroom?

What are the affordances and constraints of adopting

the knowledge acquired from the TPACK-based
professional learning community to practices in the
ESL classrooms?
 THEORETICAL
FRAMEWORK

Technological
Pedagogical Content
Knowledge (TPACK)
(Mishra & Koehler,
2006)
 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Mishra & Koehler, 2006)
TPACK-based Technology Integration Instrument for Classroom Observation
(Harris, Grandgenett & Hofer, 2010)
 ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK
“Three-dimensional Narrative Inquiry Space” (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000)
”Professional Knowledge Landscape” (Connelly & Clandinin, 1999)
 What?

Narrative inquiry is a way

of studying people’s
experiences, nothing more
and nothing less.
(Clandinin, 2013, p. 37)
 Where?

We begin in the midst, and

end in the midst, of
experience. (Clandinin,
2013, p. 43)
 How?

We are not objective inquirers.

We are relational inquirers,
attentive to the intersubjective,
relational, embedded spaces in
which lives are lived out. We do
not stand metaphorically outside
the inquiry but are part of the
phenomenon under study.
(Clandinin, 2013, p. 24)
 Who?

“…collaboration between
researcher and participants, over
time, in a place or series of
places, and in social interaction
with milieus…”
(Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p.
20)
 Why?

“it is difficult to study cause and

effect when teachers,
classrooms, politics and
curriculum goals vary from case
to case” (Mishra & Koehler,
2006, p. 1018).
 MALAYSIAN ESL TEACHERS

BACKGROUN
MEMBERS OF THE ‘GOING DIGITAL’ TPACK-
D & CONTEXT BASED PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
COMMUNITY

F2F SESSIONS (ONCE OR TWICE A MONTH),

WHATSAPP GROUP

WEBSITE:
www.goingdigitalkotakinabalu.weebly.com
www.goingdigitalkotakinabalu.weebly.com
 Arsyad (sports school, suburban area)

RESEARCH
PARTICIPANT Erica (primary school, rural area)

S
Adele (convent girls school, urban area)

Lim (Chinese secondary school, urban

area)
 TEACHERS’ PROJECT REPORTS
(TEACHER STORIES)
FIELD
TEXTS INTERVIEWS
(“…they are created, neither
found nor discovered, by
participants and researchers in ARTIFACTS (PHOTOS, VIDEOS,
order to represent aspects of field WEBSITES, STUDENTS’ WORKS)
experience” (Clandinin &
Connelly, 2000, p. 92)
FIELD NOTES
LEVELS OF ANALYSIS

FIRST LEVEL:
Composing narrative accounts of unique experiences
with each participant by being attentive to the three- SECOND LEVEL:
dimensional narrative inquiry space of temporality, Looking across the individual narrative accounts to
sociality and place. Negotiating the draft until each inquire into resonant threads or patterns. Searching
participant feels that the account represent something for “resonances or echoes that reverberate across
of who they are and are becoming. “Working accounts” (Clandinin, 2013, p. 132)
towards a sense of mutuality and co-composition”
(Clandinin, 2013, p. 132)
 “process of autobiographical narrative inquiry…undertaken at
the beginning of all narrative inquiries” (Clandinin, 2013, p.
55).

NARRATIV “we may reach as far back as our childhoods to understand and,

E at times, to name our research puzzle” (p. 55).

BEGINNING “attend to the places in which our stories have unfolded”, in

order to “make evident the personal, social, and political
contexts that shaped our understanding” (p. 56).

“only through such inquiries can we come to deeply understand

the complexities of understanding experiences narratively, of
understanding experience as narrative phenomena” (p. 89)
Searching for Resonances or
Echoes that Reverberate
across Accounts
 Relationship with
Technology
 I grew up in the transition
between the old and new ways
of doing things…I got the best
of both worlds…
(Arsyad)
 For someone like me, whose
technological bragging rights are
only limited to Microsoft Word
and maybe PowerPoint, all
these technological
advancements remain elusive
(Adele)
I sold my faithful electric typewriter and worked harder to collect
more money so I could buy a second-hand laptop to type my
assignments and to draw graphs, tables and charts using the word
processor. I also learned how to use the Internet...(Cynthia)
 Negotiating the
Tensions

 We don’t have good Internet access.

So I have to go out to town where
the Internet is better so I can help my
students download stuffs (Erica)
 We want them to engage in lessons,
definitely. But at the same time, it’s
always at the back of our mind that
we want them to perform well in
their examinations as well (Arsyad)

…the laptops were outdated and barely functioning. The best I could do was
to borrow an LCD projector from the school’s ICT lab and used my own
laptop to project digital language learning materials on a makeshift LCD
screen of white construction papers pasted on my classroom wall (Cynthia)
 Adapting &
Tailoring
 Smart phones were an easier
alternative. Most students in my
school own one (Arsyad)
 Grouping arrangements had to made
according to the availability of
laptops (Adele)
 My school is in the rural area, we
don’t have Internet. So I decided to
use PowerPoint to do my digital
storytelling. It’s an offline project.
(Erica)
 From my past experience with
When I moved back to my hometown to teach in a suburban primary school Internet connection, I would need to
in 2015, I had developed a whole new outlook on the use of technology in the limit the number of use…I decided to
classroom. I had developed a better understanding of how – to use Shulman’s
put students in groups (Lim)
(1987) terms – to adapt and tailor my strategies and approaches based on my
students’ needs, contexts and circumstances (Cynthia)
 Teacher’s Identity

 I told myself, what reason do you have?

What excuse do you have? You’re still
young, there’s so much you can do
(Arsyad)
 As a digital immigrant, I have to realise the
fact that In a digital classroom, I’m no
longer the sage on the stage (Adele)
 I think I’m a very simple person. I like
direct things. As a teacher, I think learning is In this inquiry, I place myself as someone ‘who has been there before’, as
to learn something that they can use. For someone who can relate to the experiences of the teachers. I aim to work
example, if they want to learn speaking, they together with the teachers to explore more innovative, meaningful and
need to speak (Erica) impactful ways to support and assist ESL teachers in this area, through the
exchanges of storied life experiences between me and my research partners.
(Cynthia).
 I actually was really inspired
I was introduced to Kahoot
because some of them, you
during one of the sessions in the
know, they’ve been teaching for
Going Digital workshop and I
like 15, 20 years and they were
quickly saw how it could be
still out there. It was an eye-
used…(Lim)
opening experience (Arsyad)

It was indeed a plunge into the

When some of the teachers did
deep end of the digital ocean
their sharing, I took notes and I
from the highest cliff. However,
try whatever they have done. I
I did not dive alone. The peer
do what is suitable for my
support that I received was the
students (Erica)
life float that I needed (Adele)
RELATING THE NARRATIVE TO LITERATURES
Reconstructing Connelly and
Clandinin’s (1999) inquiry into the
interconnectedness of knowledge,
context and identity within the focused
scope of technology integration in the
ESL classrooms.
Expanding Connelly & Clandinin’s
notion of ‘professional knowledge
landscape’ which deals with ‘in-
classroom’ and ‘out-of-classroom’
interactions to the interactions between
two different landscapes, i.e.
professional learning and professional
practice.
RELATING THE NARRATIVE TO LITERATURES

Exploring new way to understand teachers’

technological pedagogical content knowledge
(TPACK) - making sense of the teachers’
experiences in mobilising the knowledge from
learning to practice, and in capturing the narratives
of the teachers’ negotiations of the three domains
of technology, pedagogy and content in the
enactment of the knowledge in their classroom
practices.
Capturing narratively how teachers’
”understanding of the affordances & constraints of
technology” leads to effective identification of
content representation and pertinent teaching
approaches (Mishra & Koehler, 2006)
Grantchester Boxing
Day Barrel Race

The curved shape of the beer barrels

makes them wobble all over the
place, and rollers must avoid
crashing into each other.
(
https://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/
news/cambridge-news/grantchester-
barrel-race-2018-boxingday-155924
05
)
 Thank You!
ccj25@cam.ac.uk