Goldilocks and TPACK

In the education community, the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework has become a popular construct for examining the types of teacher knowledge needed to achieve technology integration. In accordance with Katz and Raths’s ’Goldilocks Principlen’ (cited in Kagan, 1990), TPACK, with its seven knowledge domains, may be too large (vague or ambiguous) of a construct to enable reasonable application. In this article, we provide a critical review of the TPACK construct and address the development, verification, usefulness, application, and appropriateness of TPACK as a way to explain the teacher cognition needed for effective technology integration. We make suggestions for returning to a simpler conceptualization to refocus our efforts on what teachers need to achieve meaningful technology-enabled learning.