Teaching while researching in a smart classroom: community-engaged action research on microlecturing for teachers’ professional learning

The widespread digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, have largely elevated student experiences and achievements in higher education, but the simultaneous upgrade of teacher capacity, particularly the resources and opportunities for teachers’ professional development in everyday class, were less attended. To investigate how a smart classroom can be orchestrated to boost teachers’ self-exploration and collaboration in digital teaching, this study employed the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) framework to probe how teachers advanced their professional learning through design, implementation, and revision of VoiceThread microlectures for students’ Chinese character learning outside the class. Collaborative action research was conducted over four years to create a teaching community comprising the researcher and five teachers to enhance contextual smartness, that is, digital technologies and teachers’ context-aware, adaptive, and personalized use of them, in Chinese language classrooms. Semi-structured teacher interviews, community discussion, and surveys from 227 students showed that teachers utilized microlecturing to strengthen their TPACK about Chinese characters alongside class progress. This TPACKing process not just promoted research-practice dialogues but reinforced teachers’ beliefs and strategies to carry out professional learning in smart classrooms. The findings suggested a dynamic re-framing of TPACK with means of updating and interacting with contexts, content, technologies, and pedagogies in smart learning environments. The study also offered tips to keep up language teachers’ continuing professional development in daily instruction.