A JOURNAL SUMMARY (4)

Teachers’ knowledge in content, pedagogy and technology integration: a comparative analysis between teachers in Saudi Arabia and United States

Emtinan Alqurashi, Elif N. Gokbel and David Carbonara

British Journal of Educational Technology

This journal emerged based on some previous research stated that there were only 25% of elementary and secondary teachers in U.S. public schools integrate technology effectively into their teaching. Meanwhile, some Saudi teachers seemed that they do not use digital technologies in their teaching or they implement them with barriers. This is a cross-cultural research that claimed as a remarkable and interesting comparison.

There are three research questions the writers wrote in this journal:

1. What are the perceived TPACK levels (CK, PK, TK, TCK, PCK, TPK, and TPCK) of teachers in Saudi Arabia and USA?

2. Do teachers from Saudi Arabia and USA differ significantly from each other in their perceived TPACK levels?

3. Do teachers from Saudi Arabia and USA differ in their perceived understanding of the identified TPACK levels if controlled by age, years of teaching experience, education level?

Literature review

The theory of TPACK by Koehler and Mishra (2005) was proposed. In addition, the writers proposed another theory by Kotrlik and Redmann (2009) about five personal variables influenced the amount of technology that was integrated into teaching: Gender, teaching experience, technology anxiety, technology availability, and age.

Data Collection

A web-based survey was shared through emails and social media (Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp) to seek for voluntary participation. Simple random sampling technique was administrated to collect random responses from teachers in USA and Saudi Arabia. There were 86 total responses from teachers and higher education instructors, 47 were teaching in the USA and 39 were teaching in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The survey used in this journal was developed by Archambault and Crippen (2009). The aim of the survey is to measure teacher’s seven TPACK domains.

Data analysis

A descriptive statistics of teachers’ TPACK in Saudi Arabia and USA was analyzed to answer the first research question. Then, the second research question was analyzed using ANOVA and The last research question was analyzed using analyses of covariance (ANCOVA).

Finding

The finding indicated that the teachers in both the US and Saudi Arabia had higher rating or equal knowledge in content and pedagogy than technological knowledge. However, the teachers in Saudi Arabia had higher TK, TCK, TPK and TPCK than teachers in the US.

Suggestion

This is a qualitative research with the survey, so it only provided limited responses in items of the survey. Another instrument such as interviewing or observing teachers may increase the validity of data and allow the researcher to have a deeper understanding of the problem.