SAMR vs TPCK

At first, the clarity of the SAMR model had great appeal: four categories of teacher practice with what seemed to be a hierarchical rise to aim for.  Moving from “substitution” of technology for tasks as an enhancement to “redefinition” of tasks as transformation of learning. Then I read about Mishra’s and Koehler’s TPCK model, which eloquently combines the teacher task of wedding content and pedagogy, but adds the new modern challenge of leveraging technology for learning.  That model seemed to go deeper with its analysis of teacher thinking when designing learning. TPCK seemed more sophisticated. And as Lesley Associate Dean Valerie Shinas points out in the September 2018 podcast, TPCK represents “what a teacher needs to know and be able to do to effectively plan for pedagogically sound, content-specific instruction using technology.”

On the other hand, Lesley professor Sue Cusack describes the SAMR model as a way “to think about and understand one’s use of technology.”  In the same podcast, Cusack notes the scarce research on SAMR, but she likes SAMR nevertheless due to its appeal to a broad range of educators across many levels of schooling.  I appreciate the paradox Cusack offers in her example of elementary teachers using a “handwriting without tears” application on a tablet. The teachers integrate technology into a handwriting lesson aiming to increase or accelerate learning.  The example illustrates that the technology did not enhance skill acquisition because the kids began using their fingers to write on the tablet screen as opposed to practicing with the pincer grip. Developing the grip was an underlying fine motor skill goal, perhaps best practiced with paper and pencil.  Handwriting is a full body to brain exercise. Many things must be felt: the grip, the stiffness of the pencil, the drag of the implement on the paper, the fine motor and muscle control exerted. To do this activity on a screen was less effective, it was straight substitution of a screen for paper, per the SAMR lens.  A so-so substitution or perhaps the “gratuitous” use of “technology for technology’s sake” that Cusack warns against.

Punya Mishra and Matthew J. Koehler (2006) describe the shift in teaching and learning that occurred over the past 20 years; the shift was caused by the growth of technology and the digital world.  What I will call the “old way” was a teacher developing both deep content knowledge and deep pedagogy knowledge. Over a career, the layering on of new knowledge in each area was the ongoing task. Teachers used to be able to be “assured that technological context would not change too dramatically over their career as a teacher” (Mishra and Koehler, 2006, p. 1024).  Old technologies were static: the chalkboard, the overhead projector, the DVD player. This is how I grew up in the teaching profession, until now. The “new way” is the same content and pedagogy knowledge, but add in the disruptor of technology. The teacher must consider how, and if, technology (a device or the digital world) will enlarge or constrain the presentation of information or of a concept.  Technology has been “foregrounded” in unprecedented ways (Mishra and Koehler, 2006, p. 1024) and ways that have become primal to the activity of learning and must become primal to the exercise of teaching. Mishra and Koehler note that it was content that formerly used to drive most teaching decisions, and then the pedagogy supported those decisions (2006, p. 1029). Now, with the arrival of the internet and learning that occurs 24/7 in the palm of your hand, it is “technology that drives the kinds of decisions that we make about content and pedagogy” (Mishra and Koehler, 2006, p. 1029).  This reality suggests a significant “correction” or redirection in the education field.

However, Jason Theodore Hilton’s case study is respectful of both the old and the new realities.  A year-long study of integrating iPads into social studies classes of two experienced teachers reveals the usefulness of both the SAMR and TPCK lenses.  As I currently work with the principal of my elementary school, Hilton’s case study can inform our moves to increase consistent use of running records in reading and other unified literacy tasks.  

Hilton’s social studies teachers likened SAMR to Bloom’s taxonomy with the lower levels (substitution and augmentation) as critical steps for teachers to progress through to reach the higher level (2016, p. 71).  In social studies, content acquisition is at the base level, and that stage contains the more basic understanding skills. The teachers noted that the “more traditional foundational learning tasks were more engaging when technology was included as a substitution or augmentation.” (Hilton, 2016, p. 71).  However, the higher order thinking of practicing a social studies skill, or creating, was best done at the higher SAMR level that involved task modification or redefinition. The social studies teachers saw TPCK as suggesting a constant effort to incorporate technology, which made the theory not fully reflective of their actual classrooms.  They knew that the learning task had to be matched to the tool, technical or not, and thus 25-35 percent of their teaching time did not include work on the iPads (Hilton, 2016, p. 72.)

TPCK provides a more abstract framework to study and measure teacher knowledge and integration of technology.  It is more theory-like. SAMR is more application-like. A developing teacher could choose a series of learning activities, and hold them up to the SAMR model and assess where on the model is each activity?  SAMR could have day-to-day usefulness to practitioners in lesson planning as teachers try to move from enhancing learning to transforming it.. As a current school leader, if I were trying to move the school toward a greater infusion of useful technology, I could analyze staff skills or units of study through a TPCK lens, reviewing how integrated the content and pedagogy was with the technology use.  Exemplars could arise and become models.  My question as a practitioner is – given the staff that I have, where are they with technology integration, and what is the best match of a model to move them to their next level?

Resources

Sue Cusack and Valerie Shinas (2018), podcast, Lesley University.

Hilton, J. T. (2016).  A case study of the application of SAMR and TPACK for reflection on technology integration into two social studies classrooms. Social Studies, 107(2), 68-73.

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. The Teachers College Record, 108(6).