Reflection (part 1)

In this post and in the next two posts on this weblog I will reflect on an assignment that I carried out with Yanieke Paalman and Mutinta Musuumba, namely the development of a lesson based on the TPACK framework. In the three posts I will attend to the following four subjects:

1. The process of designing a course as an educational designer;
2. Working with TPACK;
3. The opportunities/challenges of flexibility;
4. And the implications for instructors.

The process of designing a course as an educational designer
We were asked to start the design of a lesson from the perspective of the pedagogical approach inquiry learning. Therefore we started thinking about the steps that need to be taken in an lesson based on an inquiry approach:

• Knowledge attack
• Ask questions (essential and subquestions)
• Create hypothesis
• Gather information
• Construct new knowledge (sifting, sorting, synthesize)
• Report (discuss and reflect)
• Integration of knowledge

While we were thinking about how to arrange the lesson we noticed that making any decisions about the lesson plan was very difficult without making some decisions about the context in which the lesson plan had to be implemented first. Therefore we discussed whether our lesson would be for primary or for secondary education, for which grade the lesson plan would be, how many pupils would participate, for which course we would design the lesson and on which topic. We made the following decisions about the context.

The lesson plan would be for second grade VWO students of secondary school. Students in that grade are mostly 13-14 years old. The lesson plan would focus on the topic Tsunami in the course Geography. The class for which the lesson would be designed consisted of 20 students.

We based our decisions on our own experiences with inquiry learning and on our own interests. For example we thought an inquiry learning approach would fit well with a geography lesson and we all found Tsunami an interesting topic to introduce a main theme of geography to students, namely Plate tectonics. That theme is normally introduced to students in second grade of secondary school, which is why we chose second grade as our target group for the lesson plan. We decided to further specify the target group as a VWO class. Yanieke and I both were VWO-students and followed geography lessons. Therefore we thought we would be well able to imagine ourselves how students would experience our lesson plan. We figured that that could be useful during the design process.

When those decisions were made we went back to the steps of an inquiry approach and started thinking of ways to take each step for a lesson about Tsunamis. While doing so we were aware of the possibilities of using technology in our lesson plan. We came up with the following ideas that formed the basis of the final lesson plan.

Having these ideas about the content of the inquiry lesson that had to be developed we felt more confident to start thinking about the TPACK framework and how we could use it to design the lesson, but before we actually started elaborating the various parts of the TPACK framework for the inquiry lesson, we decided to make a framework for our final report. That framework looked as following.

This is mainly how our final report looks. While designing the TPACK lesson and writing the report we made some changes though. For example it seemed more logical to explain the context in which the lesson plan had to be implemented before explaining the various parts of TPACK, simply because choices about TPACK are made based on that context. Besides that we added an extra paragraph in chapter three about stimulating factors for implementation that we thought of during the process.

The general approach chosen in developing the TPACK lesson further and writing the report can be described as following. We chose a part of the report that we thought had to be elaborated first. After discussing in detail how we all thought that could be done best we divided the part in subparts and we all worked out one or more of those subparts. When all the subparts were done, everyone read all the subparts to see if everything was on paper as we discussed it and to see if we got any new ideas. If the latter was the case, those new ideas were discussed and added to the subparts.

Using this approach firstly a concrete time schedule for the teacher’s activities before, during and after the lesson was designed. Next the various parts of the curricular spider web were elaborated for the designed time schedule. Afterwards we further explained the context in which the lesson had to be implemented and the way TPACK was used in the designed lesson. In addition we designed instructor support and thought of other important factors for the implementation of the lesson plan. Lastly we wrote an introduction to the report and checked the references.

In general I think this approach in the design process worked very well for us. We all had clear ideas about the steps we wanted to take. Thanks to the many moments in which we consulted each other there was no problem in working out the ideas for the lesson on paper in such a way everybody agreed. Every team member came up with new ideas for the design during the process to – as we called it in our team – ‘spice up’ the designed lesson plan.


One major mistake that could have been a problem is that when we had almost finished the design process, we realised that the lesson - according to the assignment - was supposed to be implemented in primary education instead of in secondary education. Luckily the teachers of the course were flexible and we were allowed to continue with our lesson plan for secondary education.