Surveying Chinese teachers' technological pedagogical STEM knowledge: a pilot validation of STEM-TPACK survey

Abstract

As STEM education is increasingly drawing attention from different parts of the world, there is also an emerging call for STEM education to be synthesised with the TPACK framework for the purpose of teacher professional development. Unfortunately, teacher professional development for integrative STEM education anchored by engineering design has been lacking. This study attempts to integrate STEM and TPACK framework as a means to advance the state of affairs. In particular, a STEM TPACK survey was created and validated in this study. The exploratory factor analysis indicates that the four factors, i.e. the technological pedagogical science knowledge, technological pedagogical mathematics knowledge, technological pedagogical engineering knowledge and integrative STEM can be identified. The regression analysis indicates that the three TPACK factors can predict the teachers' integrative STEM efficacy. In addition, teachers who have experienced teaching STEM classes are generally more efficacious in their STEM TPACK knowledge. Overall, the study indicates that teachers' TPACK are associated with their efficacy in implementing STEM education. This implies that it is important to expound further teacher professional development efforts using the TPACK framework, and the inclusion of mobile apps could be important.