The discourse of design: Patterns of TPACK Contribution during pre-service teacher learning design conversations

Analysing pre-service teachers’ learning design conversations in relation to Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework to understand their learning design practices has remained unexplored. This paper presents findings from a study of pre-service teachers’ design discourses that identified how TPACK elements were used during their collaborative design of technology-enhanced lessons. Through thematic analysis of 81 design conversations in two cycles, it was found that pre-service teachers discussed design related issues, TPACK elements, and context in their design conversations with dominant references to design-related issues, substantial occurrences of single TPACK elements, and lower frequencies of integrated TPACK elements and context. Practical recommendations and a Design-TPACK or ‘D-TPACK’ framework were proposed to support pre-service teachers’ learning design practices.