Technological Pedagogical content Knowledge and Teaching Poetry: Preparing Preservice Teachers to...

Teacher Education and Practice, Vol. 26, No. 1 / Winter 2013 117

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Teaching Poetry: Preparing Preservice Teachers to Integrate Content With VoiceThread TechnologyDAVID LEE CARLSON

LEANNA ARCHAMBAULT

ABSTRACT: Although there is a vast research base on the literacy practices of adolescents and the issues surrounding the integration of technology despite current widespread access to tools and the Internet (Cuban, 2003), very little has been completed on the attempts of teacher educators to integrate technol-ogy within a specific content area to prepare future classroom teachers (Boling, 2010; Bruce & Hogan, 1998; Goodson & Mangan, 1995; Koehler, Mishra, Yahya, & Yadav, 2004; Pang & Kamil, 2004). Based on the technological pedagogical content knowledge framework, the current study explores how technology can be used to improve teaching within the content area of English/language arts by examining the artifacts and reflections of 21 pre- and in-service secondary Eng-lish teachers at a large university in the Southwestern United States. It explores how the digital medium VoiceThread could support their efforts to teach poetry. Results indicate that these future teachers found VoiceThread to be an effective tool to prepare, implement, and teach poetry to secondary students.

c The research on digital media, new media studies, and education has focused primarily on how technology has influenced the lives of ado-

lescents. Parents, teachers, and administrators concede that technology and digital media have had a profound affect on the lives of teenagers. There is a close relationship between the use of technology and adolescents. Scholars have studied the uses and benefits of specific types of digital media, such as instant messaging (Lenhart & Madden, 2005; Lewis & Fabos, 2005),[Q1] on-line magazines (Lankshear & Knobel, 2002), podcasting (Smythe & Neufeld, 2010), and online journaling (Guzzetti & Gamboa, 2005). This body of re-search indicates that adolescents rely on technology to build, maintain, and expand social networks. Although some research suggests that specific digital media forms “obscure the line between” media used during school to support academic learning and that used after school, most of the research indicates that there are relatively few schools and even fewer teachers using digital media to enhance learning (Guzzetti & Gamboa, 2005, p. 199). Wells and Lewis (2006) report that in 2005, 94% of schools in the United States had access to technology. Even so, most schools do an inadequate job of integrat-ing it into specific course materials (Hennessy, Ruthven, & Brindley, 2005). O’Brien and Scharber (2010) argue that schools that refuse to infuse tech-

Q1: Please

include Lewis &

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118 DAVID LEE CARLSON AND LEANNA ARCHAMBAULT

nology and digital media purposefully obstruct the possibility to “enhance or, dare we say, revolutionize the ways students and teachers engage with concepts, collaborate with one another, and use digital literacies” (p. 601).

Much of this concern, however, may be misplaced. While schools often provide access to technology to the extent that they are able, teachers need the skills to be able to make use of tools to improve student learning. Prepar-ing teachers to implement technology in the classroom within their content area is no easy matter. Even though teachers have the necessary technology in their schools to use in their classrooms, many of them use it in similar ways as traditional tools (Archambault & Crippen, 2007; Bruce & Hogan, 1998). Teachers are using technology as an instrument and not as part of a strategy for learning. Part of the problem that researchers have discovered is that teachers’ conception of technology influences whether they use it and how they use it (Agee & Altarriba, 2009; Zhoa, Pugh, Sheldon, & Byers, 2002). As Boling (2010) recently argued,

in order to help teachers acquire a new understanding of technology and the ways in which it can be used to support children’s literacy learning, it is impor-tant to understand the kinds of situations and experiences that might shift, and possibly change, teachers’ understanding of the role of technology in literacy education. (p. 75)

Part of the problem is that teachers enter the classroom with “organizing frameworks” about teaching and learning, and these are difficult to change (Kerr, 1991; Ringstaff & Kelley, 2002; Rogers, 2002; Veen, 1993). The ques-tion becomes, how can teachers’ conceptions of technology be altered or in-cluded into their organizing frameworks so that they incorporate technology in more pedagogically meaningful ways in classrooms?

While a considerable amount of research has been done on the literacy practices of adolescents and the problems associated with implementation of technology in classrooms (Cuban, 2003), very little has been completed on the attempts of teacher educators with pre- and in-service teachers to integrate technology within a specific content area (Boling, 2010; Bruce & Hogan, 1998; Goodson & Mangan, 1995; Koehler et al., 2004; Pang & Kamil, 2004). The current study contributes to this growing body of scholar-ship. The research conducted attempts to provide teachers and teacher edu-cators with an example of how technology can be used to improve teaching within the content area of English/language arts as Boling (2010) suggests. This article describes a research project conducted at a large university in the Southwestern United States with 21 pre- and in-service secondary English teachers. The study examined how the digital medium VoiceThread could support their efforts to teach poetry to secondary students. The aim of this project is to look at the teachers’ views on technology and the teaching of poetry and how teachers used media to design a poetry lesson.


Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge and Teaching Poetry 119

Theoretical Framework

To frame this study, two related conceptual frameworks are useful: peda-gogical content knowledge (PCK) and technological PCK (TPACK). The notion of PCK was introduced by Lee Shulman (1986) to describe what teachers should know and be able to do. Shulman described the relation-ship between the amount and organization of knowledge of a particular subject matter (content knowledge) and knowledge related to how to teach that content (pedagogical knowledge). He defined PCK as going beyond content or subject matter knowledge to include knowledge on how to teach that content. Within PCK, he included, “the most useful forms of represen-tation of those ideas, the most powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations, and demonstrations—in a word, the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others” (p. 9). Knowledge of what makes a subject difficult or easy to learn is also a part of PCK. This means that to be able to effectively teach a particular topic, teachers should be aware of the potential problems that students can expe-rience on the basis of possible preconceptions that often take the form of misconceptions, depending on student’s age and level. As Shulman describes it, “if those preconceptions are misconceptions, which they so often are, teachers need knowledge of strategies most likely to be fruitful in reorga-nizing the understanding of learners, because those learners are unlikely to appear before them as blank slates” (pp. 9–10).

In 2005, Koehler and Mishra updated and built on the notion of PCK and described TPACK as an understanding of the complexity of relation-ships among students, teachers, content, technologies, practices, and tools. According to the researchers, “we view technology as a knowledge system that comes with its own biases, and affordances that make some technologies more applicable in some situations than others” (p. 132). Using Shulman’s framework and combining the relationships among content knowledge (sub-ject matter that is to be taught), technological knowledge (computers, the Internet, digital video, etc.), and pedagogical knowledge (practices, processes, strategies, procedures, and methods of teaching and learning), Koehler and Mishra defined TPACK as the connections and interactions between these three types of knowledge:

Good teaching is not simply adding technology to the existing teaching and content domain. Rather, the introduction of technology causes the representa-tion of new concepts and requires developing a sensitivity to the dynamic, trans-actional relationship between all three components suggested by the [TPACK] framework. (p. 134)

This framework considers three distinct and interrelated areas of teaching, as represented by Figure 1.



TPACK is made up of the overlapping of technological content knowledge and technological pedagogical knowledge. An essential part of the role of an effective instructor is to not only have a strong command of one’s subject matter but also be able to design and deliver materials and activities in an electronic format for students, which can be described as technological con-tent knowledge. According to Mishra and Koehler (2006),

although technology constrains the kinds of representations possible, newer technologies often afford newer and more varied representations and greater flexibility in navigating across these representations. Teachers need to know not just the subject matter they teach but also the manner in which the subject mat-ter can be changed by the application of technology. (p. 1028)

In contrast, technological pedagogical knowledge is described as knowing the methodologies, techniques, and strategies that lend themselves to most effectively to implementing the use of technology and the affordances that the technology offers by doing so. Mishra and Koehler (2006) conceptualized technological pedagogical knowledge as “knowledge of the existence, compo-nents, and capabilities of various technologies as they are used in teaching and

Figure 1. Visual representation of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK).



learning settings, and conversely, knowing how teaching might change as the result of using particular technologies” (p. 1028).

Using TPACK as a framework for quality instruction in teacher education is effective because it allows the instructor to concentrate on helping future educators plan to leverage the affordances of technology to most effectively teach their curriculum. Tools such as the incorporation of VoiceThread to teach poetry allow for additional social interaction as well as interactive media that works to extend learning beyond the traditional school day. This makes it possible for future teachers to capitalize on the social aspects of learning, moving beyond the acquisition of foundational knowledge to a depth that enables implementation in teaching and learning. This kind of learning requires active participation that binds participants in meaningful ways (Vygotsky, 1978; Wenger, 1998). This ties closely with the notion of TPACK, working to take advantage of the power of technology to transform the pedagogy and content to provide a richer, more meaningful learning experience for students. It is in this way that the content of a lesson, the pedagogy or methods used to teach it, and the use of technology to capitalize on its affordances for learning can be melded to create meaningful learning opportunities. It is important for teacher educators to construct and model instructional units that embody the spirit of TPACK and allow future educa-tors to experiment with using the affordances of technology to improve their instruction. As Mishra, Koehler, and Kereluik (2009) describe,

we wonder how far current teacher preparation programs are telling pre-service teachers what an educational technology is rather than empowering them to experiment and create their own. A new focus needs to take root, one character-ized by creativity and flexibility of thought and experimentation by educators with their own educational technology designed to meet specific, immediate needs. (p. 52)

Scholars have recently begun to use the TPACK framework with pre- and in-service teachers. Much of the work with in-service teachers has been in the areas of math (Browning & Garza-Kling, 2010), science (Jimoyiannis, 2010; Trautmann & MaKinster, 2010), and social studies (Bull, Hammond, & Fer-ster, 2008; Doering, Veletsianos, Scharber, & Miller, 2009). The results from these studies indicate that context of educational setting affects how well teachers implement technological tools in the classroom and that teachers need intensive, ongoing training and support to effectively integrate technol-ogy in their content areas. The research shows promising results with using the TPACK framework for helping in-service teachers change their views about the uses of technology with teaching.

Fewer studies have focused on TPACK with preservice teachers, but they show similar results. Polly, Mims, Shepherd, and Inan (2010) analyze findings from the U.S. Department of Education report on Preparing Teachers to Use Technology initiatives and reveal that preservice teachers would benefit from



technology integration in their university methods courses. Creating techno-logically rich, pedagogically sound methods that are modeled and taught in their teacher education courses increases the likelihood that teachers will use technology in their classrooms when they teach; it also increases how often teachers use technology in their daily teaching practices. However, research on how to integrate technology in university certification programs illustrates that preservice teachers resist collaboration with technological tools and remain dubious about how technology will support their future teaching practices (Wetzel, Foulger, & Williams, 2009). Thus, how to best integrate technology into preservice methods courses remains a contested area in the teacher educa-tion scholarship. Successfully integrating technology into teaching a specific topic within a content area requires a careful understanding of the affordances that the given tool can offer in addition to the how the topic is situated in the overall curriculum. Poetry has always been a staple in the secondary English curriculum, but research on how to integrate it with pedagogy and technology has been minimal. To examine these issues adequately, a careful review of the teaching of poetry in the English classroom is warranted.

Literature Review

Poetry has been an integral part of the secondary English curriculum for most of its history. Even during the early days when oratory and grammar dominated the school day, students still read poetry. The place of poetry in the curriculum, its purpose, and how to teach it have been contested terri-tory. Matthew Arnold (1869/1994), a progenitor of secondary English studies, argued that literature should engender moral and cultural values in students. In 1862, William James Rolfe (Applebee, 1974) argued that literature should be taught as a collection of rules, isolated facts, and exercises in memoriza-tion. Writers and teachers in later years, specifically Percival Chubb (1902), claimed that literature could not be isolated from the student’s individual experiences. Instead, pedagogy needs to adjust to the student and not vice versa. Max Eastman’s book The Enjoyment of Poetry (1913) was perhaps the first book of the progressive era that described poetry as a source of pleasure. He stated that teachers needed to use the less analytical approaches to poetry and allow students opportunities to enjoy it. Perhaps the most important influence on the teaching of poetry was the New Critics, who argued that poetry is collection of relationships determined by the formal features of the poem. Poetry should be taught inductively without reference to historical or social influences. The author’s intentions or the reader’s personal experiences with the poem have no bearing on the meaning of the poem.

Louise Rosenblatt’s (1938/1983) work on literature and experience coun-tered their arguments and contended that the reader is a vital part of the meaning-making process. Her work, along with the New Critics, continues



to influence the teaching of poetry to this day. In fact, recent historical study by Faust and Dressman (2009) illustrates that historical perspectives on the teaching of poetry are discontinuous. They contend that classical approaches and ideas persist within populist approaches to teaching of poetry. In short, they show how resistances to specific approaches to teaching poetry appear in every model of teaching poetry.

Faust and Dressman’s (2009) recent historical studies are the anomalies in the research on the teaching of poetry. Much of the scholarship focuses on the added value of poetry (both writing and reading) to students’ learning and on specific strategies for teaching poetry. The next section describes the relevant literature in each of these domains.

Poetry in the Secondary English Curriculum

Most scholars who write about the teaching of poetry in secondary schools recognize that teachers have a difficult time teaching it and students often do not want to learn it. Additionally, poetry is often omitted from an already crowded English curriculum, and a growing emphasis on math and science education forces many secondary English teachers and scholars to try to justify the purpose of learning poetry. Researchers have taken different ap-proaches with extolling poetry’s added value to secondary education.

Researchers and teachers defend poetry’s usefulness in schools. To that end, they often demonstrate how to incorporate poetry into the daily lives of students and teachers in schools to meet specific ends (Kimzey, 1977; Skelton, 2006; Somers, 1999; Tsujimoto, 1988; Wormser & Cappella, 2004). These scholars claim that poetry can improve students reading, verbal, and writing skills, as well as their scores on standardized tests (Milner & Milner, 2008; Snodgrass 2001; Wormser & Cappella, 2004). They focus on the playfulness of poetry and how it can expedite the reading and writing development of adolescent learners. Teaching strategy to alter poems engages students in discussions about poetry, language, and thinking.

Poetry and the Affective Domain

Reading and writing poetry can improve students’ self-esteem and make them aware of the diversity in a democracy (Bigelow & Ried, 2006; Kinloch, 2005; Schwalb, 2006). It can also improve their vocabulary and listening skills. Poetry expands the mind and spirit. Tannenbaum (2000) recounts her experiences teaching poetry at San Quentin prison as the poet in residence for 4 years. She claims that poetry allowed her students to develop a voice and that it gave them a form to express themselves. She is skeptical of instrumen-tal ways of teaching poetry and favors organic approaches, letting form and meaning emerge from the individual. She asserts that making art or poetry allows people to heal from past mistakes. Similarly, Wink (2006) uses poetry



to address apathy in her classroom. She asserts that poetry gives meaning and structure to an individual’s feelings and can ignite important discussions about historical and intimate matters. Scholars also contend that that read-ing literature helps students create, develop, and refine interpretations of personal experiences (Huie, 2006; Mackler, 2009; Sumara, 2002; Van Wyhe, 2006; Wilkinson, 2006). Learning poetry can help students develop literacy skills that they can use in their lives, as well as confidence in themselves and their meaning-making abilities.

Strategies for Teaching Poetry

Researchers also focus on ways of teaching poetry to adolescent learners. Many recognize that! secondary English teachers are apprehensive about! teaching poetry (Burke, 2003; Tchudi & Mitchell, 1999). Scholars try to assay the fears of teachers by claiming that they should see poetry as a “doorway into the conversation” instead of a ”wall we must climb” (Burke, 2003, p. 70). A shift in perspective is vital to teaching poetry, but writers in this area also provide a variety of classroom strategies that teachers can use. They emphasize reader engagement. To them, poetry needs to be taught like other genres of literature. Several writers provide a series of “steps” into a poem and a process to use as teachers teach a poem. Similar strategies include reading the poem twice, writing down parts of the poem that affected them emotionally, and ranking poems (Griswold, 2006).!Moreover, scholars purport that recognizing patterns, considering form and function, and reading through the poem several times expedites interpretation of a poem.!(Cobb, 2006; Sowder, 2006).

Instead of giving steps or a process for teaching poetry, scholars also pro-vide teachers with options for teaching poetry (Milner & Milner, 2008; Max-well & Meiser, 2005). They argue that a process or method may work at only certain times—but also may not—and that teachers need to be armed with a variety of strategies to be properly prepared to teach poetry (Kirby, Kirby, & Liner, 2008). Milner and Milner (2008) advise teachers to read a variety of poems, to become immersed in the poem, and to design assignments that spark students’ imagination. Along similar lines, studies show how poetry can be used to “cross-pollinate” with other genres and other disciplines (Fletcher, 1996; Kryder, 2006; Moorman, 2006; Orzulak, 2006; Schwalb, 2006; Strever, 2006). Gathering a multitude of strategies and giving teachers the choice to select the best strategy allows them to make adjustments as they teach their students. To arm themselves, however, teachers may have to consult scholar-ship outside the field of English education.

Poets on Teaching Poetry

Writers and researchers outside the field of English education also provide important strategies for teachers to consider as they prepare to teach poetry



to secondary students (Behn & Twichell, 1992; Duke & Jacobsen, 1992; John-son, 1990). Most authors agree that while the topic of one’s poem comes from his or her experiences, the development of the poem takes hard work, editing, and fortitude. A few authors provide strategies for how to get through diffi-cult places in one’s composing process, while others assert that writing poetry is more of a “voyage of discovery” (p. 4),[Q2] where the form emerges as the poem transforms. Similar advice given to teachers (see Milner & Milner, 2008) is given to students of poetry. Many writers advise students to read a wealth of poetry and to understand that to be a serious poet, one needs to be committed to it. Scholars assert that teachers should make poetry accessible to students, incorporating drama with poetry to enhance understanding and linking form with meaning to help students comprehend and enjoy poetry.

Poetry has historically been a significant part of the secondary English curriculum. As times change, the teaching of poetry must change. The emergence of technology and digital media provides teachers, students, and researchers with an opportunity to see how well technology can facilitate the teaching of poetry. Researchers have recently reported on studies with pre- and in-service teachers. McVee, Bailey, and Shanahan (2008) focus on how preservice teachers can use PowerPoint to construct, interpret, and represent poetry. More recent work by Stuart (2010) illustrates that tech-nology can be a valuable resource to use with pre- and in-service teacher to help ease their anxieties about teaching poetry and alter their attitudes about learning and reading poetry. Both these studies illustrate the value that technology can have with pre- and in-service teachers as they prepare to teach poetry to secondary students. This study takes a slightly different angle. We used the TPACK framework to design a study with preservice secondary English teachers using VoiceThread, an interactive web-based digital media application.

Method

This study focused on how digital media technology could help secondary English teachers prepare to teach a poetry lesson. We investigated how 21 pre- and in-service undergraduate and graduate students utilized the peda-gogical strategies they learned in their Methods of Teaching English course with VoiceThread to teach a poem that they anticipated teaching in a second-ary classroom. Additionally, we examined how their conceptions of technol-ogy changed or remained the same after using VoiceThread to teach specific content. Our research questions included the following:

Research Question 1: How does VoiceThread media help or hinder pre- and in-service teachers prepare to teach a poetry lesson?

Research Question 2: How did their conceptions of technology change as a result of completing the assignment?

Q2: Who is this p.

4 quote from?



Research Question 3: How did students merge pedagogical strategies with the technology to teach a poetry lesson to adolescents?

Context

The VoiceThread projects were part of a 3-week unit in the Methods of Teaching English course on the teaching poetry. Prior to this unit, students studied such topics as lesson planning, the teaching of writing, and the teaching of literature. Additionally, students learned teaching strategies such as frontloading (Wilhelm, 2007), questioning strategies (Wilhelm, 2007), developing graphic organizers (Billmeyer, 1998), image making (Wilhelm, 2007), and modes of reflection (Billmeyer, 1998). These strategies shaped our content analysis of the completed VoiceThread projects. Students received multiple teaching strategies for teaching literature and nonfiction texts. Many of these same strategies were reiterated in the teaching-of-poetry unit with a greater examination of literary terms and poetic forms.

For this project, students were told to select one poem that they planned to teach in a secondary English classroom. Using the strategies discussed in their Methods of Teaching English course and integrating VoiceThread, students designed a poetry lesson for adolescent learners. VoiceThread is an interactive web-based collaborative tool incorporating the use of mul-timedia, including images, text, audio, video, and hyperlinks, which allows viewers to comment on any given slide by typing, recording audio, upload-ing a video, or drawing on an image. VoiceThread was selected for this unit for two reasons: First, most students were proficient with PowerPoint, and we wanted to expand their technological repertoires; second, VoiceThread allowed preservice teachers more flexibility to teach a poem because it gave them the option to use multimedia, such as voice, text, video, or audio. Ad-ditionally, it encouraged students to comment in a variety of ways, thereby making collaboration easier and more enjoyable. Preservice teachers, for example, could show an image of specific part of a poem, read that section of the poem, and then ask students to comment on the image in one slide. In short, it gave preservice teachers the ability to design lessons that would engage students in multiple ways to help them understand a selected poem, and it allowed participants options to employ strategies they learned in the methods course. Furthermore, preservice teachers could scaffold the poem as a slideshow, and by doing so, this gave students a better chance at com-prehending it. VoiceThread was a strong match to aid preservice teachers in planning and organizing a poetry lesson.

Instruments

This study employed qualitative and quantitative instruments to measure the impact of digital media on the preparation of teaching of poetry. Quantita-



tive data included a self-report survey asking students to share a variety of information, including their experiences with poetry, the amount of instruc-tion they had had with poetry, their views about teaching poetry to secondary students, and how useful they thought VoiceThread was in the teaching of poetry. The qualitative measures included a content analysis of every com-pleted VoiceThread project and analysis of the short-answer responses using grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1999).

Participants

Students in their Methods of Teaching English course completed a Voi-ceThread lesson project as one of their required assignments. Twenty-one students completed their projects and thus participated in this study. Of the respondents, 33% (n = 7) were graduate students, while 67% (n = 14) were undergraduate students. All 21 participants were preservice secondary Eng-lish teachers in a teaching certification program. Methods of Teaching Eng-lish is the final course they take prior to student teaching. In addition, during their methods course, preservice teachers were placed in a secondary English classroom in a local school to observe an expert teacher. Participants had had an average of four college courses that covered the content of poetry in some form or fashion prior to taking Methods of Teaching English.

Data Sources

The first data source was a self-report measure that consisted of a survey designed by the researchers. It contained 12 Likert-type items based on a 4-point scale (1 = strong disagree, 4 = strongly agree). The purpose of the survey was to inquire about their conceptions of teaching poetry and using technol-ogy with poetry (Table 1). Questions included content-related items (e.g., “I feel comfortable teaching poetry”), pedagogical-related items (e.g., “I am familiar with different methods of teaching poetry in the classroom”), and technology-related items (e.g., “I am familiar with different technology tools that could be used to teach poetry”). Open-ended questions designed to elicit students’ experiences using VoiceThread to complete their poetry lesson were also asked. These questions included, “Describe your overall experience using VoiceThread to teach poetry,” “What worked?” “What did not?” “What benefits are there to using VoiceThread to teach poetry?” “What drawbacks do you see to using VoiceThread to teach poetry?” and “Do you think that using technology to teach poetry is an effective method? Why or why not?”

The second data source consisted of the VoiceThread projects them-selves. Students completed this assignment during a 2-week period during the course of the semester. All students finished the project, as it was a required project for the class. Students completed this assignment during class time at the university’s technology lab. A lab technician assisted stu-



dents on how to use VoiceThread and helped them resolve technical issues as they completed their projects.

Survey Analysis

Students completed the web-based survey outside of class time, and their responses were analyzed with descriptive statistics, including mean and stan-dard deviation (Table 1).

Short-Answer Response Analysis

Responses were examined and reexamined, with prevalent themes noted from each key area of the TPACK framework. Because coding provides the foundational framework between raw and analyzed data (Charmaz, 2006), survey responses were analyzed through the use of open coding, providing a means of identifying critical concepts and themes (Strauss & Corbin, 1999). We met several times to review codes. Initial reading, or open coding, of the data produced several themes and patterns. At first, specific units were sepa-rated into two categories: pedagogy and technology. Data units that spoke about how VoiceThread affected teachers’ teaching of poetry were organized on the pedagogy document, while those that spoke about using the technol-ogy were gathered on the technology document. Once those data units were determined, each author reread the data looking for specific themes. This reading produced different codes for each document. We met to reconcile

Table 1. Descriptive Statistical Scores of Closed Items (n = 17)

Item M SD

I believe that studying poetry is valuable. 3.47 .717I understand the importance of teaching and learning about poetry. 3.47 .624I am familiar with elements of poetry, including different types of poems,

rhyme schemes, and poetic devices 3.29 .588I feel comfortable teaching poetry. 3.12 .781Teaching how to write poetry is easy for me. 2.47 .874I am familiar with different methods of teaching poetry in the classroom.a 3.00 .612Poetry can be an effective way to teach other important skills in the

English classroom. 3.35 .606I am familiar with different technology tools that could be used to teach

poetry. 2.81 .655Using various media through the use of technology would help students’

understanding of poetry. 3.24 .752The use of technology would be an effective way to represent students’

understanding of a specific poem. 3.12 .485Implementing technology is an effective way to teach elements of poetry,

including different types of poems, rhyme schemes, and poetic devices. 3.06 .748Teachers should use technological representations (i.e. multimedia, visual

demonstrations, VoiceThread etc.) to teach poetry.a 3.25 .683

an = 16.


Table 2. Axial Coding for Open-Ended Responses Related to Technological Pedagogy

Data Codes

It helped me break down the poem into manageable pieces so that I could study it closer as I prepared to teach it. I found it easier to create higher order thinking questions for students.

Teching and learningStudents

I think the overall idea of VoiceThread is interesting, but I do not like how limiting it is when creating each slide. I feel like I can do much more with another form of technology.

Overall opinionFunctionalityAdded value

VoiceThread can make poetry more interactive, and it also opens the door to poetry assignments that can be completed outside of the classroom if students have access to the internet. VoiceThread also is a medium that supports encounters with poetry. Poems are personal, and great poetry is a dialogue and a personal relationship between the author and the audience. I feel VoiceThread does this better than full classroom readings and discussions of poetry.

Teching and learningStudentsTeching and learningOverall opinionTeching and learning

our codes for each category (i.e., pedagogy and technology). The axial coding combined codes for each category to determine one set of codes to analyze the entire data source (Table 2). We met to reconcile the axial coding list. We then reread the entire data set with the final code list and met to reconcile our coding of each unit of data.

After coding procedures concluded, we were able to ascertain specific themes and patterns within this data set. We discussed the specific themes from this data set. Using the constant comparative method, we used these themes to compare the other two data sources (i.e., survey and content analy-sis of VoiceThread projects).

VoiceThread Content Analysis

We utilized the pedagogical strategies that students were taught in their Methods of Teaching English class to analyze their VoiceThread projects. These methods included ways to frontload, prepare to read, help students as they read, review/reinforce literacy skills and content, develop metacognitive prompts, and design a project for students to show what they have learned from the lesson. Because we were most interested in learning about how tech-nology could aid preservice teachers to prepare to teach a poetry lesson, we focused primarily on the students’ pedagogical choices within VoiceThread.

Results

The TPACK framework proved to be a useful guide for how to help preser-vice teachers integrate Web 2.0 media with pedagogical strategies and con-tent for teaching poetry to adolescent learners. The results indicate, for the



most part, that preservice teachers found VoiceThread to be an effective tool to prepare, implement, and teach poetry to secondary students.

Student Interaction, Engagement, and Learning Poetry With VoiceThread

The short-answer responses on the survey revealed that 32% of the com-ments made by preservice teachers mentioned the relationship among Voi-ceThread, poetry, and students. Additionally, 94% of the preservice teachers agreed or strongly agreed with the statements “Using various media through the use of technology would help students understand poetry” and “The use of technology would be an effective way to represent students’ understand-ing of a specific poem.” A majority of preservice teachers (88%) agreed or strongly agreed that “implementing technology is an effective way to teach elements of poetry, including different types of poems, rhyme schemes, and poetic devices” and “teachers should use technological representations (i.e., multi-media, visual demonstrations, VoiceThread, etc.) to teach poetry.”

[Q3] Figure 2. Percentage of technological pedagogical codes in open-ended responses.

Q3: Please cite Fig-ure 2 in text.



However, only 69% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am familiar with different technology tools that could be used to teach poetry.” This seemed to indicate that preservice teachers, while understanding the importance of using technological tools with the teaching of poetry, were not confident that they had the skills and information to do so.

From the open-ended responses, a variety of themes were identified. Pre-service teachers indicated that they believed that VoiceThread would engage adolescent learners, cause them to interact with the poem, and encourage them to learn important skills. They also felt that VoiceThread engaged ado-lescent learners because it activates multiple medias, such as audio and visual. Participants believed that VoiceThread allowed students to hear the poem as it appeared on a slide, and photographs reinforced images in the poem, which would engage learners with both the technology and the poem. Pre-service teachers also stated that they thought VoiceThread would encourage students to interact with the poem and with one another. For example, one participant stated, “The biggest benefit was that the students can comment back during the presentation”; another asserted, “The students can interact with VoiceThread and with each other to better understand and analyze the poem”; and finally, “Using [technology] to teach poetry can help students pay more attention to an otherwise dull poetry lesson.”

Participants also identified potential pitfalls with using web-based technol-ogy. One student argued, “I would rather have a face-to-face discussion in class because then students can ask questions and get immediate feedback.” However, preservice teachers for the most part agreed that VoiceThread was an effective medium to engage students with poetry and that it encouraged them to interact with the technology, the poem, and with one another.

Content analysis reinforced the results from the short-answer responses. The majority of participants (95%) used photographs, while 41% used quick-writes, and 31.8% used popular media in their projects. This indicated that participants used visual representations, texts, and other media (i.e., other websites) to engage adolescent learners and encourage them to interact with the poem. Specific strategies used to teach the poetry lesson using Voice-Thread were also identified. These included providing background knowl-edge to the student (63.6%), activating students’ prior knowledge (59%), mentioning vocabulary related to the poem or type of poetry (50%), and pointing out how to interact with the poem (45.5%). All identified strategies are displayed in Figure 1. [Q4] These strategies support learners to compre-hend the poem and learn necessary literacy skills.

We can surmise that these preservice teachers reflected positively on VoiceThread as a tool to engage students and support learning (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). In fact, participants claimed that teaching poetry with Voice-Thread would allow adolescent students to learn important academic skills. A common sentiment among these preservice teachers is summarized by the following comment: “I consider VoiceThread to be an effective tool to teach

Q4: “displayed in Figure

3”?



poetry because students can comprehend a poem in small chunks.” Others asserted, “The format of VoiceThread lends itself well to literary analysis by focusing on small bites and unpacking them without staring at a large page full of text, which can be intimidating for many students” and “[VoiceThread] allows for more mental connections as students see and hear items related to the text.” These statements suggest that VoiceThread’s format (i.e., slideshow, audio, visual, text, and links) supports adolescent learners’ comprehension of a poem because it has the capacity to break the poem into small parts and be-cause it is able to engage multiple learning modalities to encourage students to interact with the poem.

Teacher’s Preparation, Classroom Management, and Strategies With VoiceThread

Through the current study, preservice teachers indicated that VoiceThread helped them to prepare to teach poetry, manage their classrooms, and use pedagogically sound strategies. Participants claimed that VoiceThread as-sisted them to “break down the poem into manageable pieces so that I could study it closer as I prepare to teach” and “What worked for me is being capable of exploring the meaning of each stanza through VoiceThread.” Fur-thermore, preservice teachers stated that VoiceThread could help them with classroom management. Common statements summarized here were “Any

Figure 3. Analysis of elements of preparation used in VoiceThread projects.



teacher who is absent can give the VoiceThread assignments to a substitute as a lesson plan” and “You can incorporate so many things without having to slow down your class by switching from computer to TV to stereo, etc.” Finally, participants claimed that VoiceThread could update traditional class-room methods, as exhibited by the following statement:

VoiceThread also is a medium that supports encounters with poetry. Poems are personal, and great poetry is a dialogue and a personal relationship between the author and the audience. I feel VoiceThread does this better than full classroom readings and discussions of poetry.

Participants also stated that VoiceThread gave them pedagogical options and flexibility. For example, participants stated, “Teachers can also use techniques that students may be familiar and comfortable using” and

Yes! Technology can be engaging and effective. Poetry can be difficult for those who have already decided they do not care for it. Using the various points of entry with a technological delivery might just convert those students. Poetry is meant to be more than just read; technology allows for these greater options.

Added Value, Functionality, and Personal Experiences With VoiceThread

An important concern with introducing new technology with teachers is, how does it add value to traditional ways of teaching and other medias? Participants commented regularly about this issue. While most participants conceded that VoiceThread and technology added value to the secondary English classroom and to the teaching of poetry, others were not so con-vinced. One preservice teacher wrote, “I don’t plan on using technology to teach poetry. I thought it was an interesting assignment, but I can do this same strategy in the classroom without the hassle of computers,” while another asserted “sitting on the fence” regarding using VoiceThread in the classroom. This participant stated a willingness to “experiment with it and determine whether it will or won’t work for me and my instruction.” Other participants claimed that they would rather use other mediums, specifically PowerPoint. They claimed that it accomplished similar outcomes with adolescent learners as VoiceThread. Finally, a few participants asserted that poetry itself does not need the aid of technology and that multimedia is an “unnecessary step” to teaching poetry. They felt that technology did not “allow for certain emotional discussions on a personal basis.”

While most participants stated that they had positive experiences with using VoiceThread to teach poetry lessons, most of the criticism centered on the functionality of this interactive instrument. Comments such as “The pac-ing is slow,” “limited text capabilities,” “It was a little awkward transitioning from frame to frame,” and “I do not like that I cannot speak and have a typed comment at the same time” indicated that even though participants saw how



VoiceThread could help their teaching of poetry, there were some concerns with its functional aspects.

Discussion and Implications

The focus of this study was on preservice teachers and how to prepare them to teach in a secondary English classroom. The study took place as part of a Methods of Teaching English course, implying that technology could be a potential method to teach English with adolescents. As such, it is designed to provide preservice teachers with additional strategies for which to engage their adolescent learners. Using poetry with technology was designed to help preservice teachers feel better equipped to teach an often-dreaded yet usually required genre. Additionally, the study was meant to help preservice teach-ers conceptually see how to incorporate content knowledge and PCK with technological knowledge.

TPACK and Teaching Poetry

Through the use of VoiceThread to create visual representations of poetry and have the potential for creating a dialogue about a particular poem, pre-service English teachers were able to capitalize on the affordances of tech-nology and break their lessons into parts that would be easier for students to comprehend. While the teachers recognized the value in doing this, includ-ing the ability to represent poetry with media and the potential to be able to communicate more efficiently and effectively with their future students, they recognized their lack of experience and knowledge to be able to confidently do so. After the project, preservice English teachers’ beliefs were increased regarding the value of incorporating VoiceThread to improve student under-standing of poetry through a variety of pedagogical methods. They identified the technological advantage of using VoiceThread to extend learning beyond the confines of the one period class, in addition to the pedagogical benefits of being able to implement specific strategies to enhance learning, including the use of chunking, pacing, and activating prior knowledge. This gets at the complex and interwoven nature of technology, pedagogy, and content as sug-gested by the TPACK framework.

This has implications for the way that teachers and students interact, both in and out of the classroom. Because read/write web tools such as Voice-Thread allow for greater representation, access, and communication, sec-ondary students can receive more immediate and ongoing feedback through their use. This use of formative feedback is important for supporting learning (Higgins, Hartley, & Skelton, 2002).

The increased communication with students, coupled with a more student-centered approach to teaching, is important in terms of leveraging the capa-



bilities of web-based tools for educational purposes. The benefits of integrat-ing these tools in a meaningful way, mindful of how they fit within specific content areas, including methods of teaching, are important considerations, especially for teacher education programs that are preparing teachers for the challenges of the 21st century.

Supporting Highly Qualified Teachers

While the debate in education about the characteristics of a “highly quali-fied” teacher continues, this research supports the recent study conducted by Dudley-Marling, Abt-Perkins, Sato, and Selfe (2006). Their study indicates that although possessing a strong background in English content is impor-tant to being an effective and “highly qualified” English teacher, a majority of National Council of Teachers of English members believe that PCK is most important to being a “highly qualified” English teacher. Additionally, their study indicates that council members do not value computer-based strategies for teaching English. Although the authors raise several questions about why this may be so, our research indicates that new teachers do value technology as a tool to teach adolescent learners. We can infer that new teachers have a different view of technology from experienced teachers, only because the present study focused on preservice teachers. Furthermore, we would argue that the lack of infusing of technology in Methods of Teaching English courses, where preservice teachers would learn how to incorporate technology with content knowledge and where PCK would be a significant factor in why technology is viewed as a less important quality of a “highly qualified” teacher.

What we do know, however, is that content knowledge is not necessarily enough to becoming an effective secondary English teacher. The partici-pants in this study were well versed in poetry but lacked the strategies for how to teach it with secondary students. Thus, it appears to us that pro-viding preservice teachers with an array of strategies for teaching poetry, including technological ones, aligns with the views of the National Council of Teachers of English membership. Teacher educators can design units in their methods courses to show how to infuse technology with content or, as Dudley and colleagues (2006), suggest “to consider anchoring new ideas and strategies and approaches in the traditions of the profession in order to be viewed as supporting highly-qualified teachers” (p. 184). Participants in this study learned traditional methods of teaching poetry and strategies for how to teach both poetry and the writing of poetry, and they learned how to use technology with those traditional tools. In this way, then, we are “supporting highly-qualified teachers.”

Finally, a word about the professionalization of teachers is appropriate. The tensions in what constitutes teaching as a profession and, more im-portant, about how to prepare secondary English teachers as professionals



remains contentious. The main reason is that there is no clear relationship between standards of practice and real-world application. Preservice teach-ers learn a variety of strategies to implement with adolescent learners, but unlike the medical and legal professions, the teaching profession does not have codified practices to apply in every situation or in even specific local settings. Teachers make decisions everyday about how to best support ado-lescent learners with English. Shulman’s (1986) work was seminal in argu-ing that teachers need PCK to successfully teach secondary students. To be professionals, preservice teachers need knowledge about how to use ap-propriate and research-based strategies to use in their classrooms. There is, however, no flowchart to follow for each and every student in the classroom. Teaching—specifically, teaching English—is a complex endeavor (DiPardo, 2005). Teacher educators will need to learn how to use technology in the classroom to support adolescent learners with English content. O’Brien and Scharber (2010) state that the National Assessment Educational Progress plans to develop a national test on technological literacy. Teachers will be required to teach the “general understanding of technology coupled with a capability to use, manage, and assess the technologies that are most relevant in one’s life” (cited in O’Brien & Scharber, 2010, p. 601). Although Voice-Thread may or may not be a technology that is useful to an adolescent’s life, it can be used as a teaching strategy to help one understand English content. Additionally, in terms of professionalism, the fast shift from text-based learning to computer-based learning implores teacher educators to design specific content-based assignments with content and technology to give new teachers the tools they need to make professional decisions about teaching and learning in the classroom.

Limitations

There are several limitations to this study. First, it does not take a stand on issues of digital media and space (Kirkland, 2009), which is beyond the scope of the current research. Future studies could explore issues of space, medium, and how these are related to teaching and learning a particular content area such as poetry. Second, all participants were preservice teachers, who created a hypothetical lesson to be used in their future teaching. Although partici-pants had experiences in secondary schools, it would be interesting to see how in-service teachers responded to the VoiceThread project, considering that they currently design lessons for secondary students. Finally, this study did not measure learning or experiences on the part of the intended adolescent audience. A useful study could be done exploring how high school students responded to the poetry projects and how well the project affected students’ learning and experiences with poetry. We are currently considering this idea, along with several related ones, in subsequent research.



Conclusion

As a function of the medium and as a read/write web-based tool, the use of VoiceThread to create visual representations of poetry is uniquely suited for hosting an engaging discussion about a specific poem and for taking advan-tage of the abilities of the technology to spur conversation outside the regular classroom and to chunk the content into parts, which can be guided using text and audio commentary as well as visual imagery. After leveraging Voice-Thread to design a poetry unit, preservice English teachers expanded their views, which enabled them to recognize the value of integrating technology to teach an already-difficult part of the English curriculum. These future teachers recognized the pedagogical benefits of being able to incorporate specific cognitive-based strategies for increasing learning, including the use of chunking, pacing, and activating prior knowledge. They also experienced the technological advantage of using VoiceThread to extend learning beyond the restricted time in a 50-minute class time.

Through this study, the complex and meshed nature of technology, peda-gogy, and content described by the TPACK framework were made readily apparent. As such, increases of communication with students, coupled with a more student-centered approach to teaching, are important benefits of lever-aging the capabilities of web-based tools for educational purposes. The ben-efits of integrating these tools in a meaningful way, mindful of how they fit within specific content areas, including methods of teaching, are important considerations, especially for teacher education programs that are preparing teachers for the challenges of the 21st century. TEP

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!David Lee Carlson is an assistant professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers Col-lege at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. He taught secondary English for 7 years in urban public schools. He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters on topics related to methods of teaching English and teacher edu-cation. He is currently writing a book on queer theory entitled (Re)Reading Queer Theory: The Grammar of Recognition and the Pedagogies of Friendship. He also serves on the advisory board of the GLBTQ Online High School. Address



correspondence to David Lee Carlson, Division of Teacher Education, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, 4701 West Thunderbird Road, Glendale, AZ 85306-4908. E-mail: [email protected].

Leanna Archambault is an assistant professor of educational technology at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and a researcher with the Sustainability Sci-ence Education initiative. Her research areas include teacher preparation for online and blended classrooms, as well as the nature of technological pedagogical content knowledge. Through her work, she has emerged as a leader in her field. In addition to publishing in several prominent journals, she was awarded the Online Learning Innovator Award for Important Research from the International Association for K–12 Online Learning. Prior to taking her position at Arizona State University, she graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, with a doctorate in in-structional and curricular studies. As a former middle school English teacher, she is passionate about improving education, particularly through the use of relevant and emerging technologies.


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