Share Paper: Ethical Border Crossings along TPACK’s Arc of Technology Transparency: Reckoning with Digital Technologies as the New "Materia Medica" of Pedagogy

  1. Catherine Adams, University of Alberta, Canada
Wednesday, March 20 10:15 AM-11:15 AM Wilshire A

Abstract: In his landmark essay on Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), Shulman (1986) described technology as the “materia medica of pedagogy, the pharmacopeia from which a teacher draws” (p. 10). This crucial passage about curricular knowledge and technology was overlooked by Mishra and Koehler (2006) in their popular formulation of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK), yet it hints at important technoethical obligations for today’s teachers. For if technological solutions are indeed pharmacological in their effects, then teachers must carefully weigh every new technology’s benefits against its possible risks and adverse effects to their students’ knowledge ecology and well-being, and by extension, the ...