Computers & Education 128 (2019) 171–182

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Computers & Education

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compedu

How pre-service English teachers enact TPACK in the context of

T
web-conferencing teaching: A design thinking approach
Jun-Jie Tseng∗, Yuh-Show Cheng, Hsi-Nan Yeh
English Department, National Taiwan Normal University, 162, Section 1, Heping E. Rd., Taipei City, 106, Taiwan

A R T IC LE I N F O ABS TRA CT

Keywords: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is a teacher knowledge construct in

Distance education relation to integrating technology into teaching. However, whether this theoretical concept exists
Improving classroom teaching in practice remains contentious. To ascertain the nature of TPACK, the present study aimed to
Learning communities understand how six pre-service English teachers enacted various forms of TPACK through design
Pedagogical issues
thinking while considering contextual problems that impacted on their web-conferencing
Teaching strategies
teaching over the course of 14 weeks. This study examined the design conversations in which six
distance teachers discussed ways to design online teaching materials and activities as well as to
solve any contextual problems encountered. Through quantitative content analysis of coded post-
teaching discussions and qualitative analysis of interviews, it was found that while the teachers'
discussions conspicuously displayed an orientation towards Pedagogical Content Knowledge, as
opposed to technology-based knowledge, their discussions were particularly not associated with
Technological Pedagogical Knowledge. In addition, two contextual factors were found to influ-
ence their web-conferencing teaching: technical problems related to sound quality were identi-
fied as a micro-level contextual factor while the teachers' concerns about their students’ prior
knowledge and short attention spans were viewed as a student-centric contextual factor. These
findings provide insights into how individual TPACK subdomains were enacted through design
thinking that enabled the teachers to overcome contextual problems. The present study con-
tributes to our understanding of how TPACK enactment is mediated by the context, empirically
validating TPACK construct in practice through design thinking.

1. Introduction

As computer technology advances, computer-mediated communication (CMC) continues to be widely applied to the teaching and
learning of foreign languages. Language schools and training institutes all over the world have started to launch distance foreign
language programs (Kraemer, 2008; White, 2017), and many educators consider them an alternative to traditional face-to-face
foreign language teaching and learning (Meskill & Anthony, 2010; Vorobel & Kim, 2012). Distance technology has an advantage in
that it traverses the long distances between teachers and students, so this technological strength is highly suitable for teaching
students in remote areas where teacher manpower is limited. However, in order to help foreign language teachers to exploit distance
technology and to apply it to task design (White, 2017), there is an evident need to develop their competence in integrating online

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: jjtseng@ntnu.edu.tw, https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-tseng-292ba121/ (J.-J. Tseng), t22035@ntnu.edu.tw (Y.-S. Cheng),
brianyeh@ntnu.edu.tw (H.-N. Yeh).
URL: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jun_Jie_Tseng (J.-J. Tseng).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.09.022
Received 23 June 2018; Received in revised form 4 September 2018; Accepted 28 September 2018
Available online 29 September 2018
0360-1315/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
J.-J. Tseng et al. Computers & Education 128 (2019) 171–182

technology into language learning and teaching, namely teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), in relation
to distance teaching and learning.
TPACK, as proposed by Mishra and Koehler (2006), is a conceptual framework of teacher knowledge about technology in-
tegration. There has been interesting discussion about the nature of TPACK. While some researchers consider TPACK as a holistic
unique body of knowledge (Angeli & Valanides, 2005, 2009; Valanides & Angeli, 2008), others assume TPACK to be a combination of
technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and content knowledge (Chai, Koh, Tsai, & Tan, 2011; Koehler & Mishra, 2008;
Schmidt et al., 2009). Whether TPACK construct exists in practice as proposed by Mishra and Koehler (2006) needs to be further
clarified.
TPACK enactment is grounded in the context (Koehler & Mishra, 2008; Porras-Hernández & Salinas-Amescua, 2013; Rosenberg &
Koehler, 2015b). Research on contextual influences on TPACK enactment has furthered our understanding of the nature of TPACK
itself (Bibi & Khan, 2017; Gill & Dalgarno, 2017; Swallow & Olofson, 2017). However, there is little conclusive evidence that attests to
the existence of the seven knowledge domains as conceptualized, i.e. technological knowledge (TK), pedagogical knowledge (PK),
content knowledge (CK), technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK), technological content knowledge (TCK), pedagogical content
knowledge (PCK), and technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). This controversy may be attributed to the difficulty in
validating TPACK due to the uniqueness and complexity of the context (Phillips, 2016). Thus, more research is needed to ascertain
the nature of TPACK by looking at what sub-domains are truly in practice and how they interact with the context.
To measure TPACK in practice, the present study adopted design thinking to unravel how the distance teachers applied their
TPACK to designing online materials and tasks in considerations of contextual factors that might facilitate or impede their web
conferencing teaching. This method describes a reasoning processing in which the teachers could address authentic problems arising
in their distance teaching (Koh, Chai, Wong, & Hong, 2015a). These contextual problems could engage them in a design process that
involves iterative cycles of design, reflections, and redesign (Laurillard, 2012). It was intended that design thinking could shed light
on how the teachers enacted various forms of TPACK while contemplating overcoming any contextual problems encountered. The
present study ultimately aimed to understand how the nature of TPACK is mediated by the context.

2. Literature review

2.1. The nature of TPACK construct

Due to the pervasive influence of computer technology on education, teachers have been increasingly integrating technological
tools and resources into their instructions. In the face of such change in teaching practices, Mishra and Koehler (2006) proposed a
theoretical construct of teacher knowledge, technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), which extends from Shulman's
(1986, 1987) pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). When teachers apply technology to their teaching, they have to develop an
understanding of technology, in addition to the PCK they possessed beforehand. That is, they need to integrate TK with PCK. Another
way to examine TPACK is through the various intersections of the three bodies of core knowledge: TK, PK, CK, TPK, TCK, PCK, and
TPACK. Corresponding to the context of the distance foreign language teaching undertaken in this study, the seven sub-domains are
briefly defined as follows and illustrated in Fig. 1.

● TK: knowledge about technology such as Adobe Connect, PowerPoint, and multimedia
● PK: knowledge about EFL teaching techniques and strategies
● CK: knowledge about English subject matter such as vocabulary, grammar, reading, listening, speaking, and writing
● TPK: knowledge about how to use Adobe Connect in an appropriate distance teaching fashion such as promoting interactive

Fig. 1. TPACK framework (source: http://tpack.org).

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learning
● TCK: knowledge about Adobe Connect that affords the representation of English subject matter
● PCK: knowledge about how to apply instructional strategies to the teaching of English knowledge and skills
● TPACK: knowledge about how to integrate the affordances of Adobe Connect into teaching specific English content in an ap-
propriate pedagogical manner.

The enactment of TPACK has been extensively investigated. Some researchers view TPACK as a transformative concept, paying
little attention to individual knowledge components (Angeli & Valanides, 2005, 2009, 2015; Valanides & Angeli, 2008). These
scholars would consider TPACK holistic rather than discrete, focusing on an eventual enactment of TPACK. For example, in the study
of Tseng, Lien, and Chen (2016) on TPACK development of four teachers teaching Chinese as a foreign language, they found that,
overall, the teachers understood the affordances and constraints of web conferencing technology, i.e. using multimedia and Internet
resources to enhance linguistic input provided to distance learners, to increase interaction between people and content, and to
contribute to linguistic production. This result suggested a transformative form of TPACK. However, the above research ignored the
dynamics and complexities involved in the process of TPACK development.
In contrast, researchers with an integrative view of TPACK are keen to investigate pre-defined TPACK in progress, intending to
undertake a detailed analysis of individual knowledge components. Based on the proposed TPACK framework, this line of research
often explores the enactment and development of specific TPACK knowledge components through TPACK measurement instruments,
such as self-reports, open-ended questionnaires, and interviews. For example, Liu and Kleinsasser (2015) conducted pre- and post-
surveys and individual interviews to explore how six Taiwanese vocational high school teachers incorporated online project-based
instructions into EFL curriculum. The study suggested that the teachers, after a year of learning/practice, made progress in the
enactments of discrete knowledge bases, particularly TPK, TCK, and TPACK. However, the study failed to confirm whether TPACK
knowledge domains appear in practice as they are conceptualized in theory. To address this problem, there is a call for TPACK
enactment in real-life practice in order to understand the nature of TPACK.

2.2. The impact of web-conferencing teaching context on TPACK enactment

Recently, researchers have shown an increasing interest in the context of teachers' TPACK (Blackwell, Lauricella, & Wartella,
2016; Harris, Phillips, Koehler, & Rosenberg, 2017; Jang & Tsai, 2013; Koh, Chai, & Tay, 2014; Porras-Hernández & Salinas-Amescua,
2013; Rosenberg & Koehler, 2015b; Swallow & Olofson, 2017). TPACK enactment does not take place in a vacuum; instead it is
situated in specific teaching contexts (Koehler, Mishra, & Cain, 2013; Rosenberg & Koehler, 2015a). As teachers represent content
using particular technology via certain pedagogy, they would consider contextual factors such as their students, the school, and
parents (Koehler & Mishra, 2008). In particular, Porras-Hernández and Salinas-Amescua (2013) examined the context from five
dimensions: (a) the macro context, situated in particular socio-political environments where teachers may be required to teach with
technology due to the formulation of an educational policy with the advancement of technology, (b) the mezzo context, situated in
the school setting where teachers’ willingness to use technology may be affected by the culture and leadership of the school, (c) the
micro context, situated in the classroom where access to technology would influence the ways teachers incorporate technology into
teaching, (d) teachers (e.g. their beliefs and motivations), and (e) students (e.g. their prior knowledge and learning difficulties). The
contextual framework illustrates the interplay between the scope dimension (macro, mezzo, and micro) and the actor dimension
(teachers and students).
Adopting this conceptual framework of context, Rosenberg and Koehler (2015a) investigated what aspects of context were in-
cluded in describing TPACK in 193 research publications between 2005 and 2013. They found that only 36% of publications dealt
with context, with a dominating presence of micro-level context. However, TPACK researchers have been exploring the influences of
the other contextual dimensions mentioned above on TPACK enactment. For example, Swallow and Olofson (2017) attempted to
identify specific contextual factors that influenced teachers' TPACK knowledge and practice. Seven teachers from two Catholic
schools were observed and interviewed. Results showed that the teachers' use of technology was moderated predominantly by
teacher-centric factors in the micro context, including their attitudes towards technology and their conceptualization of teaching and
learning. The identification of these contextual factors can help further our understanding of how teachers’ TPACK is woven together
with the context.
The incorporation of the context into TPACK research can make research relevant to practice (Rosenberg & Koehler, 2015a), so it
is worth exploring the contextual factors that may impact on web-conferencing teaching in the present study. In fact, there are a
number of contextual differences between distance teaching and face-to-face teaching (Blake, 2005; Hampel, 2006; Murphy, Shelley,
White, & Baumann, 2011). Online teaching particularly requires teachers to maintain interaction in order to reduce the sense of
isolation caused by geographical distance (Hampel, 2006). For this reason, teachers may need to ponder how to (a) make meaning in
multimodal learning environments (Hampel & Hauck, 2006), (b) establish interpersonal relationships with distance learners
(Guichon, 2009), and/or (c) promote online interaction (Hampel & Stickler, 2012; Rosell-Aguilar, 2005).
As Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (1999) suggested, online teaching quality can increase if distance teachers maintain cognitive
presence, teaching presence, and social presence. More specifically, cognitive presence is defined as online teachers' ability to
construct meaning through communication channels; teaching presence, their expertise to design online course materials and tasks;
social presence, their skills to project themselves to students as real people. In particular, social presence is extended to highlight the
need for online learners to express ideas in comfortable and safe learning environments (Anderson & Garrison, 1995; Gunawardena &
Zittle, 1997). Bradner and Mark (2001) examined the social presence concept in a synchronous audio-graphic conferencing platform,

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concluding that the application sharing toolset for supporting interaction could potentially establish social presence, specifically
promoting distance learners’ interest and engagement.
The present study aimed to add details to the context in which pre-service English teachers learn to teach at a distance, thereby
contributing to the literature regarding the impact of the context on their TPACK enactment. It was intended that detailed de-
scriptions of this context could help illustrate how pre-service teachers consider contextual factors in applying web conferencing
technology to foreign language learning and teaching.

2.3. TPACK enactment through design thinking

As suggested above, how teachers consider contextual factors in TPACK enactments has become increasingly critical. However,
there has been little discussion about how they tackle contextual problems encountered in technology integration. Design thinking
may address this issue since this pedagogical intervention could possibly help teachers improve TPACK with an emphasis on how they
encounter authentic problems or challenges, utilize knowledge and practices, and finally identify viable solutions (Koh et al., 2015a).
Key issues or concerns may emerge during collaborative design conversations among teachers through cycles of action and reflection:
initial design, implementation, reflection, and redesign (Boschman, McKenney, Pieters, & Voogt, 2017). According to Schön (1983),
teacher designers often engage in reflective conversations with a focus on solving problems. This is what is known as reflection-in-
action, through which teachers can improve their TPACK in an attempt to design technology-based curriculum materials and utilize
them in class (Boschman et al., 2017; Koh, Chai, Wong, & Hong, 2015b). Therefore, design thinking has been employed to improve
teachers’ TPACK in that this approach can encourage teachers to contribute to collaborative dialogues for technology integration
(Boschman et al., 2017; Boschman, McKenney, & Voogt, 2015; Bower, Highfield, Furney, & Mowbray, 2013; Koh & Chai, 2016; Koh
et al., 2015b, 2015a).
In particular, design thinking may potentially illustrate how TPACK subdomains are associated with contextual considerations in
teaching (Boschman et al., 2017; Koh & Chai, 2016). Boschman et al. (2017) explored how kindergarten teachers collaborated to
design digital learning materials through design talk. The topical exchanges in discussions were analyzed to determine which sub-
domains of TPACK were elucidated. Results indicated that their design talk displayed their orientations towards PCK and TPACK and
that their discussions in this regard were associated with practical concerns. While TPACK was enacted in designing learning ac-
tivities, PCK was also explicated in the teachers' discussions due to their limited knowledge of novel technology that could be used in
kindergartens. Similarly, Koh and Chai (2016) also found that PCK and TPACK dominated the design talk of 27 Singaporean ele-
mentary teachers when they worked in teams to integrate technology into student-centered lessons. PCK-related discussions were
particularly motivated by the teachers' concerns about students’ learning problems.
Although there is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance of design thinking, much uncertainty still exists
about the gap between concept and practice. There have been few empirical investigations on how pre-service teachers enact TPACK
through design thinking, particularly in relation to the context (Koh et al., 2015a). The present study intended to address this gap by
exploring which dimensions of TPACK were explicated in the consideration of contextual influences resulting from web-conferencing
teaching.

3. Research questions

The present study is situated in the context of pre-service English teachers delivering online lessons to the students of a remote
senior high school through web conferencing technology. The purpose of this study is two-fold: (a) to ascertain TPACK construct in
practice and (b) to identify contextual factors in action through design thinking. It is hoped that light can be shed on the relationship
between TPACK enactment and the context. Research questions are framed as follows:

• How did pre-service English teachers enact their TPACK in the context of web-conferencing teaching?
• What were the contextual factors that might influence the teachers' TPACK enactment?
4. Methods

4.1. Participants

The participants consisted of six pre-service English teachers, 14 first-year senior high school students, one collaborative school-
based teacher, and three professors. The pre-service teachers recruited by the professors came from English department of a national
university in Taiwan. All of them were females at the age of 21/22. They were taking teacher education courses such as teaching
materials and methods, and teaching practicum. Upon voluntarily participating in the project, they were informed of the objectives
and procedures of the project.
As for the distance students, while nine of them were males, five of them were females. At the age of 16/17, they had learned
English for seven years. However, they were low achievers because the students had been exposed to limited learning resources
owing to their locations in a small aboriginal island. Being disadvantaged educationally, economically, and socially, they ended up
possessing low English proficiency, with a small vocabulary size, poor pronunciation, and insufficient grammatical knowledge.
This distance learning project was actually initiated by the students' teacher, who was a 27-year-old female and had taught
English for five years on the outer island. Before the project, the teacher consulted with one of the professors (her former teacher at

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Fig. 2. The interface of Adobe Connect web-conferencing platform.

the university; the second author) for the possibility of helping the students improve their English ability. Consequently, they came up
with a way to enhance the students’ English proficiency: distance learning. The teacher was subsequently involved in co-designing the
distance curriculum with three university professors; she also helped the students with trouble-shooting, such as fixing audio and
Internet connection problems.
Meanwhile, the three professors, also the authors of the present study, played different roles in the project: the first author
supervised the whole project, i.e. training the pre-service teachers to operate the web-conferencing platform and discussing with
them about technical and pedagogical problems; the other two authors were in charge of co-designing the distance teaching program,
recruiting the participating student teachers, and arranging two school visits in which the distance teachers gained a better un-
derstanding of the students' backgrounds, the school context, and the island culture at the beginning of the project, and assessed
students’ performance of the assigned tasks at the end of the project.

4.2. Web-conferencing teaching environments

This study utilized Adobe Connect as the web-conferencing teaching platform, which allowed distance teachers to upload
PowerPoint-based teaching materials, to enhance their teaching via whiteboards such as pen, marker, arrow pointer, and text input,
and to communicate with their distance students through communication channels such as microphone, webcam, and text chat. See
Fig. 2 for the interface of Adobe Connect.
Prior to teaching, the participating teachers received training in a 12-h workshop training: 6 h on designing the curriculum and
materials, and the other 6 h on operating the web-conferencing platform.

4.3. Procedures

In order to help the distance teachers enact TPACK specific to the context of web conferencing teaching, design thinking was
implemented. Adapted from Boschman et al.’s (2017) collaborative design talk, the present study organized the pre-service teachers
to go through not only multiple cycles of action and reflections, but more specifically, initial design, implementation, reflection on
practices, and redesign. At the very beginning, one of the pre-service teachers designed PowerPoint-based teaching materials; sub-
sequently all of them implemented distance teaching using the same online materials; afterwards they discussed problems en-
countered and reflected on the materials and practices; finally they adjusted their teaching and redesigned their teaching materials
and activities.
With regard to distance teaching, each teaching session ran for 50 min, once per week, for 14 weeks. The teaching objective was to
train students to presumably introduce their aboriginal culture and hometown to foreign tourists, so the topics selected for this tour
guide mission included transportation, tourist spots, local food, and cultural stories. The teachers learned to represent these topics
through PowerPoint-based teaching materials; for example, Fig. 3 illustrates a sentence pattern for transportation and Fig. 4 de-
monstrates a description of a tourist spot.
After teaching, the teachers proceeded to swap ideas about overcoming technical and pedagogical problems encountered. Such
discussions motivated them to reflect on distance teaching practices. In addition, they would also discuss how to design and create
PowerPoint-based teaching materials for instructions that followed, specifically what content should be covered and how it should be
represented on PowerPoint slides. In the end, the professor (the first author) would give feedback on the ways the teachers designed
materials and solved problems.

4.4. Data collection

Data for seeking TPACK enactment were collected through post-teaching discussions. Each of the discussions ran for approxi-
mately 30 min and was audio-recorded with the participating pre-service teachers’ consent and were transcribed verbatim.
Data for identifying contextual factors were collected through two focus-group interviews and post-teaching discussions.

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Fig. 3. The teaching of a sentence pattern for transportation.

Fig. 4. The teaching for introducing a tourist spot.

Conducted respectively in the seventh week (the middle of the distance teaching project) and in the fourteenth week (the end of the
project), the interviews intended to elicit the pre-service teachers’ responses to any challenges or problems that might affect the ways
teaching materials and activities were designed and implemented. Each of the interviews was audio-recorded and transcribed ver-
batim for data analysis. In addition, data from the previous post-teaching discussions were also utilzed to illustrate contextual factors.

4.5. Data analysis

This study adopted quantitative content analysis to examine the teachers’ TPACK enactment. First of all, representative samples
for data analysis were determined: any three discussion sessions that were comparatively richer and lengthier were chosen re-
spectively from the early stage (weeks 3, 5, 7) and the later stage (weeks 9, 12, 13). Each of the discussions was segmented into
several discourse episodes according to conversational turns. Then, the first author developed coding protocols. Coding examples are
listed in Table 1. The discourse episodes were coded. In order to promote trustworthiness, the researcher attempted to achieve coding
reliability by coding the same data one month after the first coding. If any coding inconsistency took place, it would be re-coded
carefully. Finally, the occurrences of discourse episodes coded for a particular TPACK component were counted.
If specific TPACK subdomains emerged prominently, their discourse episodes would be further coded for themes in relation to
how the teachers enacted their TPACK subdomains associated with web-conferencing English teaching.
The way to analyze the interview data for contextual factors followed a qualitative approach: (a) coding, (b) developing category,
(c) comparing data, (d) determining theme (Silverman, 2000). The first author carefully read the interview transcripts and coded
them. All of the coding was organized into categories after constant comparisons. The categories emerged as themes.
In addition, the data from the post-teaching discussions were also coded into discourse episodes according to the five contextual
dimensions of Porras-Hernández and Salinas-Amescua (2013). The occurrences of the discourse episodes were counted.

5. Findings

5.1. TPACK enactment

As shown in Table 2, PCK occurred with a count of 13 discourse episodes in the early stage. CK came second with 7 discourse
episodes; TPACK was third, 5; TK and PK were joint fourth, 4; with TCK fifth, 2, and TPK sixth, 0. In contrast, the counts of discourse
episodes for each sub-domain of TPACK in the later stage are revealed from the highest to the lowest: PCK (10), CK (4), TPACK (4), TK

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Table 1
Examples of coding protocols pertaining to TPACK subdomains explicated.
Codes Examples

TK A: Is there anything wrong with the wheel [part of a PowerPoint game]? You can't click on that; instead you need to click on the one at the bottom.
Only when we move on to the Monopoly game later can you click the inner one.
B: When I clicked on the map, I couldn't find a way back.
A: You need to operate it manually.
PK I spoke louder today, because the boy spoke louder and louder during the class. He just didn't stop doodling and skipping the slide, so I was a little bit
annoyed. Later, I asked him to raise his hand (to get away from the mouse).
CK I think we can teach another sentence pattern, because when I asked them if they go to school by bus, they didn't say “by bus”, but “take a bus.”
TPK When doing review, we can show not only cartoon pictures but also some more authentic ones, which may impress them much more!
TCK A: Can we embed audio files into the PPT slide?
B: Sure!
A: I think we don't need to have them search for each word's audio pronunciation on Google Translate … they would spend a lot of time searching for
the pronunciation. Instead, we can let them find some, and add the MP3 audio of the pronunciation for the rest on the PPT.
PCK A: In teaching, I would leave some words blank in sentences so that students could guess their meaning or through my guidance.
B: Blanking out noun words or …
A: For example, removing “take” in the phrase, “take a bus.” This covered word would impress students.
B: Nice!
TPACK A: What did you do to help them develop the outline? Mine is to introduce the place first, then the features, and the story last. What about you?
B: I gave them a table of contents in the end. Also, I asked them how they could change the cover page. For example, I told them that they could put a
picture of Chin-Ren Cave beside the words. Also they could add the picture of Battleship Rock to the slide. That's how I used analogy to guide them.
This is my outline. What about yours?

Table 2
The counts of discourse episodes involving TPACK enactments.
TPACK codes TK PK CK TPK TCK PCK TPACK

counts in the early stage 4 4 7 0 2 13 5

counts in the later stage 3 1 4 0 2 10 4
total counts 7 5 11 0 4 23 9

(3), TCK (2), PK (1), and TPK (0). In total, the teachers’ discussions predominantly reflected PCK (23). With regard to the discussions
involving technology integration, i.e. the enactments of TPK (0), TCK (4), and TPACK (9), they totaled 13. This number is notably
lower than a sum of discourse episodes in relation to individual core knowledge enactments, i.e. 23, specifically TK (7), PK (5), and
CK (11).
When the counts of the discourse episodes are compared between the early stage and the later stage, a pattern emerged: PCK
dominated most of the discourse episodes, with the other sub-domains of TPACK scattered throughout the discussions. See Fig. 5 for
the counts of TPACK codes in the two stages.
Furthermore, themes emerging from the data coded for PCK suggested that the teachers' enactments of PCK involved how vo-
cabulary and sentence patterns were taught. They were concerned about their students’ learning problem, particularly their com-
prehension of teaching content. To address this concern, they employed pedagogical strategies: (a) presenting vocabulary with
contextual clues, (b) providing positive feedback on grammatical errors, and (c) reviewing content through games. These strategies
were revealed in the following excerpts:
(a)
On the teaching material there was a vocabulary word, “weather,” my student queried for its meaning. I made a sentence for him: “The

Fig. 5. Graph showing per count of TPACK codes found in the two stages.

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Fig. 6. Aspects of the context identified in web-conferencing teaching.

weather is cold today.” I guessed he understood the meaning of “cold,” so he could figure out the meaning of “weather.”
(b)

A: I just saw my student respond with an incorrect answer: “not like [vegetables]” instead of “No, I don't like vegetables.” … How do you
help your students respond correctly?
B: I would simply say: “No, I DON’T like vegetables.” Providing a correct sentence with an emphasis on “DON’T.”
(c)
You know, when I uttered the word, “bicycle,” they failed to spell it out. Through the game of word puzzle, I could ensure their ability in
spelling.

5.2. Contextual factors identified in web-conferencing teaching

When the teachers taught through web-conferencing technology, they thought the online context made them seriously consider
both their students and technology: (a) their students’ prior knowledge and short attention span, and (b) sound quality caused by
web-conferencing technology. Fig. 6 illustrates the two contextual problems and how the teachers handled them.
When the distance teachers taught the content, they found what they had planned for their students might not go as expected due
to the former's insufficient understanding of the latter's linguistic profiles. In particular, the teachers' discussions revolved around
what content should have been appropriate to the distance students, as revealed below.
I think this lesson design is to offer vocabulary and grammar knowledge; however, I need to ask my students first if they have learned this
content before.
I began to work on the topic of food, which I think should be relevant to the island. However, I have no idea how much I should cover. At
the moment, I would like to introduce vocabulary about meat, vegetables, and seafood. Is this too much for them?
To address this problem, the teachers would explore students’ background knowledge. This strategy was thought to ease their
concern about the content that should be covered, as indicated in the following account.
I think I should explore students' prior knowledge first. Consequently, my lecture would be easier for them to understand. Perhaps later on, I
will focus on transport options on the island so that they will understand faster and build a strong link to the content.
In addition, the teachers had a hard time drawing students’ attention, particularly when the former were unable to physically

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reach out to the latter and when the latter lost interest in learning. The following two excerpts are cases in point.
It makes a difference when it comes to students' attentiveness. If we were in the same classroom, I could have them concentrate again by
gesturing or just walking close to them. But it's harder to do so via an online platform.
When we started the class, the students would react at the beginning. However, they would gradually become tired of responding. The
Problem I met is that they couldn't concentrate for a long period of time.
The teachers improved on this problem by (a) developing a relationship with students via chatting, (b) reviewing content via
games, and (c) marking content via whiteboard tools. These strategies were employed to draw the distance students’ attention, as
revealed in the following excerpts.

A: My students often disappeared from the screen before, but now I can see their eyes or half of their faces. The more interaction we have,
the more parts of their faces I can see. It's interesting that the proportion of the face revealed on the screen becomes an index of how
interactive they are!
B: Is that because you become more familiar with each other?
A: Yes. They are more willing to pay attention to the class if I chat with them.
The thing is that the distance teaching was actually an extra class. If we taught in the same way as a normal one, they might show little
interest in the class. Therefore, I used games to review the vocabulary so that they would be more willing to learn.
If a teacher highlights important parts by color pen (one of the online whiteboard tools), students will know which sentence the teacher is
talking about and focus on the point. I didn't highlight by color pen before, so students often asked me what I was referring to. Now, I check
or circle the part I'm teaching, so that they'll know what they should pay attention to.
Finally, the teachers' discussions also involved technological constraints that could impede their efforts to teach at a distance. As
identified, the technological limitations dealt with background noise, audio lagging, and unclear voices. More specifically, these
problems arose when a number of students talked simultaneously via the microphone in the same computer classroom, when the
Internet connection was not stable at times, and when the sound quality of the web-conferencing platform was occasionally poor.
Such problems were all out of the teachers’ control, as illustrated in the following excerpts.
I should have asked students why they didn't answer me. The reason I found later is that they couldn't hear me clearly. They were unable to
concentrate on my teaching because there was a lot of noise.
If students needed to repeat their answers again and again due to the unstable Internet connection, both the students and I would lose
patience. If the video didn't lag, our teaching could have been smoother.
It must be an audio problem! What I articulated was a little bit different from what they heard; what they read aloud to me was also
different. I encountered this problem when teaching pronunciation. Although I tried to repeat, it didn't make a difference.
With regard to the findings from the post-teaching discussions, the distance teachers' design conversations were also found to
revolve around their students' learning and technical problems. While the distance teachers' concerns about their students’ learning
occurred with a count of 26, their discussions about technical problems, 7.

6. Discussion

6.1. TPACK enactment in web-conferencing teaching

The most obvious finding to emerge from the analysis is that PCK was predominantly explicated in the teachers' discussions. This
finding is consistent with that of Boschman et al. (2017), who reported that kindergarten teachers enacted their PCK when they
collaborated to design digital learning materials through design talk. This finding is also in agreement with that of Koh and Chai
(2016): when Singaporean elementary teachers integrated technology into teaching practices through design thinking, they displayed
their orientation towards PCK associated with students' learning problems. The finding in the present study may be due to the
constraints Adobe Connect imposed on the use of other technology. The web-conferencing technology seemed to be a tool that
impeded, rather than enhanced, students’ learning. However, the technology made distance learning possible, so the teachers enacted
PCK more than technology-based knowledge (i.e. TPK, TCK, and TPACK). Nevertheless, teacher educators can highlight technology-
based TPACK by identifying technological functionalities and then demonstrating how they can be incorporated into online teaching
materials and activities. For example, distance teachers can explore how the webcam can facilitate them to teach: perhaps using
gestures to enhance online interaction and communication.
Another important finding is that the teachers’ discussions were not related to TPK. This finding confirms that every TPACK
subdomain conceptually defined by Mishra and Koehler (2006) may not necessarily appear in practice due to the uniqueness and
complexity of the context. The outcome may empirically validate the nature of TPACK by illustrating how the teachers wove together
their knowledge of technology, pedagogy, and content through authentic problem-solving procedures from the perspective of design
thinking. Thus, the present study resonates with an integrative view of TPACK (Chai et al., 2011; Koehler & Mishra, 2008; Schmidt
et al., 2009).

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Furthermore, this study provides support for the hypothesis that when teachers build TPK, they need to develop a deeper un-
derstanding of technological affordances and constraints as well as how they can be leveraged in different contexts, as remarked by
Koehler et al. (2013). Developing TPK is critical essentially because many software programs are not designed for educational use,
such as Adobe Connect and PowerPoint utilized in the present study. For this reason, TPK needs “a forward-looking, creative, and
open-minded seeking of technology use” (Koehler et al., 2013, p. 16), requiring teachers to turn original functionalities to their
pedagogical advantage according to changes in the context. An implication derived from this finding is that teacher educators can
help distance teachers enact TPK through bona fide examples of using online technology in an appropriate pedagogical manner.

6.2. Contextual factors that influenced the teachers’ TPACK enactment

As reported previously, the distance teachers thought they encountered problems associated with both students and technology
use. While the teachers sometimes had a problem communicating with their students due to technical constraints (i.e. background
noises, audio lagging, and unclear voices), they also found it difficult to ascertain their students' prior knowledge and to draw their
attention from a distance. These findings were also supported by those identified in the post-teaching discussions, i.e. the teachers'
design conversations in relation to their students' learning and technical problems. The two contextual factors correspond to Porras-
Hernández and Salinas-Amescua's (2013) dimensions of the context: micro-level context as well as student-centric context. Different
from previous studies only focusing on scope-level context, the present study provides new insight into actor-centric context.
With regard to micro-level contextual factor, the distance teachers thought their teaching was occasionally affected by sound
quality caused by the classroom setting and web conferencing technology. The technical problems encountered were likely to inhibit
the distance teachers from enacting technology-based TPACK subdomains, i.e. TPK, TCK, and TPACK, because improving sound
quality was out of the teachers' control at that point. This micro-level contextual factor echoes one of the results in the present study:
the teachers’ discussions through design thinking were not explicated towards TPK.
As for the actor-centric contextual factor, students' prior knowledge and short attention spans were the contextual problems the
distance teachers would like to overcome. The two major problems may be explained by the fact that the geographic distance made it
difficult for the teachers to fully understand their students' linguistic profile as well as to grab the students' attention. The teachers'
concerns about their students pointed to the importance of establishing interpersonal relationships with distance learners, as re-
marked by Guichon (2009). This finding matches that of Owusu, Conner, and Astall (2015), who investigated the contextual factors
that influenced the ways in which five science teachers used technology to support students' inquiry learning and concluded that their
concerns about students’ needs helped shape how the teachers applied technology to teaching. It can therefore be assumed that
student-centric context may potentially affect TPACK enactment.
To overcome the student-centric contextual problems, the teachers came up with tentative solutions. In particular, they attempted
to draw their students’ attention by incorporating PowerPoint-based games and utilizing whiteboard tools embedded in Adobe
Connect. This aspect of the contextual problem indicated the importance of promoting social presence in online teaching and
learning, as remarked by Garrison et al. (1999). The case of marking content via whiteboard tools was also reported on by Bradner
and Mark (2001), who suggested that the application sharing toolset could be utilized to maintain social presence, specifically
supporting interaction and engagement. Such a finding helps teachers and researchers develop a deeper understanding of how
teachers consider contextual factors relevant to web-conferencing teaching as they enact TPACK.
The present study has contributed to the literature by employing design thinking in which the distance teachers addressed
contextual problems while enacting TPACK subdomains. As reported previously, the teachers' discussions were mostly oriented
towards PCK and students. This finding corroborates that of Koh and Chai (2016), who suggested that the 27 Singaporean elementary
teachers' discussions about students' learning problems were predominantly related to the enactment of PCK. In other words, PCK was
mediated by the teachers' concerns about their students' learning. In this case, teacher educators cannot help pre-service teachers
enact TPACK without considering students’ backgrounds. Light has been shed on how TPACK enactment is affected by the context. All
in all, the present study confirms that design thinking can contribute to enacting individual TPACK subdomains since teachers seek to
work out viable solutions to authentic problems encountered in real-life contexts (Boschman et al., 2015; Koh et al., 2015a).
Especially to the novice pre-service teachers in the present study, design thinking motivated them to increase their willingness to
explore different avenues to overcome contextual problems, as well as to spark their creativity in web-conferencing English teaching.

7. Conclusion

The present study set out to illustrate how design thinking could help pre-service English teachers enact TPACK in the context of
web-conferencing teaching. This study has shown that their design conversations conspicuously displayed orientations towards PCK,
as opposed to technology-based knowledge (i.e. TPK, TCK, and TPACK). In particular, their discussions never dealt with TPK. In
addition, two contextual factors were found to influence their TPACK enactment: namely, technical problems associated with sound
quality were identified as a micro-level contextual factor while the distance teachers' concerns about their students’ prior knowledge
and short attention spans were viewed as a student-centric contextual factor. These findings provide insights into how TPACK
subdomains were enacted while the teachers tackled contextual problems through design thinking. The present study contributes to
our understanding of how TPACK enactment is mediated by the context in practice.
This study had a number of limitations. Firstly, this study was limited to novice pre-service teachers albeit with workshop training
and continuous support from each other and the teacher educator. The results and findings would have been different if this study
had targeted experienced in-service teachers. Secondly, the number of participating teachers was small. Replicating this study with

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more teachers would help ascertain the extent to which the findings from this study could be generalizable. Thirdly, this study was
limited to web-conferencing technology, so future research is needed to investigate other technologies for corresponding contextual
factors. Finally, this study focused on group discussions during design. Further studies could be conducted to investigate critical
incidents in video-recorded teaching sessions, in order to gain a more complete picture of TPACK enactment and development.

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, ROC [grant number 105-2410-H-003-075-]

Acknowledgements

This article was subsidized by National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), Taiwan, ROC.

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Jun-Jie Tseng is an associate professor in English Department of National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan. His research interests involve teacher education in
CALL, online language teaching and learning, and multimodal representation and communication.

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