Contextualizing Student Teachers’ TPACK: Understanding the Benefits of Field Experience

Field experience is a crucial component of teacher education, supporting student teachers in developing professional knowledge. In the digital era, this body of knowledge can be described by the technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) framework. Although field experience is generally positively associated with TPACK among student teachers, research has not yet investigated whether these benefits are related to the development of knowledge of educational contexts (XK). XK is crucial for TPACK’s development and is evermore important given the rapid pace with which artificial intelligence is reshaping education contexts. The present study aims to explore the relations between field experience, XK, and TPACK. We extended an existing self-report TPACK survey to include technology-related XK (tXK) and investigated 174 student teachers, of whom 121 had no field experience, and 53 had at least one year of teaching-related field experience. We used ANOVAs, correlation matrices, and structural equation modeling to investigate experience-related differences in levels of and relations between knowledge domains. Findings confirmed tXK as a three-level construct (immediate, proximal, and distal levels) and showed field experience, particularly when combined with some formal training, to be positively related to higher levels of knowledge in several pedagogy-related and school/proximal-related domains. In addition, experienced student teachers showed stronger correlations between knowledge domains compared to inexperienced ones. These findings suggest that field experience is associated with benefits for the levels and contextualization of student teachers’ TPACK, which inexperienced student teachers lack. The implications of these findings for the design of teacher training programs are discussed.