Investigating the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) and Technology Leadership Capacities of K-12 Public School Principals

It is understood that principals play a key role the integration of computer technology their schools, however there have been limited studies exploring the level of technology knowledge and technology leadership skills possessed by school principals and how these measures relate to each other. Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) is a popular framework for understanding the teacher knowledge required for effective technology integration. This framework has been used to study a number of different populations including pre-service and in-service teachers in a variety of grade levels, subject areas, and pedagogical contexts. This is the first time this framework has been applied to school principals. Technology leadership capacity for this study was defined by the ISTE Standards for Administrators, which define the skills school leaders need to support the successful use and integration of computer technology. The purpose of this study was to adapt and apply the TPACK framework to school principals, to measure the technology leadership skills of those principals, and to identify whether a relationship exists between the measures. This study employed two distinct survey instruments that were delivered online. The Principal TPACK Survey used in this study was adapted from an existing TPACK survey by Schmidt et al. (2009). The Technology Leadership Inventory (TLI) is an original instrument developed to align with and measure the leadership skills represented in the ISTE Standards for Administrators. In addition to providing baseline data for principal TPACK and principal technology leadership capacities, results indicate a strong positive correlation between TPACK and their technology leadership capacities. Additionally, results indicate principals are more knowledgeable of more traditional, non-technological conceptions of pedagogy and content. Finally, because of the strong correlation between the two measures, it is recommended that in order to improve the technology leadership ability of principals, special consideration should be given to building knowledge emphasizing the connection between technology, pedagogy, and content that is specific to classroom contexts rather than more managerial applications