E-teaching Internships and TPACK during the Covid-19 Crisis: The Case of Saudi Pre-service Teachers

Abstract

This paper main aim is to compare the effect of a new electronic teaching internship strategy and the traditional face-to-face teaching internship strategy on the pre-service teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) skills. This paper highlights one consequence of the coronavirus (COVİD-19) pandemic on education in a Saudi university’s college of education. The pandemic forced pre-service teacher educators to find alternative teaching internship strategies in place of the traditional face-to-face strategy. The research involved 120 pre-service teachers from two classes: 2019 (traditional) and 2020 (electronic). The results showed significant differences between the two research groups regarding their technological knowledge (TK) (p = 0.005), pedagogical knowledge (PK) (p = 0.001), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) (p = 0.000), technological content knowledge (TCK) (p = 0.000), technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK) (p = 0.000) and technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) (p = 0.000). These results strongly advocate the importance of blending traditional and online teaching internship strategies to develop pre-service teachers’ TPACK skills. The current study may also inform stakeholders, curriculum developers, teacher educators, and designers of teacher preparation programs to develop content-specific and technology-enhanced learning opportunities linked to the most appropriate teaching methods. This may prepare pre-service teachers for their responsibility to support their instruction using technology, and to facilitate the digital transformation in education, one of the main programs of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030.