TPACK and Music Teacher Education

I have been researching music technology in schools and teacher education since 2000, when I led the music team within a large-scale project that explored teachers’ use of technology across seven school subjects.1 As part of our research, the music team used Shulman’s Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) framework (1987) to further our thinking about inservice teachers’ work in classrooms with music technology, and also as a lens through which to consider teachers’ perceptions of technology in school music (Gall and Breeze, 2007). At the time I was not aware of developments by Pierson (2001) who, as part of a discussion on ways in which technology (T) impacts upon teaching, transformed the model to include Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK). From 2006 to 2009 I also engaged in an international project, part of which included the development of a set of descriptors to indicate the musical competences one might expect of music educators across Europe.2