Exploring teachers' use of TPACK in design talk: The collaborative design of technology-rich early literacy activities

Research shows the benefits of collaborative design activity by teachers are that in their conversations (design talk) they develop technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). While more and more teachers engage in collaborative design, little is known about how they use TPACK during design. The main question of this study was: "What is the nature of design talk of a group of teachers during the design of technology-rich early literacy activities?" Using a holistic case study on design talk, the analysis focused on the topics that were under discussion and how these topics were discussed. Three phases of coding were applied: (a) how design represents any of the seven domains of TPACK knowledge (Pedagogical, Content, Technological, Technological Pedagogical, Technological Content, Pedagogical Content or Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge); (b), how design talk represented three aspects of reasoning (external priorities, practical concerns and existing orientations); and (c), and what levels of inquiry are reached (no-depth; sharing ideas; analyze; and plan). Findings indicate that design talk reflects moments in which teachers reach deeper levels of inquiry. Findings also indicate that TPACK was mostly linked to expressing practical concerns. However when engaging in deeper inquiry, teachers existing orientations featured more prominently in the conversations. External priorities hardly seemed to play any role in design talk. Also, when addressing TPACK or PCK, design talk mostly reflects practical concerns. Pedagogy was addressed not as a single knowledge domain, rather in conjunction with the other two domains. Practical implications are discussed regarding how to support teachers during collaborative design. The nature of kindergarten teachers design talk was investigated.Explorations focused on depth of inquiry, explicated design reasoning and TPACK.Findings show progressive change over time in TPACK domains expressed and depth of inquiry.Teacher collaboration on designing can be a fruitful context for developing TPACK.


Introduction
How teacher knowledge about technology, pedagogy and content is used in the conversations and decision-making processes taking place during collaborative curriculum design, is not well understood. This study was set out to understand the nature of design talk as it occurs in the collaborative design of technology-rich curriculum activities for early literacy and how design talk in teams relate to a teachers' knowledge about technology, pedagogy and content.
In this study, the design talk of one group of teachers is studied in-depth as they create technology-rich lesson modules. They do so within the context of designing content and activities for an early literacy learning environment called PictoPal. PictoPal contains on-computer and off-computer activities. The oncomputer activities take place through a software-based based learning environment featuring teacher-designed content that runs on the Clicker© offline platform.
Clicker© enables children to create written products. By clicking on ready-made words, text is typed for users and may be checked using the built-in text-to-speech engine. PictoPal off-computer activities, which are also designed by teachers, stimulate children to use prints of their written products for authentic tasks (e.g. stories are read, recipes are cooked, letters are mailed) (McKenney & Voogt, 2009).
Teachers design these activities for their own classroom often within a theme they have selected themselves. Kindergartners then conduct these activities within the daily or weekly routine, making PictoPal a technology enhanced addition to the early literacy learning environment in kindergarten.
The purpose of these learning activities is to foster kindergartners' understanding of the functions of written language, which is one of the Dutch National Early literacy Interim goals (Verhoeven & Aarnoutse, 1999). While these are featured in the Dutch curriculum, the functions of written language have been recognized internationally, as important areas of early literacy for decades. For example, a pioneer in the field of emergent literacy, Clay (1966) argued that children are active learners about print long before they can read or write. Macnamara (1972) argued that language learning is driven by and dependent on the capacity to understand and participate in social situations. And in recent years, in response to increased research on specific aspects of early literacy (e.g. alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness), experts have expressed deep concern that an over-emphasis on these constrained skills will come at the high cost of developing other abilities, such as oral language, conceptual development and reading/listening comprehension (McKenney, Bradley, Boschman, 2011). This concern seems justified, when looking at existing technologies available to support the development of early literacy. In their landmark review, Lankshear and Knobel (2003) showed that technology is mainly applied to attain development of (a) coding / decoding; (b) vocabulary. They noted that technology use for productive purposes (to assist children in even modest forms of writing) is severely lacking, and called for attention to be given to this area. The PictoPal initiative speaks to this call. The following research question guided this study: "What is the nature of the design talk that emerges when teachers collaboratively design technology-rich early literacy activities in the context of the PictoPal environment?"

TPACK
Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is a form of situated knowledge about the affordances of technology on teaching specific subject matter in a certain context (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). Several studies employ TPACK as a conceptual framework to understand how teachers explicate their understanding of how knowledge of technology, pedagogy and content interact, for instance during instructional decision-making (Doering, Veletsianos, Scharber, & Miller, 2009;Graham, 2011). TPACK is considered a distinct body of knowledge, that takes into account teachers' understanding of the difficulties students encounter when they have to learn a particular subject matter domain; in this case kindergarteners learning about early literacy in the context of PictoPal (Voogt, Fisser, Pareja Roblin, Tondeur, & van Braak, 2013). The TPACK framework posits that three knowledge domains (technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge) are integrated to form Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. In addition the integration between pedagogy and content form Pedagogical Content Knowledge (Shulman, 1986); the integration of technology and content form Technological Content Knowledge; and the integration of technology and pedagogy constitute Technological Pedagogical Knowledge. In this study the TPACK framework is used in the context of PictoPal, and operationalized as follows: • Pedagogical knowledge (PK): knowledge about kindergarten teaching and learning as well as socio-emotional development of kindergartners; • Content knowledge (CK): knowledge about early literacy concepts such as phonological awareness, book-reading, vocabulary development; • Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK): knowledge about how to apply general instructional strategies in kindergarten to teach and develop early literacy; • Technological knowledge (TK): general knowledge about technology such as operating computers, web 2.0, email. • Technological content knowledge (TCK): knowledge about PictoPal that afford the transformation of specific early literacy subject matter; • Technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK): knowledge about how to use PictoPal in an appropriate kindergarten related fashion such as used to stimulate cooperative learning; • Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK): how to use the affordances of PictoPal to teach specific early literacy content within a kindergarten appropriate fashion.
In this study we examine how teachers use their TPACK in their conversations during the design of the on-and off computer activities aimed at fostering early literacy in the context of the PictoPal learning environment. Design is a specific context in which TPACK is used, and its use is reflected in design talk.

TPACK in design reasoning
Further investigation of teacher design reasoning as explicated in design talk and how it relates to teachers' TPACK can yield a rich understanding of the factors that drive decision-making during collaborative design of technology-rich activities for student learning. In the context of design, teachers use their TPACK for solving design problems. Design problems are complex and the reasoning to solve these problems is characterized by a multitude of decisions that have to be taken (Jonassen, 2012).
Educational design problems frequently revolve around questions related to achieving certain learning goals. For specific goals we may ask e.g.: What kind of (technologyrich) learning activity seems most effective? How can it be made practical? Efficient?
Enjoyable? Many educational design problems are complex, thus providing ample opportunity for teachers to use their TPACK. Design decisions are based on reasons that seem most appropriate to the problem-solver as best suited for the situation at the time (Jonassen, 2012). In an educational context, teachers make such decisions through practical reasoning (Gholami & Husu, 2010;Wieringa, Janssen, & Van Driel, 2011). This kind of reasoning involves justifying decisions in classroom practice in terms of 'how' and 'what' is done rather than what is 'true' (Gholami & Husu, 2010).
In addition to TPACK, other contextual factors also influence decision making during the collaborative design of technology-rich activities for student learning. Scholarship on TPACK and context has found a rich abundance of factors and how these contextual factors influence technology integration (see for instance (Koh, Chai, & Tay, 2014;Porras-Hernández & Salinas-Amescua, 2013 First, curriculum design typically occurs in a context influenced by external priorities set outside the classroom, such as national exams or department policies. When designing, external priorities often focus and/or limit teachers' choices. In most circumstances, teachers are hesitant to make decisions that conflict with external priorities, often because they are at least partially held accountable for pursuing those priorities (e.g. student performance on external exams, teaching certain content in a particular quarter). The Dutch national interim goals for early literacy (see Verhoeven & Aarnoutse, 1999) are an example of an external priority on content.
Second, teachers' practical concerns, including their perceptions of affordances and constraints in practice, influence their design reasoning (Doyle & Ponder, 1977). In design conversations these might surface as questions such as "How do we organize this activity?" or "Where are my computers located?" For instance the lack of proper hardware is found to be a barrier to technology integration (Ertmer, 2005). When teachers discuss this point they explicate a practical concern within the domain of technology.
Finally, teachers' existing orientations (such as their own knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and feelings underlie classroom decision-making (Van Driel, Verloop, & De Vos, 1998) and decision making in regard to curriculum material (Deketelaere & Kelchtermans, 1996;Drake & Sherin, 2006;Remillard, 2005). Teachers have gained ample experience in their classroom and they are likely to express these as existing orientations when for instance arguing or providing viewpoints in design talk. For instance teachers beliefs about teaching and learning underlie classroom practice (Ertmer & Ottenbreit-Leftwich, 2010). These can be considered as falling into the category of existing orientations regarding technology and pedagogy.
While TPACK in design reasoning reflects the topics under discussions, how these topics are addressed, the kind of inquiry that is reflected in these discussions furthermore yields richer understanding of design talk.

TPACK in collaborative inquiry
Design decisions are made in collaborative inquiry, as teachers discuss possible solutions to the problem at hand. The nature of design talk can therefore be characterized as a form of inquiry where teachers use their TPACK and take external priorities, practical concerns and existing beliefs into account when they design technology-rich activities for student learning. Schön (1992) examines Dewey's notion of inquiry, as a systematic, rigorous and critical path from doubt to its resolution. In design such inquiry is focused on solving a design problem at hand.
Collaborative design inquiry therefore is the act of reaching resolution of a design problem by means of deliberation, discussion and exploration. This complex cognitive task takes skills and teachers combine what they know, believe and understand about teaching and learning, subject matter and technology. While some qualitative studies have investigated the contents of discussions (e.g. Koehler, Mishra, & Yahya, 2007), the inquiry process has not been subject of investigation.
Collaborative inquiry processes are intelligible in conversations (Frederiksen, 1999;Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2008;Rojas-Drummond, Mazón, Fernández, & Wegerif, 2006;Wegerif, Mercer, & Dawes, 1999). Literature on collaborative inquiry processes in conversations suggests two levels (a) shallow and (b) deep. For instance Wegerif, et al. (1999) found that shallow depth is reached through cumulative talk (for instance by sharing information). On the other hand, exploratory talk (Wegerif et al., 1999), shows collaborative engagement and critical discussion reflecting deeper levels of inquiry. Inspired by the new taxonomy of learning objectives (Marzano & Kendall, 2007), Henry (2012)  we are saying that all key ideas in the book must be illustrated such that the children can interpret the story without reading any words.' The difference between sharing and planning is that in sharing no decision is explicated while in planning the decision is explicit and on details of the learning activity. From time to time, it is hypothesized that collaborative inquiry reaches the deeper levels of inquiry (analyze and plan).
Therefore, collaborative teacher inquiry certainly seems a context in which TPACK develops as the results of integrating the knowledge domains of technology, pedagogy and technology. To date there are no studies that link inquiry processes in conversation to TPACK. Since design talk is mostly conversation, it would seem necessary to also unpack this specific feature of design talk.

Aims of the study
This study was set out to understand the nature of design talk as it occurs in the

Methods
A single, holistic, explorative case study was conducted on the design-talk of one team of kindergarten teachers creating PictoPal materials and activities. This data-analysis method was employed in order to obtain an in-depth understanding of the complex interactions that underlie design talk. The teams' design talk was explored in terms of the TPACK used, design reasoning explicated, and the depth of inquiry present.

Participants
An open call to three school districts was issued requesting participation in a project regarding professional development of kindergarten teachers in the domains of technology and early literacy yielded in one team of teachers. Thus this school was automatically selected for this study (Table 1 provides information on participating teachers). Furthermore the teachers expressed that they wanted to learn about technology integration in early literacy. A preliminary on-site meeting was arranged to explain the goal of the project and to get acquainted with all six participating teachers. After this preliminary meeting, all six teachers agreed to voluntarily participate in the project. These teachers had an average age of 58,8 (SD=5,08) and an average of 30,3 (SD=6,34) years of teaching experience, all in kindergarten.
Additionally one teacher-coordinator requested to participate in the study out of interest and because the other six teachers endowed her with the role of being an experienced teacher as well as an expert in the field of young-children's education.
This teacher was 58, had 31 years of teaching experience.

Procedure
The overall design task was explained to all teachers during the preliminary meeting: "using the existing PictoPal structure, design on-and off-computer activities, to be implemented in your own classroom" (3 classrooms were involved).
These learning activities were directed at a specific learning goal: kindergartners attainment of their understanding of the functions of print, one of the national interim goals for early literacy. After the preliminary meeting, three workshops took place.
The first author took the role as outside facilitator. The teacher coordinator (G) who was also liaison of the school did preside over the meetings and provided input, yet taught in a different grade level. However, she requested that she would be present during two of the workshops. The facilitator organized the workshops and set the agendas. The individual workshops lasted approximately 50 minutes.
At the teachers' own request, the first workshop focused on creating a draft version of one integrated set of on-and off-learning-activities (children compose grocery lists, and then use printed lists to shop for those items in a grocery shop playcorner). In the following weeks, PictoPal was installed, the draft set of learning activities were used by several children and teachers' could experience how PictoPal would behave in their classroom. The goal of the second and third workshops was to plan and design a lesson-series of eight PictoPal learning activities (one for each week). On request, the facilitator also provided background information about PictoPal and how it contributes to child understanding of the functions of written language. One teacher (P) missed the first two workshops; however, this study focuses on the teams' design conversations and not the individual teacher and therefore not considered problematic.

Data collection and analysis
Data were collected by video-taping the three meetings of the design-team and making a transcript of the audio portions; the video allowed us to identify who was talking. With design talk as unit of analysis, this study focused (a) on TPACK reflected in the conversations; (b) explicated design reasoning in relation to TPACK; and (c) depth of inquiry in relation to TPACK.
First the conversations were segmented into episodes: larger units of text that sustained focus on one topic over a longer period of time or were similar in tone.
Then, each episode was segmented into topical exchanges (TEs): sections in episodes that sustained focus on sub-topics. Two rounds of coding practice and discussion were held among all three authors. Thereafter an experienced research assistant recoded TEs in a part of the transcript (roughly 20% of the transcript of workshop 1). After discussion, reliability was calculated yielding Cohen's Kappa of .76, which was deemed sufficient. TEs were coded along the categories of TPACK (TK, PK, CK, TPK, TCK, PCK, TPCK). Table 2 provides examples of the TPACK-codes used in TEs. "Well you know, some children can't even operate a mouse." <TCk> Use of computers to "But in some sentences the word 'cat' has to be used.
represent subject matter knowledge.
That should be included in the program." <PCk> Strategies to promote the development of early literacy.
"Well… you have the childrens' own story, or at least how I think children will divide the story themselves… and they have to 'tell' it in their own words?" <TPCk> Strategies or affordances of the computer in regard to early literacy development.
"And children who are not yet ready to use a computer? Why would you want them to write their own story?" Second, the TEs were also coded on explicated design reasoning (see Table 3) using the three dimensions described previously (Practical Concerns, Existing orientations, External priorities). TEs were then given an overall TPACK and design reasoning code which represented the TE best. "Could you also install those printers then?" "…those computers are so slow, the first thing you should do in the morning is turning them on." <Orient> Teachers own attitudes, beliefs, practical knowledge.
"I can imagine a child wants to write something on it himself." <Extern> Priorities set by others outside the classroom.
" [name] states that you should let children write themselves…" Finally, each TE was given a 'depth of inquiry' code using Table 4. Therefore TEs received three different categories of code (TPACK, Explicated design reasoning and Depth of Inquiry). G: "That's wonderful isn't it?" H: "Yes, that is their own book!" G: "Then it becomes their own work." H: "As long as they 'kind of' stick to the story.." <Plan> …delve deeper but also find solutions to problems, they make decisions for which they provide explicit reasons or make a detailed planning of steps to be taken.
G: "Okay, I imagine you take several books as an example and show that to them." H: "Yes, and then you discuss what the table of contents is and then you move on to the contents of the book itself." G: "Maybe you could also discuss this afterwards."

Overall presentation of findings
The data-analysis resulted in a contained the TPACK code (illustrated in Table 2). The fourth column (reason) showed explicated design reasoning codes (described in Table 3). In the final column (depth), depth of inquiry is given (shown in Table 4). The following sections discuss the findings in detail, in relation to each sub-question. Names are not provided; the first letter of the name is represented in the text to ensure anonymity. The researcher present as facilitator is denoted as F. In workshop 1, six teachers were present; in workshop 2 four teachers were present and in workshop 3 three teachers were present among which one teacher (R) who had just started teaching after workshops 1 and 2 were held. Although the group's composition varies, they worked to produce one lesson-series that they all would implement.

RQ1: Which TPACK domains are represented in design talk?
In workshop 1, before the discussion was initiated, teachers requested to make a draft version of PictoPal. The design-task was formulated as: "Design one PictoPal on and off-computer learning activity." The rest of the workshop was devoted to working out the details of this learning activity; writing a grocery list on the computer and using this grocery list in a play-corner. In workshop 1, four out of seven possible TPACK codes were found: TK, CK, PCK and TPCK, which were distributed evenly across the 13 TEs.
In workshop 2, teachers first evaluated the prototype learning activity and concluded that due to technical difficulties with the printer, the results were poor. The issue could not be resolved at that time as the schools' ICT-coordinator was not present. Furthermore, a large number of TEs were coded as PCK (14 out of 23).
According to the summaries (see tables in Appendix), topics under discussion pertain to practices in early literacy education off-computer. Yet after TE 2.5.6, topics are mostly coded as TPCK. While the goal of this workshop was to discuss both offcomputer and on-computer activity, in this workshop the focus clearly is on offcomputer activities first before moving towards on-computer activity or integration of both kinds of learning activities. Interesting also is the emergence of 3 TEs coded as CK in which for instance the early literacy learning goal was discussed. The findings show that, in this workshop, teachers focused on the off-computer learning activity, as most TEs were coded as PCK.
In TE 5.1 to 5.8 teachers' team's rationale for further design activities is discussed. TE 5.1 to 5.6 were coded as PC; after TE5.7 most TEs were coded as TPCK and that when investigating the topics, the rationale that was provided is reflected in the topics under discussion. Also interesting in this light is TE 5.8 in which Y makes an inference on how the use of pictograms will support children in performing this activity, she states:  . What this graph also shows is that in all three workshops TEs emerged that were coded as either TK, PCK or TPCK. In workshop 1 no TEs emerged coded as CK, while in the other workshops TEs were found pertaining to CK.  Table 5 reveals that all but one TE was coded as practical concern in workshop 1. In workshop 2, most TEs were also coded as practical concern and PCK.
Striking however are patterns found. First, that of the four out of six TEs coded as existing orientations pertained to PCK. Second, TEs coded as C (N=3) pertained to external priorities (N=2) or existing orientations. TEs 5.7 (about nouns) and 5.9 (invented spelling) were initiated by a question from one of the teachers, while TE 2.2 was initiated by the researcher. The third workshop sees a rise in the emergence of TEs coded as TPC and practical concerns (7).
Overall, in the three workshops TEs coded as PCK and as TPCK in combination with practical concerns make up the main body of codes used (N=39).
Also within workshops, most TEs were coded as practical concerns (workshop 1, 12 Over time, Table 5 reveals that the number of TEs coded as practical concern increases. However the number of TEs that were coded as either orient or extern also increase, with the number of TEs coded as extern showing a steep incline (0 -2 -6).
Also, in concurrence with Figure 1, the number of TEs coded as PCK and practical concerns increases in workshop 2, but decreases again in workshop 3. The number of TEs coded as TPCK and practical concerns however steadily increases. Table 5 also shows that TEs coded as PCK / external and TPCK / external emerge only in workshop 3.

RQ3: How does depth of inquiry in the design talk relates to TPACK?
This research question focused on the depth of inquiry in design talk and how this relates to TPCK and explicated design reasoning. First the quantitative analysis of the distribution of depth of inquiry coded among TEs is provided. Seen in Table 6, there is a shift over time across all three workshops. Second to provide a more in-depth portrayal of this shift, a qualitative analysis of provides insight into how sharing occurred in workshop 1; how sharing evolves into analysis in workshop 2 and finally a portrayal of how analysis in workshop 3 occurs on the basis of external priorities.
As witnessed in table 10, of all TEs coded (N=65) most TEs were coded as Share (N=39); followed by Analyze (N=21), Plan (N=4) and None (N=1). Of the TEs coded as Analyze, in workshop 2, three were found to be on PCK, two on TPCK; workshop 3, six were coded as PCK, two were coded as TPCK. Of the TEs coded as share in workshop 2, most were coded as PCK (N=8) while in workshop 3, most were coded as TPCK (N=7). Across all three workshops, TEs coded as T were only found to be coded as either None (N=1) or Share (n=6). Across all three workshops, a change occurs when considering TEs coded as pertaining to PCK or TPCK; in workshop 1 both of these were coded as pertaining to shallow inquiry (none or share); in workshop 2, most TEs were coded as pertaining to share, however 7 also emerge as pertaining to deeper inquiry (analyze or plan); in workshop 3 most of those TE codes pertain to deeper inquiry (total n=10).  both PCK and TPCK. The following section presents the qualitative findings in which subsequently the inquiry processes for each workshop are provided as excerpts from actual discourse. These excerpts were carefully chosen to illustrate and portray an account of how such inquiry processes occur in conversation. Table 7 presents an excerpt from turn 13 to 24 ,which occurred in workshop 1.

Workshop 1: Sharing
This excerpt picks up after the researcher has explained the kind of learning activity that has to be designed. This excerpt depicts shallow inquiry, teachers share their ideas and viewpoints yet there is little constructive conflict. Although arguments are made they do not influence the decisions made. J: Well, if you say it like this, than they will be engaged for a while.. and then well organization.. I kind of like quick and… I would, do this the day before, they will first make a list. We make it quick, those children slow, and then they will go to their store. 20 H: Yeah, but I think… 21 J: You can do this within a larger theme, but not as a small playing activity. 22 G: But do you all have a shop right now? 23 J and H: Yes, we are going to make one. 24 H: But then you have like, one can be the shop owner, the other can buy something. Isn't that fun, they first make a list and then, that's part of their work, they take a shopping basket and head of to the store to get it. What they want.

This excerpt shows that at line 19, J concludes and makes conjectures about
what would occur in practice ("will be engaged for a while…"). This is then taken as an argument to substantiate how she thinks the activity should be organized ("I would, do this the day before…"). However, this argument does not elicit any counterarguments from the other teachers. In line 20, H hesitates but does not finish her sentence, which could be seen as an argument which is withdrawn. Then in line 21, G brings up a whole other matter, namely the kind of theme and activity that could be appropriate. This excerpt furthermore shows that the practical concern is not shared among other teachers, they do not recognize this concern and ignore J's call for action. Instead, in line 24 design talk commences by sharing ideas on the specific learning activity.

Workshop 2: from share to analyze
As already noted in RQ2 and RQ3 TEs 5. H proposes then designate each child with one part of the fairytale. However, Y makes a refuting statement and expounds her view:

"But a child wants to 'churn out', just does not want to… alone with those…"
Interesting is the fact that in the following TEs especially in TE 2.5.8, a rationale is being explicated and agreed upon by all teachers. The following excerpt picks up at the moment where once more Y shares with the other teachers her view on how the learning activity will take form in her classroom. The excerpt shown in Table 8 reveals that Y's comment on children's own written work is taken up by H who in line 152 expresses how she thinks a child will react to the learning activity. Y's argument is taken up by H, who not only repeats it but also extends with her existing orientation. This signals agreement between the two teachers about the rationale behind PictoPal as it will function in their classroom.
Furthermore in line 160, Y then draws a conclusion: "But then the pictograms are kind of anchors that provide children scaffolding into making their own story." This conclusion is also agreed upon by other teachers. This clearly shows how understanding of the affordance of technology gets translated to the teachers own beliefs about teaching and learning early literacy, integrating PCK with T to form TPCK.

Workshop 3: Analyze external priorities
It is notable that, while in this workshop P introduces many concerns, none defy the rationale which was solidified in workshop 2. Tensions do rise in the conversations but rather provide opportunity to strengthen rather than weaken the 'power' of the teachers' personal rationale for use of PictoPal. See for instance Table   9, showing the excerpt at the end of the workshop in which an external priority regarding early literacy is discussed. The arguments that teachers use reflect their existing orientations on PCK as translated into the context of Technology. Reasoning therefore first is based on teachers' existing orientations about how children develop early literacy and then implications are made on how this is integrated with technology. The excerpt in Table 9 shows that an external priority (Turn 558) is being outweighed by the rationale (Turn 561). After this TE, R once more mentions an external priority, yet this does not influence the rationale teachers explicated in workshop 2.

Conclusion and discussion
This study was set out to understand the nature of design talk as it occurs in the collaborative design of technology-rich curriculum activities for early literacy and how design talk in teams relate to a teachers' integrated knowledge about technology, pedagogy and content. The design talk that occurred was explored on topics under discussion and how these topics were addressed. TEs coded as TPCK gradually increases which is concurrent with findings from the study by Koehler et al. (2007). Based on these findings, this study suggests that teachers base their collaborative design decisions on integrated knowledge domains rather and that teachers actually gain understanding of how these three bodies of knowledge intertwine, which is considered characteristic in TPACK development (Koehler et al., 2007;Mishra & Koehler, 2006).
Research question 2 focused on how TPACK is related to design reasoning in design talk. Practical concerns stay important, most TEs were coded as such, but the number of TEs coded as existing orientation increase over time. Most of these existing orientations pertain to PCK. They reflect beliefs and knowledge about teaching early literacy. Most TEs coded as TPCK also pertained to practical concerns.
The findings would suggest that teachers use their existing orientations to reason about their rationale and once this rationale is established teachers integrate technology and discuss practical concerns.
The third research question focused on how depth of inquiry relates to TPACK in design talk. The findings showed that over time teachers reached deeper inquiry levels. The emphasis throughout all three workshops was on sharing, yet a slight increase was found in deeper levels of inquiry. In workshop 2 and in workshop 3, while the majority of the TEs were coded as share, the amount of TEs coded as either analyze increased. The TEs coded as plan did not increase and were clearly lower in number, only four were found. The findings of this study furthermore show that teachers' existing orientations regarding teaching and learning early literacy then are employed during analysis. By contrasting different perspectives and by making implications or arguing for or against a certain solution, teachers reach a deeper level of inquiry. Furthermore, 'plan' is hardly found, suggesting that actual design is mostly done by sharing proposals. Striking is that TPCK gets shared mostly as practical concern in such proposals. Only towards the end of workshop 2 TPCK is explicated during analysis as existing orientation. Contrasting, at the end of workshop 3, external priorities and existing orientations are discussed, but only coded as PCK regarding appropriate kindergarten practices in early literacy. This would suggest that over time teachers better understand the complexity of the design problem in terms of practical concerns and how technology, pedagogy and subject-matter act together; yet analysis still occurs on the affordance of teachers' existing orientations reflecting PCK. This would suggest that in collaborative design teachers existing orientations towards early literacy are translated to classroom practice.
This study differentiated between non-existing, shallow and deeper levels of inquiry. The findings of this study suggest that design is an iterative process. This is not surprising, given that design is a reflective activity in which actions are taken and often designers 'step-back' to evaluate the actions taken (Hong & Choi, 2011;Schön, 1983). In this study the findings show a pattern that is similar: teachers share knowledge and information by proposing what the learning activity could look like, this process is repeated until one teacher either expresses doubt or makes an evaluative comment about the learning activity, which is then followed by action.
Striking is that action is mainly taken through sharing. Analyzing is an inquiry process in which not only teachers build understanding but also reflect on actions taken. It is in such moments that TPACK could develop.
The findings of this study should be considered in light of its inherent limitations. First of all, the analysis was conducted on a relatively small group of teachers, during three workshops. While this would limit generalization, this study does provide a rich account of TPACK development as it occurred in the design talk of one team. The approach to studying design conversations about TPACK is a new perspective to the ongoing investigation into building understanding of TPACK. This study has shown that methods of discourse and conversation analysis help to shed light on TPACK development. Future studies could extend this approach to studying interactions of teachers in different contexts. Although design serves as a rich context for teacher learning, the narrow time-frame of the study, it is unclear whether participation as a designer alone or design-talk that occurs underlies TPACK development. The problem being that both are difficult to distinguish since designtalk is the product of collaborative design. Therefore, TPACK development is reflected in design talk as teachers integrate what they know about teaching and learning early literacy with technology. Further research is needed in order to establish and understand how TPACK is linked to design talk.
This study's findings point to practical implications on the level of support provided to teachers during collaborative design. The complexity of design problems, stresses the need for support. Teachers often use an unsystematic and intuitive approach to design problem solving (Hoogveld, 2005). Two kinds of support exist.
The first, procedural support is considered a minimal pre-requisite for productive teacher teams (cf. Huizinga, Handelzalts, Nieveen, & Voogt, 2013). In this study, procedural support was provided through the researcher-facilitator, in the form of worked examples, and by chunking the overall design work into three workshop sessions featuring smaller yet open-ended tasks. Previous research suggests that teacher design teams also benefit from substantive (i.e. subject-matter) support. Such support is provided as just in time information (cf. Kester, Kirschner, van Merriënboer, & Baumer, 2001;van Merriënboer, 2013), by a subject-matter expert especially when teachers struggle. In this study, the results show that teachers struggle when discussing topics that reflect CK. A subject-matter expert could provide teachers with information before and during the design. Often teachers struggle in translating abstract subject-matter knowledge to practical solutions (cf. Handelzalts, 2009), for which a subject-matter specialist could provide insights and information.
Desirable then would also be that a subject-matter specialist is present during actual design talk when teachers struggle.
The findings of this study are corroborated by findings from other studies that show the learning potential of (a) collaborative problem solving through conversation (Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2008); and (b) solving complex design problems (Jonassen, 2000;Kolodner et al., 2003). Contemporary studies on teacher workplace learning also stress the importance of inquiry processes (Putnam & Borko, 2000) such as those investigated in this study. Further, teachers in this study did engage in activities known to foster teacher learning in terms of changes in knowledge and/or beliefs and intentions for practice (Bakkenes, Vermunt, & Wubbels, 2010); these include: experimenting, reflecting, collaborating, problem-solving, analysis (Vermunt & Endedijk, 2011). This means that design talk not only reflects TPACK development as integrating knowledge about pedagogy, content and technology, but that this occurs in and through various levels of inquiry. Summarizing, this study has explored TPACK in design talk, and while myriad aspects of design talk could still be investigated, we have come closer to understanding how TPACK development can be understood. After an example PictoPal on-computer activity is shown, G asks why in PictoPal lower-case letter are used; this is purely a matter of taste. The design task is discussed: design one on-computer and off-computer activity within the PictoPal framework. 2 Brainstorm about the screen, the kind of pictograms and how they should be placed on the screen. Furthermore, H proposes that some of the Pictures she wants to use can be scanned from the fairytale book she uses in her classroom and can be sent to R. Lengthy (182 interactions) TCK Pract Share 3.8.1 H proposes that computers from other classrooms can also be used. TK Pract Share 3.8.2 Y provides an event which triggers her belief on the appropriateness of children using their invented spelling. She furthermore discusses this belief as it opposes R's belief that "you should teach children the correct spelling right away". PCK Orient Analyze 3.8.3 R openly asks F when invented spelling is not appropriate anymore. F responds that he is not an early literacy expert. PCK External Analyze 3.8.4 R furthermore brings about the 'rules' that one of the Dutch early literacy experts tells teachers "let them scribble". Y then explains that she finds it more important that children are motivated and may "churn out" instead of. PCK External Analyze 3.8.5 R concludes that motivation is more important than correct spelling kindergarten.
PCK Orient Analyze 3.8.6 Teachers discuss the appropriateness of small-cap letters in kindergarten to avoid confusion. After this, teachers close the meeting and make an appointment for the installation of PictoPal.
CK External Analyze