Digital technology has increasingly influenced all areas of education, including higher education. Not only general communication and collaboration technologies are widely used in all educational areas, but also subject-specific technologies developed for specific professional contexts. Within educational programmes of building construction in higher education, this can, for example, be drawing programmes such as Revit supplemented with Virtual Reality technology, which is the empirical context for this paper.

The development of teachers’ teaching skills can be seen as combinations of different knowledge domains. Here, the so-called PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge) research tradition has been quite prominent since its introduction by Schulman (1986), mainly with focus on pre- and primary school areas. Particularly concerning teachers’ competences in technological integration, a special tradition has later developed under the term TPACK (Technological, Pedagogical, And Content Knowledge). This framework was introduced in an article by Mishra and Koehler (2006), in which the authors argued that this area should be highlighted as a third domain due to the growth of digital technology development. Both the PCK and the TPACK tradition are based on the idea that the different domains are integrated or transformed into a new knowledge construct (Kind, 2015; Angeli et al., 2016). The perception of integration/transformation is rooted in a cognitive view of knowledge and learning (Schulman, 2015). However, this has raised some ontological questions about how a ‘knowledge domain’ should actually be understood (Shulman, 2015), and this, in turn, leads to challenges in conceptualising what regulates integration and transformation processes. This has given rise to criticism and discussion, both internally from the research field, but also from other sides, e.g. educational sociology fields. Howard and Maton (2011) have argued that the three knowledge domains in TPACK – though they identify important content areas – are locked in their empirical context. According to the authors, there is a lack of concepts for determining what forms knowledge takes; i.e. forms that can be compared across empirical contexts.

In order to identify some underlying principles of how knowledge practices are structured, the so-called specialisation codes from ‘Legitimation Code Theory’ (LCT) can be employed (Maton, 2014). Specialisation codes are about the ‘basis of achievement’; i.e. what counts as legitimate knowledge and what constitutes a legitimate ‘knower’ in a specific setting. A distinction is made between two sets of principles/dimensions: ‘epistemic relations’ and ‘social relations’. The former deals with the significance of epistemological matters such as possessing specialist procedures, methods and techniques related to the subject matter. ‘Social relations’ deals with the significance of personal traits/characteristics of the ‘knower’, whether such traits are innate or come from belonging to social groups (Bourdieu, 1988). The two dimensions can vary independently of each other as continua and thereby form four different code modalities; knowledge code, knower code, elite code and relativist code. These codes make it possible to analyse what dominates teachers’ transformation of knowledge into a pedagogical discourse suitable for students’ learning. The research question that the paper discusses is: How can specialisation codes contribute to conceptualising technological knowledge transformation into pedagogical discourse and thereby complement the TPACK framework? This paper thus proposes an educational sociology perspective on the transformation issue. The empirical work that forms the basis of the argumentation is a case study, which is part of a larger research project comprising a number of UC’s and universities in Denmark. The overall aim was to develop teachers’ digital competences in construction education. The actual case study is about a teacher’s transformation of knowledge about Virtual Reality (VR) to teaching practice in a Constructing Architect program (CA-program).

The research process has been designed as a single case study (Flyvbjerg, 2006), comprising a course in a Constructing Architect programme where a teacher had planned to introduce Virtual Reality technology as part of the main subject called ‘Building Construction’. The teaching course was planned for 2nd semester students. There were 23 students in the class, and it took place in their domestic classroom over a period of three weeks in the spring of 2022. The course alternated between instructional lessons and the students’ independent work. The main criterion for choosing this course as a case was that the teacher was particularly concerned with introducing subject-specific digital technology, which seems under-emphasised in the TPACK literature, probably due to the primary school focus. The case was also relevant because the teacher initially focused on two goals. One was to transform his knowledge of VR and pedagogy into a pedagogical discourse that should enable the students to develop competences of VR for future professional work. Another focus seemed to be to transform his VR-knowledge into a pedagogical discourse, which should facilitate the students in using VR as a learning tool in order to acquire the subject matter knowledge. Using VR-headsets and related software should improve spatial understanding and reveal inappropriate room dimensions. The empirical work included: • Document study • Three observations: o Observation of training/testing of equipment o Observation of the first introduction session o Observation of the second introduction/instruction • Three interviews: o Interview with the teacher before the first lesson o Follow-up interview with the teacher after the course period o Interview with students after the course period. The document studies comprised an analysis of the teacher’s prepared PowerPoint material in order to gain insight into the pedagogical considerations that the teacher made in advance. The observation method was participant observation, unstructured in natural surroundings with a low degree of involvement (Kristiansen & Krogstrup, 1999). Hand notes were taken during the observations with focus on important actions supplemented by ongoing interpretive reflections. Both lectures were audio recorded as a supplement to the note taking. In addition, pictures of teaching situations were taken; partly still photos and partly short video clips based on judgements in the situation about the importance of live visualisations of events in the room. The interviews were conducted as semi-structured in-depth interviews with audio recording. The interviews were then transcribed in full length (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009).

By means of ‘specialization codes’, it has been possible, on the basis of data from the case, to identify two different pedagogical discourses in the VR-course; one aimed at facilitating the students’ acquisition of VR as a professional competence, another focused on using VR as a learning tool. Data show a high degree of voluntariness and freedom for the students in how they want to use VR, as long as they solve the design challenges in their houses. Moreover, there are no evaluation criteria, so both discourses are characterised by a ‘relativist code’, i.e. weak framing regarding both epistemic relations and social relations. What constitutes them as different discourses, however, is their different focus. The teacher clearly directs his attention and priority of resources towards VR as a learning tool. Given that the VR course for the teacher has the status of a trial/experiment, the relativist code makes good sense. Hence, I argue that when technologies in general become more integrated in educational programmes, and maybe even become elements in the curriculum, it is likely that the framing of the disciplinary content of the technology will get stronger in classroom practices as well. It that case, pedagogical discourses will move towards a knowledge code. In case that technology is implemented to suit diverse students’ learning needs, the discourse will move towards a knower code. By thus including educational sociology theories, particularly concepts about principles of pedagogical discourse, it is possible to further differentiate the hybrid of the three domains: technological, pedagogical and content knowledge in the TPACK-model. I claim that a general distinction can be made here between different pedagogising processes depending on: 1) the nature of the technology (subject specific or general), 2) the focus of the pedagogical discourse, and 3) the coding of the pedagogical discourse.

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