Within this paper, we consider hope through two key aspects of the TPACK framework. Firstly, how the role of technology in the TPACK framework intersects with hope for a sustainable future, and how may hope and hopeful practices play a role in the learning design. And, secondly, the role of context and how, and in what ways do teachers focus on hopefulness (hope elements) in the TPACK framework in response to building capacity and resilience towards a sustainable and hopeful future? This paper forms part of a larger doctoral thesis project on hope and hopeful practices in the classroom in response to climate issues.

Education for social change is largely based on hope, with hope and education inspiring each other. Paulo Freire states that “Without hope there is no way we can even start to think about education” (2007, p.87).  In positioning teachers as active respondents, a core component of their work is as learning designers, in which teachers turn to the use of models or frameworks for designing curriculum and making pedagogical decisions. One such framework is the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). Based on Shulman’s Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), the TPACK framework seeks to capture the essential elements of teacher knowledge required by teachers for the effective integration of technology in teaching whilst addressing the complex and situated nature of this knowledge. The three primary forms of knowledge that intersect each other are content, pedagogical and technological. As a framework, it has much to offer to the discussion of technology integration at multiple levels including, theoretical, pedagogical and methodological. Whilst TPACK has been predominately used for learning design, in response to climate related issues this paper considers how the TPACK model fits with educating for a sustainable future. Significant environmental events can be unpredictable, they often cause disruption, uncertainty and instability. The complexity to be discussed here is in the form of the intersection of hope, hopeful practices in education and in understanding how it may fit into curriculum and pedagogies. In the rapidly changing socio-environmental landscape we have seen, at extraordinary rates, socio-ecological crises, such as floods, wildfires and heatwaves across the globe. With eco-anxiety increasing and the wellbeing of our young people being a concern, it is timely to look at this model with a new set of eyes to see what it has to offer in way of dealing with the unprecedented climate uncertainties young people are facing.

In the face of current climate uncertainty, teachers have a multi-faceted and challenging role of educating and caring for the whole student. Exacerbated by successive extreme weather events and natural disasters, there is growing evidence linking mental health and climate change with it being reported that students are experiencing greater levels of environment related stress and anxiety. Along with stress and anxiety frequently comes the feeling of despair. Hope is often discussed in terms of its binary opposite, despair. At the essence, hope is something that is universally experienced by everyone and can be found in a multitude of arenas, for example in sport, religion, the media, technology, medicine, politics, education. Snyder et al (2017) simply describes hope as “the belief that one can find pathways to desired goals and become motivated to use those pathways” (p. 28). We often look to the feeling of being hopeful to draw on resilience in the face of adversity. Our contribution to the ongoing narrative of eco-anxiety is to discuss the conditions of TPACK as a possibility for more hopeful teaching practices for a sustainable future.

This paper is a theoretical discussion that engages with the literature of hope theory and its position in educating for climate uncertainty. Using climate change as a representative, timely and urgent socio-environmental topic, this paper explores how building capacity and resilience in response to the unprecedented extreme weather events and natural disasters being experienced around the globe may be enacted using hope and hopeful practices through the TPACK framework. It draws upon research from the fields of psychology, sociology and philosophy to provide insights into how we might characterise and explain hope. It combines theoretical work from Freire and Snyder with other hope and positive psychology theories. It then examines how it might be positioned in educating for climate change. Further to this, Maria Ojala has generated a rich program of research on hope and climate change. Her works proceeds largely from a psychological perspective into education focussed situations. What Ojala’s (2021) continuing research highlights is the affective behaviour, emotional needs, and responses of young people to global environmental problems and more specifically to climate change. In comparison to Snyder’s focus on individual goals, pathways and actions, Ojala (2023) shifts the emphasis, seeing a need to consider collective pathways of hope, yet acknowledging that different groups and communities experience hope differently, highlighting the complexities of hope elements and practices. We unpack the TPACK framework by first summarising the components of the framework with the theoretical framework from Mishra and Koehler (2006) for understanding teacher knowledge for effective technology integration, based on Shulman’s construct of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). Then, we describe and explore the various ways TPACK has been conceptualised, showing where things are going and what it has to say about hope and hopeful practices. Highlighting that the intersubjective space in the TPACK model has the potential to enable particular practices through its flexibility (Phillip 2016) or constrain particular practices through being too rigid in the approach (Phillips & Harris, 2018). Finally, we bring together the literature on hope with the TPACK framework, to discuss and understand ways of teachers’ thinking and responding to climate change issues and uncertainty, that build capacity and resilience in young people. Importantly, it draws together the significance of hope and hope practices in educational planning frameworks to recommend areas for further research.

We argue that the role of hope has a very significant place in education. If this is the case, then it would be prudent for teachers, educational leaders and teacher educators to adopt some of the key findings and enact them in their practices. We suggest that there is a synergy between hope and the TPACK framework that has the potential to position hope and hopeful practices as a driver for educating for a sustainable future by putting hope at the forefront, underpinning the Content Knowledge, Pedagogical Knowledge, and Technological Knowledge elements and thus strengthening the TPACK framework for educating in times of unprecedented uncertainty. However, some of the challenges include the processes and practices of how TPACK is enacted along with the complexities of hope. Finding pathways for hopeful practices in the classroom that build capacity and resilience in young people so that they cope in stressful situations, requires careful consideration. To address these challenges, certain aspects of the TPACK framework suggests that it is likely to be able to support the role of hope and hopeful practices as: • It acknowledges contexts • It acknowledges culture • It supports knowledge of hope • It supports domain-specific hope • It can draw upon pedagogies of hope • It can use hope as technology for teaching • It fosters specific goals and pathways • It incorporates hope into the classroom through structured, dedicated, and intentional practices (activities, actions,); developed as hopeful practices • It provides for authentic and real-life challenges • It allows the ‘hope’ driven educator to engage in the pursuit of hopeful goals This paper makes the case for a hope rich elaborated extension of TPACK, providing a wholistic perspective which embodies the socio-environmental and social-emotional aspect as drivers for education, powerfully prioritizing the well-being and mental health of young people whilst educating them towards a sustainable future.

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