Europe needs to equip its young population with digital competence to gain and maintain its competitive advantage in the global economy. This need, as recognized by the European Commission, clearly requires a concerned research effort in preparing future teachers with necessary skills to integrate emerging ICTs into learning and teaching settings. This research aims to respond to the need for developing technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) informed curriculum materials and research assessment instruments that will be use by the teacher educators to develop and assess preservice teachers’ knowledge of “effective mobile application integration”-defined as mobile-TPACK in this research. 

Mobile applications have been reported as the fastest growing feature of smart phones and as one of the most important technologies for the near future in education (Johnson, Adams, & Cummins, 2012). With the recent advances in mobile devices (eg. imbedded sensors, cameras, motion detection, location awareness, social networks, web search), mobile applications in particular, hold the additional affordance of being able to convey multimedia information, engage in a multi-way exchange of information in real-time, perform computation, and guide student inquiry with search, selection, and feedback (XXXXX & XXXXX, in press). “Mobile applications, referred to as software systems operating on mobile devices, are evolving rapidly, making ubiquitous information access at any time and anywhere a true reality” (Zhang & Adipat, 2005, p. 294). In their review of the mobile learning projects conducted in Europe, Kukulska-Hulme et al., (2008) revealed that “at European and individual state level, there appears to be little teacher development or training activity addressing mobile learning” (p. 14). The challenges related to teachers’ adoption of mobile technologies in their classroom emerged from the fact that they were not prepared effectively in investigating the affordances of mobile technologies for their pedagogy and the content they teach to make informed decisions (Kukulska-Hulme et al., 2008). Hence, revealing the limited research on mobile applications and their educational uses, our preliminary results of the research study conducted within Canada further suggested teacher educators to  help teacher educators develop curricular methods and activities for the integration of mobile applications into the teacher education (XXXXX & XXXXX, in press).

Recently, arguing a need for a situated teacher knowledge required for effective technology integration, researchers have started using TPACK as a framework for designing and developing programs to equip teachers with a more interconnected knowledge that is concentrated on student learning in various content areas (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). TPACK is considered as a useful frame to successful curriculum-based technology integration and for thinking about what knowledge teachers must have to integrate technology into teaching and how they might develop this knowledge (Koehler & Mishra, 2008; Borko, Whitcomb, & Liston, 2009). Whereas, teacher educators around the world have expressed enthusiasm for using the TPACK frame for developing teacher knowledge (c.f. Special Interest Group for Teacher Education [SIGTE] Leadership), work is just beginning on understanding of TPACK, particularly with respect to the emerging ICTs that preservice teachers need to integrate to their future classrooms. 

Borko, H., Whitcomb, J., & Liston, D. (2008). Wicked problems and other thoughts on issues of technology and teacher learning. Journal of Teacher Education, 60(1), 3–7. doi:10.1177/0022487108328488. Johnson, L., Adams, S., & Cummins, M. (2012). The NMC horizon report: 2012 higher education edition. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2008). Introducing TPCK. In AACTE Committee on Innovation and Technology (Ed.), Handbook of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) for educators (pp. 3–29). New York, NY: Routledge. Kukulska-Hulme, A., Traxler, J. & Pettit, J. (2007). ‘Designed and User-generated Activity in the Mobile Age’, Journal of Learning Design, 2(1), pp. 52-65. Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for integrating technology in teachers’ knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054. Zhang, D., and Adipat, B. (2005). Challenges, methodologies, and issues in the usability testing of mobile applications. International Journal of Human Computer Interaction, 18 (3), 293-308. XXXXXX & XXXXX (in press). Going Mobile – Science Teacher Candidates Evaluating Mobile Apps. In C. Miller & A. Doering (Eds), The New Landscape of Mobile Learning: Redesigning Education in an App-based World.