Teaching Teachers for the Future Project: Building TPACK confidence and capabilities for e-learning

In Australian Higher Education, the importance of initial teacher education (ITE) programs is evident through enrolments totalling 105 858 students in the broad field of Education in 2012 (DIISRTE, 2012) which represent 9.7% of the 1 094 672 students enrolled in higher education. This paper provides insights into the "Teaching Teachers for the Future (TTF) Project" involving all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) which provide ITE programs in Australia. The 15 month long, $8 million TTF Project, funded by the Australian Government's ICT Innovation Fund aimed to develop the ICT capabilities of future teachers. The design of ITE programs need to build the capabilities of future teachers to be effective within increasingly eLearning environments in schools. Central was the use of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) conceptualisation (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) for teacher educators to build pre-service teachers' TPACK confidence and capabilities to enhance eLearning approaches with their students. Key findings from the TTF Project indicate that the TPACK conceptualisation and the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership's "ICT Elaborations for Graduate Teacher Standards" (AITSL, 2011a) can inform the design of ITE programs in preparing future teachers for using ICT to support teaching and to support student learning.