Examination of Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Western Regional Perspective of China’s Compulsory Education System

Educational technology can provide many advantages for teaching and learning. However, the regional disparity is a well-known result of imbalanced development in China, and the understanding of Western teachers’ technological competence is incomplete. This study utilized the Technology, Pedagogy, Content Knowledge Framework (TPACK) in order to examine the overall status and influence of gender toward teachers’ technological competence in Western China. The survey method was employed to understand the participants (n = 361) perception of their level of TPACK. The results showed that teachers’ pedagogy knowledge and content knowledge were perceived as the highest among the seven types of knowledge examined. All types of technology-related knowledge were perceived as the lowest. Examination of gender influences showed that males perceived significantly higher levels of pedagogy knowledge, technology knowledge, and technological content knowledge. These findings contributed preliminary evidence of the status of teachers’ TPACK in Western regions of China and suggested that additional policies and initiatives should be targeted toward improving all teachers’ technological competence, particularly among female teachers in the compulsory education system.

utilize technology in their teaching practices (Ministry of Education of China, 2016;Yu, Yu, de Jong, & Storm, 2015). Such forms of inequality have been recognized as a serious societal issue characterized as the digital divide. That is a circumstance where ICT usage expands education inequality due to ICT applications providing imbalanced developmental advantages among only a portion of the population (Van Dijk, 2005). Recognition of these critical issues has catalyzed policies and initiatives that have prioritized balancing access and utilization of ICT applications within the compulsory nine-year primary and secondary education system in China (Ministry of Education of China, 2014; Ministry of Education of China, 2017a). However, despite much effort toward the remediation of Eastern-Western education inequality in China, little research has examined Western educational contexts to provide an assessment of the initiatives targeting issues of technology integration and utilization.
Without a clear and continuously monitored understanding of the status of Western teachers' technological competence, it is difficult to interpret the effects of professional development initiatives targeted toward easing the digital divide issues that exist within China. Therefore, additional knowledge is needed to assist in informing government policies and contribute data-driven solutions and protocols to address existing equity issues. The present study was designed to examine the status of teachers' TPACK in Western regions of China. The implications of this study contribute knowledge that can practically support in-service teacher education in China, as well as other contexts that possess similar levels of technological and socio-cultural development.

Theoretical and Conceptual Framework
The theoretical and conceptual framework of the present study is based upon the effectively maintained inequality hypothesis (Lucas, 2001) and the TPACK framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). The effectively maintained inequality hypothesis describes the current status of education equity in China, which generally has shown a slower pace of development in Western regions, in comparison to Eastern regions. Meanwhile, the TPACK framework represents a model for teaching and assessing the appropriate information for integrating and utilizing technology in instructional processes. The related details and interconnections of these theoretical and conceptual components are described in the following sections.

The Effectively Maintained Inequality Hypothesis
As of 2013, reports showed that the national average years of schooling reached a nine-year threshold (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2016). These statistics suggest that the educational policies that have been encouraging the expansion of access to primary and secondary education have achieved universal student enrollment and that the typical student in China is now participating in the whole nine years of compulsory education. Given that universal enrollment has been achieved, research now suggests that the status of education equity in China can be explained by the effectively maintained inequality hypothesis (Yang & Wan, 2015). The effectively maintained inequality hypothesis refers to a theoretical assumption that after a society achieves universal enrollment within their compulsory education system, inequity continues to exist within the delivery of different types and qualities of education that are provided to students. Theoretically, this perspective of education equity highlights the rationale of the present study, which aims to assist in understanding the current status of teacher knowledge in Western regions of China. The implications of such knowledge can be used to provide more strategically targeted teacher training programs that aid the reduction of Eastern-Western educational disparities in China.

The TPACK Framework
The TPACK framework was proposed as an expansion of Shulman's (1986) Pedagogical Content Knowledge Framework. Shulman's framework conceptualized the notion that effective teachers were required to possess two different types of knowledge: pedagogical knowledge, which describes competence in one's ability to convey information to others; and content knowledge, which refers to competence in one's ability to understand the subject-specific information which must be conveyed. As shown in Figure 1, Mishra and Koehler (2006) articulated that the emergence of modern educational technologies required a technological perspective of knowledge to be added to Shulman's original framework.
In addition to the three core knowledge domains (pedagogy, content, and technology), Mishra and Koehler's (2006) TPACK framework describes four interrelated sub-domains. These sub-domains are defined as follows: pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), which refers to teachers' understanding of how to adapt teaching strategies to make specific learning contents easier to acquire; technological pedagogical knowledge (TPK), which refers to teachers' understanding of how to use various types of technology to enable teaching approaches; technological content knowledge (TCK), which refers to teachers' understanding of how to use technology to transferring content information; and technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), which refers to teachers' understanding of how to use various types of technology to teach, as well as facilitate students'

Instrumentation
The survey utilized in the present study was adapted from existing TPACK instruments (Mishra & Koehler, 2006;Liu, Zhang, & Wang, 2015). The complete survey consisted of 42 items and seven scales: Pedagogy Knowledge (7 items), Technology Knowledge (7 items), Content Knowledge (6 items), Technological Content Knowledge (4 items), Pedagogical Content Knowledge (5 items), Technological Pedagogical Knowledge (5 items), and Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (7 items). All survey items were measured on a five-point Likert-scale ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree. The complete list of items used in this study is available in Appendix A.
In order to administer the survey in the participants' native language, the instrument was translated to Mandarin. The translation process first entailed parallel translation (Guillemin, Bombardier, & Beaton, 1993) by two researchers with committee reconciliation as a means for pre-assessing the translated draft, which means, when there was disagreement regarding the translation of a survey item, the item remained discussed until agreement was reached. Then, the translated survey received bilingual assessment (Harkness & Schoua-Glusberg, 1998) from a bilingual language specialist. Feedback was collected from the language specialist and used to adjust the wording for several items in order to improve the clarity and readability of the survey.

Data Collection and Analysis Procedures
Before adopting and translating the survey, permission was obtained from the original authors of the instrument. Additionally, before administering the survey to the participants, administrative approval was obtained from the authors' university to conduct the study. All responses were collected voluntarily and anonymously in order to ensure that the participants' maintaining in full control of their personally identifiable information. Data were collected via paper format, then entered into SPSS for data analysis.

Examining the Post-Translation Survey Validity and Reliability of Teacher Responses
Before interpreting the results, the translated survey used to collect data in the present study must be assessed to confirm the appropriateness of its validity and reliability. Validity should be assessed in terms of convergent and discriminant validity. Convergent validity describes the degree to which items of a scale that theoretically should be related, are in fact related. Convergent validity is evaluated by checking that the average variance extracted (AVE) values are more significant than the recommended threshold of 0.50 (Segars, 1997). As shown in Table 2, the AVE values were observed as ranging from 0.55−0.77. These results were all above the recommended value of 0.50, which confirmed that the convergent validity of the scales used was acceptable and suggested that the items of each scale were appropriately correlated to each other.
Discriminant validity describes the extent to which measures of a scale are distinct and uncorrelated. Discriminant validity is evaluated by checking that the square root of each AVE value is higher than the inter-construct correlations (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). As shown in Table 2, this process suggested acceptable discriminant validity for all scales used in the present study. Therefore, it can be assumed that the inferences from the scales used in the present study were appropriate and meaningful.
Reliability describes the extent to which the participants' survey responses are free from error. Reliability is evaluated by checking that the composite reliability (CR) and alpha coefficients are greater than the recommended threshold of 0.70 (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). As shown in Table 2, the CR coefficient values showed a range of 0.88 − 0.94, and the alpha coefficient values showed a range of 0.82 − 0.93. These results were all above the recommended value of 0.70, which confirmed that the reliability of participant responses was acceptable. Accordingly, the consistency of the participants' responses was considered to have adequate reliability with relatively little error.

Examining the Overall Status of Teachers' TPACK
Research question one aimed to understand the overall status of teachers' self-perceived level of TPACK in Western China. Table 3 provides an overview of mean scores and standard deviations (SD) for teachers' responses to the TPACK survey. The results showed teachers' scores were highest for pedagogy knowledge (M = 4.14, SD = 0.48) and content knowledge (M = 3.98, SD = 0.57). Teachers reported the lowest scores for technology knowledge (M = 3.34, SD = 0.73) and technological content knowledge (M = 3.53, SD = 0.68). These findings indicated that roughly 95% of teachers reported mean pedagogy, content, and technology scores were between 3.18-5.00, 2.84-5.00 and 1.88-4.80, respectively.

Examining Gender Influences
Research question two aimed to understand whether gender influenced teachers' self-perceived level of TPACK in Western China. As shown in Table 4, a series of t-tests were conducted to analyze teachers' self-perceived TPACK scores by gender. The results showed that males scored higher on three out of the seven scales examined. Males responded significantly higher on pedagogy knowledge (t = 2.995, p = 0.003), technology knowledge (t = 5.154, p = 0.000), and technological content knowledge (t = 2.974, p = 0.003).  078 Note. n = 360; ** p < 0.01; ** p < 0.001; PK = pedagogical knowledge; TK = technology knowledge; CK = content knowledge; TCK = technology content knowledge; PCK = pedagogical content knowledge; TPK = technological content knowledge; TPACK = technological pedagogical content knowledge.

Discussion and Conclusion
Much attention has been focused on the issue of imbalanced development, and the resulting effects on education equity in China (Wu, 2013;Yu et al., 2015). Theoretically, the effectively maintained inequality hypothesis (Lucas, 2001) had been used to describe the current status of services in China's compulsory education system (Yang & Wan, 2015). Generally speaking, it is clear that the Chinese government has been responding to equity issues and is making progress toward universalizing access to educational ICT resources; however, the more difficult challenge is equalizing the quality of teaching among the different regions of China. The present study utilized the TPACK framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) and was designed to expand understanding of teachers' technological competence in Western China, which provides some preliminary evidence to describe the ways in which technology may be used in the Western regions of China. The results of this study should be used to inform policies and professional development initiatives aimed toward balancing educational opportunities through reducing the digital divide (Van Dijk, 2005) within the compulsory education system.
Overall, teachers' TPACK scores reflected a positive benchmark for teachers' pedagogy and content knowledge. However, the findings showed that a large portion of teachers perceive lower levels of confidence in their abilities to integrate and utilize technology in the classroom. All types of technology-related knowledge (e.g., TK, TPK, TCK, TPACK) were perceived as being lower among teachers, in relation to teachers' pedagogy and content-related knowledge (e.g., PK, CK, PCK). These findings indicate that there continues to be space for improvement among Western teachers. In order to improve teachers' technological competence, it is recommended that additional intervention is necessary, beyond the existing mandated training programs (Ministry of Education of China, 2017b). For example, Western teachers should be encouraged to participate in new organizational processes of professional development and on-the-job learning, which have historically shown benefits among advantaged areas of China. Research has also shown that learning-centered leadership and teacher learning is a good way to improve school quality in China. Additionally, regular teacher collaboration, such as through the participation in teaching and research groups (e.g., Wang, Wang, Li, & Li, 2017) which can focus on the cultivation of 21st-century digital skills (Van Laar, Van Deursen, Van Dijk, & De Haan, 2017), is another organizational processes that can encourage the development of teachers' technological competence between teachers' participation in government-mandated training programs.
The results of analyses examining gender influences toward teachers' self-perception of their TPACK showed that males sometimes perceived higher levels of competence than females, particularly concerning pedagogy knowledge, technology knowledge, and technological content knowledge. All other types of knowledge examined showed no statistically significant differences. To the best of our knowledge, these findings contribute the first gender analysis of teachers' self-perceived TPACK levels among a Western teacher sample. Furthermore, it is worth noting that these findings were not aligned with existing research on the general perspective of Chinese teachers, which in contrast, observed significantly stronger beliefs among male teachers regarding content knowledge, as well as significantly stronger beliefs among female teachers regarding pedagogical content knowledge (Liu et al., 2015). These results suggested that among Western regions of China, additional effort should be made to encourage more learning, positive experiencing, and confidence among female teachers. Additionally, due to the inconsistency of results, future research should continue to examine gender influences to expand understanding of gender within this topic of study. of China, this was a quantitative study that relied upon self-report data. Future studies should refine knowledge through the examination of observable data (e.g., Smith, Jones, Gilbert, & Wieman, 2013), as well as through mixed-method research methodologies that allow the triangulation of data. Second, this study was designed to conceptualize a benchmark for the Western region of China. It is intended that our future studies may utilize comparative or experimental approaches to expand understanding of this vital topic. Finally, the present study broadly explored TPACK in a general sense. Given that research has highlighted needs for more specific analysis of TPACK settings (Voogt et al., 2013), future studies should explore learning environment-specific contexts such as within the smart classroom, or within specific technology-supported instructional approaches such as flipped classroom instruction (Bishop & Verleger, 2013).
To conclude, this study showcases a benchmark of teacher's perceived technological competence in Western China, an under-researched demographic that has been negatively affected by imbalanced economic development over the past several decades. The findings of this study contribute preliminary evidence that suggests the need for additional and more diverse types of training among Western teachers, particularly females within the compulsory education system. All efforts to improve Western teachers' technological competence represents an important step toward addressing the larger digital divide issue that is maintaining regional disparity and educational inequality in China.