From Components to Configurations: A Systematic Review of Design Approaches in TPACK-Based Teacher Professional Development

Abstract

This study examines how design approaches in TPACK-based teacher professional development are structured and enacted, addressing a key limitation in existing research that predominantly catalogs discrete components without explaining how they are organised into coherent learning sequences. Drawing on a PRISMA-guided systematic review of empirical studies, the analysis adopts a structural perspective to investigate how learning activities are configured, sequenced, and integrated. The findings indicate that commonly emphasised features, such as technology-related input, become meaningful only when embedded within coherent configurations. Across studies, professional development is better understood as a configuration of interdependent components organised into four recurring design patterns—technology-focused, design-oriented, practice-based, and integrated modular—providing a systematically derived typology of learning configurations in the TPACK literature. These patterns reflect varying degrees of structural integration and help explain previously inconsistent findings regarding the effectiveness of similar professional development elements. In addition, the analysis identifies iteration as a generative mechanism through which design, implementation, and reflection are recursively linked, enabling the progressive integration and refinement of teachers’ technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge over time. By shifting the analytical focus from component inclusion to structural configuration and iterative enactment, this study offers a configuration-based and process-oriented framework for understanding TPACK-based professional development, contributing to explaining variation across studies and informing the design of coherent and sustainable professional learning programmes.