The original TPACK framework refers to this as “Content Knowledge” and is described as:

“Teachers’ knowledge about the subject matter to be learned or taught. As Shulman (1986) noted, this knowledge would include knowledge of concepts, theories, ideas, organizational frameworks, knowledge of evidence and proof, as well as established practices and approaches toward developing such knowledge”

(Koehler & Mishra, 2009)

I have purposefully moved away from the term “content” as in most discussions I have had using the TPACK framework this quickly becomes associated with learning resources, even though this wasn’t the intention of the authors of TPACK. In that sense “content” shouldn’t be the driver or focus for the discussions relating to curriculum design, but knowledge of the subject area (often also referred to as discipline area) is most certainly fundamental in the design of curriculum and the teaching of it, hence the shift of terminology to “subject” domain in the SPaM framework.

In the context of Higher Education undergraduate degrees the subject matter to be taught is heavily influenced in the UK by the QAA benchmarks statements and also Professional, Statutory and Regulatory Bodies (PSRBs) associated with specific discipline areas and is often the starting point for many curriculum design conversations.

Additionally, each academic staff member who teaches on the course/programme will also bring an element of subject expertise to the programme which will also strongly influence some design of the programme of study and additionally the subject matter being taught. In more recent years we have also seen employers influencing curriculum design activities and elements of the subject matter, especially where undergraduate programmes are developed for specific graduate level careers such as in business or law for example.

In summary – the subject matter is the knowledge that students will need to have demonstrated throughout the programme in order to achieve the award and these are usually presented to students as learning outcomes (programme and module) which are associated with assessments to be completed.

Regardless of the subject matter a common approach to curriculum design is Constructive Alignment, which seeks to align the learning outcomes with the assessments and teaching activities.

You can find a full list of references for this work on the references resource page.

To cite this work:

Thomson, S. (2022, February 3). SPaM – A Framework to support the Development of Hybrid Education. SPaM Framework. https://spam.digis.im