What is Functional Knowledge

This study applied factor analysis for exploring technological knowledge of beginner and veteran Office Data Processing (ODP) teachers at Further Education and Training (FET) or Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) colleges in South Africa. These ODP teachers use Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the technology-enhanced classrooms. The Mishra & Koehler (2006) Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) framework was extended by replacing Technological Knowledge with Procedural Functional Knowledge (PrFK) to realise the PrFPACK theoretical framework that enabled the researchers to holistically explore the contextual technological knowledge of teachers in the digital classroom environment. We developed an inventory of 65 comprehensive measures based on the PrFPACK framework and validated the inventory on a dataset of responses from 107 ODP teachers. The findings of this study generally revealed that Procedural Functional Content Knowledge is the most important factor in explaining the technological knowledge of ODP teachers.