An Investigation Into Primary And Secondary School English Teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Self-Efficacy

As Educational Informationization has entered an in-depth stage of emphasizing the application of technology,scholars at home and abroad have paid close attention to"Teachers’ required knowledge".TPACK(technological pedagogical and content knowledge)has proposed and become a brand-new knowledge that teachers should be equipped.Lots of studies explore TPACK development and measurement while which at the"emotion-belief" level are lacking.To enrich TPACK study at this level,and to better understand the status quo of Chinese primary and secondary school English teachers’TPACK self-efficacy,this study made an investigation by employing a mixed method.Three research questions were proposed:1.What is the TPACK self-efficacy level of primary and secondary school English teachers?2.How does TPACK self-efficacy show differences in terms of gender,period of service,educational level and locales?3.What are the influencing factors?Questionnaire and semi-structured interview were administered to answer these questions.Quantitatively,TPACK self-efficacy questionnaire(TPACK-SQ)including 35 items was adapted from Nigeria scholar Chukwuemeka(2019).Qualitatively,semi-structured interview was conducted to further dig out the factors that influence teachers’TPACK self-efficacy.359 primary and secondary school English teachers’ TPACK self-efficacy were measured from 7 TPACK constructs:TK,PK,CK,TPK,TCK,PCK,and TPCK.Data analysis by SPSS 22.0 revealed that teachers perceived TPACK self-efficacy level was close to "confidence".In each dimension,it was ranked as:PK,PCK,TPCK,TK,TCK,TPK and CK.Moreover,differences were found in terms of teacher varieties as follows.Firstly,male teachers perceived significantly higher efficacy than females in TK domain.Secondly,except for CK and TCK,unexperienced teachers’ TPACK self-efficacy was relatively low while TK self-efficacy was high.All teachers’ confidence in PCK and PK increased with period of service.And first-year novice teachers and teachers with more than 10 years’ teaching experiences revealed significant differences in TPK and TPCK.Thirdly,teachers’ TPACK confidence level was in accordance with their educational level.In TK and CK domains,it grew with educational level while PK and PCK dimensions shared an opposite result.Finally,teachers in urban areas expressed notable higher efficacy than those from rural areas on the whole and toward TK and CK domains.Based on interview data,TPACK self-efficacy influencing factors were summarized as KEEC(knowledge,experience,emotion,context).Firstly,knowledge refers to teachers’self-knowledge about technology,pedagogy and content.Secondly,experience includes their mastery experiences(daily classroom practices,online teaching,demonstration lessons and competitions)and vicarious experiences(observing,modelling).Vicarious experiences have informational function as well as motivational function for teachers,especially for novice teachers who have fewer mastery experiences.Thirdly,emotion refers to teachers’emotional physiological states(anxiety,technostress)and verbal persuasion(feedback from people around them and expectations of influential others).Fourthly,context includes micro context(schools,teacher communities),and macro context(policy).Components of KEEC are relative and additive although they influence TPACK self-efficacy in different ways.Therefore,KEEC serves as an integrate framework.Finally,suggestions for teacher development and teacher education were recommended.