The Study On Development Strategies Of Pedagogical Content Knowledge Of Language Teachers

Since the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) was proposed in 1986 for the first time by Mr. Shulman, who was President of American Educational Research Association and a professor in Stanford University, many experts and scholars at home and abroad have been studying it. With PCK combined with specific disciplines, new research perspectives have appeared. This paper is to analyze how PCK of Chinese teachers in middle schools develops and how to improve their PCK.A research has been carried out on the development of PCK of Chinese teachers in middle schools. And the result shows that there exist three main problems. First of all, Chinese teachers lack in summarizing and reflecting on their teaching experience. Second, their time spent on reading is too little. Third, there is hardly sincere communication on teaching among them. All these are disadvantages which would hinder the acquisition and development of their PCK. By analyzing the causes of these problems in pre-service and post-service education periods, this paper is to come up with a solution on the development of PCK. The solution would settle how to arrange the educational courses for the major of Chinese Linguistic Literature in the pre-service education period, how Chinese teachers should reflect, how to reinforce their motivation for reading, and how to improve their communication.In normal colleges and some comprehensive universities which aim to train teachers for the future, apart from the fundamental courses for the subject, education and teaching courses must be attached great importance to, because the pre-service education period is the preliminary period for the development of Chinese teachers'PCK. Besides, attention should be paid to the alternation of education courses and major courses with each other. Pedagogy and subject knowledge should be mutually related. What's more, the academic courses, major courses and familiarization courses should be opened alternately. The principle of training teachers on the basis of practice should be adhered to throughout the whole process. A large number of studies have shown that reflection is the most important way to improve the development of PCK for Chinese teachers. Teachers need to understand the importance of teaching reflection. What's more critical is that they should know what to reflect so as to develop their PCK. As far as schools are concerned, they should organize specific trainings for the content of reflection so that the teachers would not reflect blindly. As for teachers, they need to raise their consciousness that teaching reflection is of high importance for the development of PCK. Chinese teachers can reflect in the following ways: collecting and reorganizing teaching records, writing for one's personal blog, writing autobiography and academic papers on teaching.Reading books and periodicals, especially journals on Chinese subject teaching, will directly improve the development of Chinese teachers'PCK. For Chinese teachers, to foster a good reading habit, there should be some extrinsic force to guarantee it. Besides, Chinese teachers should absorb reading into their own living styles, so that reading will become not a compulsion but an intrinsic desire. In order to set up sincere communications and create an atmosphere of cooperation among Chinese teachers, obstacles should be cleared away among which the crucial one is the competition for promotion. The best ways to enhance the communication and exchange of teaching experience and sharing of teaching knowledge among teachers are as follows: establishment of specific Teaching and Research Groups, organization of observation and evaluation on classes as well as open classes among teaching colleagues, mentoring and so on.