A Case Study On The Teaching Of Newly - Trained English Teachers

Teachers not only need to possess sound disciplinary content knowledge and generic pedagogical knowledge but, more importantly, need a good command of subject-specific pedagogical knowledge which is highly connected to practical experience. American educationist L. Shulman termed this knowledge as pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and asserted it is at the heart of teachers’ professional competence. PCK is defined as pedagogically reformulation of subject content knowledge in the way students have easy access to it. The sub-categories of PCK include knowledge of overarching objectives in teaching the subject; knowledge of students’ cognition in learning the subject; knowledge of the curricular materials related to the subject and knowledge of the strategies to be used for teaching the subject.What are the PCK for teachers of English as foreign language? How is it formed and developed? There have been researches addressing such questions on both well-experienced teachers and on novice teachers as well. This study was intended for the latter, which traced two of novice teachers (one of them is M. Ed in teaching English) in teaching practices in the first term with the focus on reading lessons in Senior1. This case study explored novice English teachers’PCK, its development and the affecting factors, guided by two research questions:What is the two novice teachers’ PCK of reading teaching demonstrated in their classroom teaching? What factors influence the development of their PCK of reading teaching? The researcher made an in-depth exploration and analysis on the two novice teachers’ teaching practice through various kinds of data-collection procedures:classroom observation, structured interview, after-class interview, video and audio recording and material objects.By analyzing the data of the two novice teachers, the study finally finds that,(1) both of the teachers claimed fairly comprehensive understanding about the goals of reading teaching and tried to practice it, but they had difficulties fully actualizing the ideas in classroom; they paid due attention to language knowledge and skills yet with some problems in due focus and balance;(2) both teachers were aware of students’ conditions, like difficulty in reading comprehension, which was reflected in their efforts to solve the problems in students’reading;(3) in terms of teaching materials, the two teachers could make appropriate use of textbook and other materials in reading teaching, including multi-media tools;(4) regarding strategic knowledge, both teachers showed fairly clear concepts about the general procedure and activity types of reading lesson, but their cognitive variety and flexibility in using them were obviously limited and individually different. Regarding factors affecting novice teachers’PCK, the researcher found that external and internal factors interact and affect the development of the novice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge together. However, the impact of teacher education was not found as obvious as expected.