A Narrative Inquiry Into Novice English Teachers' Practical Knowledge In Rural High Schools

The research into teachers'practical knowledge is based on their life experience and teaching practice. It focuses on how teachers'understanding influences the construction of class and the communication between students and teachers. Narrative inquiry is a method to understand the experience by story-telling. According to Ye Lan's definition to "suitability" between research method and research questions, "narrative inquiry" offers a proper way to study TPK. "narrative methods can be considered real-world measures that are appropriate when real life problems are investigated".Novice English teachers in rural high schools face many difficulties at the beginning of teaching:the poor teaching management, ineffective communication with students and so on. These indicate that they lack teaching practical knowledge. So novice teachers reflect and criticize their experience in the process of teaching practice, which is also a way for renewing the practical knowledge.After literature review, Miss Peng was chosen as the research subject. The present research aims at answering the questions as follows:Firstly, what specific practical knowledge does this high school English teacher reveal in the teaching and daily life stories? Secondly, what factors affect the formation and development of this novice English teacher's practical knowledge?This narrative inquiry consists of three stages:firstly, conducting fieldwork: classroom observation, interviews, narrative stories collection and other related materials collection are conducted in this period; then, composing field texts:all the collected materials are classified, organized and transcribed into field texts; at last, reporting research results:the transcribed data are analyzed and discussed, during which the above research questions are answered.Miss Peng's stories mainly reveal her three kinds of TPK, namely educational belief, intrapersonal knowledge, critical and reflective knowledge. The external and internal factors which influence Miss Peng's practical knowledge are also discussed. Finally the implications and limitations of the present research are presented.