A Comparative Study On PCK Of Different Career Development Phase Of Early Childhood Teachers In Shanghai

In recent years, the pedagogical content knowledge, which is the core of teachers’professional knowledge, has become an important field in the study of education. According to the recorded literatures, the object of study on pedagogical content knowledge is mainly teachers of primary and middle school, while research on kindergarten teachers is still rare. The study combines pedagogical content knowledge and career development phase, helping to know of the professional development degree in the process of career development, enriching PCK theory in preschool field, and improving theoretical researches on teacher development.Based on the video questionnaires, the study investigates kindergarten teachers’ current present condition of PCK, and each questionnaire is scored according to the coding rules." the PCK questionnaire" and" coding manual" are drawn out and provided by American Erickson Child Study Center, while two video segments of about5minutes on language activities are recorded and provided by the early language education research group led by Zhou Jing. Based on faculty development stage theory, all151teachers are divided into four ages of teaching:0-2years,3-10years,11-20years and21-34years, then descriptive statistics methods, such as t-test, one way ANOVA and other statistical methods are used to analyze the answers of investigation objects of four teaching stages. The main contributions are as follows:1. PCK of language areas of Shanghai early childhood teachers of four teaching stages is overwhelmingly in general and limited level. PCK of preschool teachers stays on the surface level. Teachers are able to identify the key concepts, surface behaviors marking children’s understanding to key concepts and teaching strategics on key concepts. However, but as for deeper level on PCK, for example, the key concepts network, particular age group of children’s understanding of key concepts, adjusting teaching content and strategies to adapt diverse groups of children,have a vague knowledge.2. Kindergarten teachers of11-20teaching years have the highest level of PCK. For those who are less than20years of teaching age, the level of PCK increases with the advance of the teaching age. The PCK level of teachers of21-34years of teaching age markedly decreased, showing obvious tendency of "stressing teaching and ignoring learning ". 3. The knowledge of the key concepts of different teaching stages of kindergarten teachers does not show significant differences.4. As for the knowledge of children development, teachers of11-20years of teaching age have the highest level, while that of teachers of21-34years of teaching age is significantly lower.5. As for teaching strategies teachers of11-20years of teaching age have the highest level, while that of teachers of21-34years of teaching age is significantly lower.