The Practicum English Teachers’ Teaching Cognition

Since 1970 s the researchers began to put their attention on language teacher cognition.Due to an important role it plays in teacher development and teacher education, the study on language teacher cognition has become popular. Different aspects relating to teacher cognition have been studied, including the teachers’ pedagogical thoughts, judgments and decisions;types of teacher knowledge; the role of teachers’ personal practical knowledge in teacher cognition; the role of teachers’ subject matter knowledge in teacher cognition; language teachers’ beliefs in teaching; the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices, etc. These researches indicate that teacher cognition plays a pivotal role in teachers’ lives and it is connected with teacher learning(both through schooling and professional education),professional coursework, contextual factors and classroom practice. From 2000 until today,more and more researchers focus on studying language teacher cognition, especially on studying the practicum language teacher cognition.The present study focused on two questions:(1) In what aspects do practicum English teachers’ teaching cognition change?(2) What are the factors that lead to these changes?This study was about studying practicum English teachers cognition. A case study on five practicum English teachers has been adopted for getting a deeper understanding of practicum English teachers’ teaching cognition.The data were mainly from interviews and the analysis on reflection notes written by one of the practicum English teachers. Individual interviews started from July 7th to 17 th in 2015.And each interview was recorded and transcribed into 49 thousand Chinese words. And the reflection note written by one of the participants was analyzed to make the analysis more reliable.The preliminary findings from this study are that the practicum English teachers’ teaching cognition changes mainly on four aspects, including the practicum English teachers’ teaching skills, the practicum English teachers’ knowledge, the relationship with other teachers and students, and the practicum English teachers’ emotion also changes in some degree.Based on the study, a number of factors have been identified that lead to these changes.The factors include the practicum teachers’ prior learning experiences, their beliefs about language teaching, their past practicum experiences, and their instructional decision-making and practical knowledge.Some suggestions are offered for the practicum English teachers to be expertise in teaching. As for teacher educators, they should help in organizing and supporting a new relationship between new and experienced teachers. The new relationship could help the practicum English teachers to accumulate more in their teaching knowledge and to foster their positive emotions. And the courses of postgraduate programs could be reset, which means more practical courses could be aggrandized in university for practicum teachers to accumulate more personal practical knowledge. What’s more, there should be more reflection and the group discussion of practicum teachers’ training and more supervision in practicum. This may help the practicum teachers to apply the theories to their practice, which ultimately helps the practicum teachers to form their own teaching cognition.