A Study On The Current Situation Of Preservice English Teachers’ TPCK Cognition

Technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK), which provides a knowledge framework for teachers to integrate technology into teaching, was first proposed by Mishra and Koehler in 2006 based on Shulman’s pedagogical content knowledge(PCK). This framework plays an important role in professional development and training of teachers. Great attentions have been paid to the study of TPCK abroad. However, there are relative few researches on TPCK at home, especially in the aspect of preservice teachers’TPCK cognition. Thus, this study tries to explore the current situation of preservice English teachers’TPCK cognition.This study investigates the following three aspects:(1) What is the current situation of preservice English teachers’TPCK cognition? (2) What are the factors contributing to the current situation of preservice English teachers’TPCK cognition? (3) How should preservice English teachers do to improve their levels of TPCK cognition?Based on the teachers’TPCK survey designed by Schmidt in 2009, this study adapted a new preservice English teachers’TPCK survey, and 60 graduate students who major in subject teaching (English) from one university of Zhejiang were invited to take part in this survey. In the stage of data collection and analysis, excel 2007 is used to investigate the current situation of preservice English teachers’TPCK cognition. Besides, interview and classroom observation are supplementary methods to explore the factors that contribute to the current situation.The conclusions of this study are presented as follows:(1) The whole level of preservice English teachers’TPCK cognition is relatively low. Among seven components of TPCK, the mean score of CK is the highest and the mean score of TK is the lowest. With the low level of TK, there are some problems when preservice English teachers integrate technologies into English teaching and learning. (2) According to the investigation results, the author finds there are mainly three factors contributing to the current situation of preservice English teachers’ TPCK cognition, namely:the related curricula for cultivating preservice English teachers’ TPCK; teaching practice of preservice English teachers; assessment system of TPCK. Those factors impact the development of preservice English teachers’ TPCK cognition. (3) Some suggestions are put forward to improve the level of preservice English teachers’ TPCK cognition, including learning more TPCK knowledge; taking part in more English teaching practice; making comprehensive assessment for TPCK.As a result of limitations in resources, time and energy, there are some deficiencies in this study. For this, the author proposes some suggestions for the future research and shows the directions that can be further concerned on this topic.