A Narrative Inquiry Of Practical Knowledge Of A Special-class Middle School English Teacher

The researches on teachers’practical knowledge have become a hot topic since 1980s with the rise of international educational reform and the value of teachers’ professional development. In our country, the study on teachers’practical knowledge has shifted gradually from "integrity", "necessity" to "individuality", "reality", which is a transformation from static research to dynamic research for teachers’knowledge. The attention to teachers’ practical knowledge has been the core of teacher’ knowledge and the analysis of the formation of teachers’practical knowledge will have a great influence on the reform and development of education reform in our country.Teachers’practical knowledge is closely related to teachers’own experience and teaching activities, which reflects teachers’educational belief and guides teacher’ daily teaching practice. This paper attempts to explore the generation, constitute and guiding significance of teacher’practical knowledge by probing into the teacher’s teaching life.With a middle school special-class English teacher as the cooperator and by means of observation and interview to collect data and nearly three months of field investigation and narration of Ms Tang’s teaching stories, the writer attempts to analyze the underlying reasons of Ms Tang’s practical knowledge and some implications, which may help deepen the understanding of practical knowledge and promote teachers’ professional development.In this paper, there are six chapters:The first chapter is a brief introduction, which gives a brief introduction to the research origin, study purpose and study significance. It also describes the basic composition of this paper.The second chapter is the description of literature review on teachers’practical knowledge and the framework on which this study is based. This part gives detail definitions and constitution of teachers’practical knowledge and it also concludes present study which provides a theoretical basis of the study.The third chapter is the designing description of this study, which refers to the selection of participant and research methods. Meanwhile, it also gives an overall description of this research process.The fourth chapter is the description of research process and also the core of this paper. The author sits in the classroom to collect detail data and from the aspects of Ms Tang’s teaching experience, teaching process and life experience.The fifth chapter is about the findings and implications, including two aspects of the understanding of Ms Tang’s practical knowledge and the factors analysis. The author probes into subject knowledge, pedagogic knowledge, students knowledge, strategy knowledge and knowledge of self and attempts to find the similarity and difference from the effecting factors.The sixth chapter is the summary of this paper, which gives a brief conclusion according to research results. In addition, it also explains the limitations of this study and hopes to give some suggestions for future study.