A Case Study Of The Development Of Chinese Secondary School EFL Student Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge

One of the core elements of education is teaching and one of the core elements of being a teacher is having Pedagogical Content Knowledge(PCK). PCK was proposed by Shulman which highlights the specialized nature of teachers. It has distinguished teaching as a career from other majors. Teacher specialization has progressed along with the development of history and society, and PCK evolved into the main force in education reform gradually. The optimization of PCK is a new indicator of scientific educational reform for the specialization of teachers. Student teachers, as the teachers of the younger generation, should pay more attention to the impact of PCK for teaching, to carry out more effective English teaching in high school.This thesis uses the case study method which includes 3 interns of a Secondary School in Lvshun, Dalian as the research subject due to the specificity of secondary school English student teachers. In this thesis, the research was conducted through interviews on student teachers, classroom observations and reflection journals. The work of case study was carried on a comparative study of student teachers’ PCK elements in the pre and post period with the purpose of comprehending the developing model of student teachers’ PCK and finding effective methods to promote the development. This research involved 3 research questions in this context:(1) How is the PCK of student teachers developing?(2) How are the PCK components correlated with the development of EFL student teachers?(3) What should to be done to summarize the general pattern of the development of Chinese EFL secondary school student teachers of promote and find effective methods to promote the development?The research found that(1) PCK is dynamic in nature, every elements of it have different effects on the development of secondary school EFL student teachers.(2) PCK elements are correlative in the process of their development.Therefore, the thesis demonstrates that PCK has great effect on the development of Secondary School EFL student teachers.