A Comparision Of The PCK Of A Novice Biological Teacher To That Of A Skilled In A High School

PCK, abbreviation of Pedagogical Content Knowledge, is knowledge of teachers in the teaching activities and comprehensive knowledge on how to organize, adjust, present, and transfer the subject knowledge according to students’ different abilities and interests. In the process of teachers’ professional development, their PCKs has been optimized. In the development of teaching professional, the skilled degree is the most important.According to PCK pentagons structure model raised by Park, this research compares the PCK of a novice and a skilled biology teacher in a high school in A city from five aspects, i.e., Orientation to Teaching, Knowledge of Curriculum, Knowledge of Student’s Understanding, Knowledge of Assessment and Knowledge of Instructional Strategies, to give suggestions for novice teacher’s PCK development.Using qualitative research methods, through interviews, classroom observations, analysis of teaching projects, this research mainly compares the same teaching contents of two teachers in the same chapter. Totally 18 teaching cases were compared. Taking its pertinence and the depth into consideration, this study mainly focus on two teaching cases, supplemented by quantitative research methods meantime. The two teachers’ PCK levels in the teaching cases per section were evaluated through the analysis of the gauge Park Table.This study shows that the skilled teacher’s PCK level has reached proficient, while the novice’s PCK is still at a limited level. There are some differences between the PCKs of the two kinds of teachers.(1) Because the high school biology lacks orientation to teaching knowledge on the whole, the novice teacher regards the curriculum standard as the most important, while the skilled treats the curriculum standard and the teaching materials dialectically.(2) As far as high school biology curriculum knowledge are concerned, the novice hasn’t constructed a stable and complete subject knowledge, while the skilled can well grasp the knowledge veins laterally and vertically.(3) There are major differences between the two kinds of teachers on understanding students. Due to lack of experiences, the novice doesn’t understand what the students know and want.(4) Concerning the evaluation of study efficiency, the novice only pay attention to the grasp of knowledge, while the skilled not only focuses on student’s learning efficiency, but regards it as a kind of the teaching reference.(5) Concerning the utilization of teaching strategies, although the novice has systematic teaching strategy knowledge, he doesn’t dare to put them into practice. On the contrary, the skilled do well in use of teaching strategies according to concrete teaching situation.