An Investigation On Junior Middle School English Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge Under The Background Of New Curriculum Standard

As one of the basic education courses,English plays a very important role in today's society.And at the same time,the professional qualities of teachers who teach English are paid more and more attentions by researchers.In the structure of English teachers' professional qualities,pedagogical content knowledge(PCK)is one of the most important aspect.Therefore,junior middle school English teachers' PCK is taken as the research breakthrough point in this thesis.Based on the relevant theories on PCK and New Curriculum Standard,the researcher adopt questionnaire and interview as the main research instruments to investigate the current mastery status of junior middle school English teachers' PCK,find the main factors influencing teachers' development of PCK and put forward some suggestions to help junior middle school teachers to develop their PCK.The research tends to solve the following questions: 1)What is the overall status of English teachers' PCK in junior middle schools under the background of the implementation of New Curriculum Standard? 2)What is the detailed mastery status of knowledge in each of the six different dimensions of PCK? 3)Are there differences in the grasp situations of PCK among junior middle school English teachers based on different teaching years,education degrees,majors,graduation backgrounds and areas? If there are,what are the differences? 105 junior middle school English teachers from different schools in different areas are involved in the investigation.The data is analyzed by SPSS 17.0.Then,the researcher conduct an interview involving 14 participants to further explore the the main factors influencing teachers' development of PCK and the ways topromote their development of PCK.The major findings of the research are as follows: 1)The overall mastery status of junior middle school English teachers' PCK is not so poor,neither is good enough(with the mean value of 3.85,accounting for 76% of the full score).2)Junior middle school English teachers' mastery of knowledge of teaching purposes,knowledge of instructional strategies,knowledge of subject matter,knowledge of self is generally good,but their mastery of knowledge of teaching contexts is worse.3)There is significant difference on knowledge of teaching purposes among teachers with different teachings years;there is significant difference on knowledge of teaching purposes,knowledge of subject matter and knowledge of self between teachers majoring in English and non-English majors;there is no significant difference on each kind of knowledge among teachers with different education degrees;there is significant difference on knowledge of instructional strategies between teachers graduating from Normal College and Common College;there is significant difference on each kind of knowledge among teachers from different areas.Based on the problems found in the analysis to the data of questionnaire,and based on the main factors influencing teachers' development of PCK and the ways to promote their development of PCK summarized from the interview,the researcher puts forward some suggestions to promote junior middle school English teachers' PCK.