Investigating Pre-service High School English Teachers' Construction Of Pedagogical Content Knowledge

With the promotion of basic education curriculum reform and with more emphasis put on the professional development of foreign language teachers,more requirements and challenges are posing on normal university students' mastery of pedagogical content knowledge(PCK).Under the background of new ages,the teaching profession has changed from the experience-based casualization to the professionalization.PCK is an important part of teacher professionalism,which helps teachers impart knowledge to students of different levels of intelligence and knowledge structures,helping students dispel doubts and accept new knowledge.The construction of PCK has a beneficial effect on teachers' professional competences and teaching performances.Generally speaking,the quality of English teaching lies on the professionalism of English teachers.Pre-service English teachers are the newly emerging force of English teachers,and their mastery of PCK has a significant effect on the development of English language education.However,research done in terms of the pre-service teachers' PCK development is relatively few.English-majored M.Ed.students,as pre-service high school English teachers,need to construct their PCK to be better prepared to become a qualified teacher.But current situation concerning these pre-service high school English teachers' PCK is not satisfactory.They don't have a good understanding of the PCK in English language teaching,and cannot convert the theories into practical knowledge,applying them into their classroom teaching.Moreover,these pre-service teachers are lack of the ability to investigate and combine different teaching strategies.This thesis aims to investigate the effective methods which help pre-service high school English teachers construct their PCK,the developmental characteristics in the PCK construction process,and the difficulties they meet while constructing PCK.Suggestions are also offered accordingly.The thesis proposed the following three research questions:1.What strategies are employed by the pre-service high school English teachers while constructing the pedagogical content knowledge? Which one/ones is/are the most frequently used? Which one/ones is/are the least frequently used?2.How does the pre-service high school English teachers' pedagogical content knowledge change as the time goes?3.Which part of the pedagogical content knowledge is more difficult for the pre-service high school English teachers to construct?This study first chose research participants through two pre-tests,a questionnaire investigation and a test.The data and information are collected and analyzed through another three questionnaires and interviews.The results indicate that “class observation” and “teaching practice” are the most frequently used methods in pre-service English teachers' PCK construction,while the “online learning” the least frequently used one.Their PCK has improved and showed some developmental characteristics as time goes by.“Knowledge of students” and “knowledge of teaching strategies”,have developed quickly during both the undergraduate teaching practice and the postgraduate teaching practice,while the “knowledge of curriculum” grow relatively slowly due to the lack of systematical theories learning and due to pre-service English teachers' indifference to the postgraduate course study.Lastly,“knowledge of teaching strategies” and “knowledge of teaching contexts” have been found to be the more difficult ones to be constructed.The reasons maybe the complexity of real class teaching contexts and limited learning conditions.