A Case Study Of Junior High School Novice English Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Pedagogical Content Knowledge(PCK)is a kind of knowledge that teachers adjust,organize,present and carry out in teaching according to the students' different interests and abilities.It is the core of teachers' professional knowledge.In recent years,many scholars at home and abroad have closely linked PCK with the teaching of specific subjects.The researches combined with mathematics are relatively rich,but they are relatively few combined with English.And most of the researches focus on the comparison between novice and expert teachers' PCK.To a certain extent,this particular paradigm of comparative ignores the personality differences and the presentation of development level of teachers' PCK in the same stage.Based on this,the study compares and analyzes the PCK between novice English teachers in junior high school,which is not only beneficial to junior high school novice English teachers to reflect on the status quo of their own PCK and also promotes the further development of their PCK.At the same time,it helps the novice teachers adapt to the teaching work as soon as possible and take the path of the teachers' specialization.Based on Grossman's PCK theory and constructivism theory,combining with the factors that affect the construction of PCK proposed by Ying Guoliang and Yuan Weixin,this paper focuses on the followingtwo questions:(1)what are the differences between novice English teachers' PCK in junior high school?(2)What causes the differences between novice English teachers' PCK? The author selected two novice teachers from the internship school.Two teachers were observed in class and interviewed after class to compare and analyze their pedagogical content knowledge.In order to understand the differences of novice teachers' PCK more comprehensively,the author conducted a questionnaire survey to investigate 111 students in their class.The main findings of this study are as follows.Firstly,in terms of beliefs about the purposes for teaching English,although two novice teachers attach great importance to the cultivation of language knowledge and language skills,teacher W pays more attention to the students' examinations and their scores,but teacher Y focuses on cultivating students' interest in learning English.Secondly,in terms of curricular knowledge,the curricular arrangements of two novice teachers are carried out according to the sequence of course books,but teacher Y is better at helping students build bridges between knowledge.Thirdly,in terms of knowledge of student understanding,because of lacking of teaching experience,two novice teachers' analyses of learning situation are not comprehensive enough.In addition,their predictions of mistakes which students may make are also subjective and have no pertinence.Last,in terms of knowledge of instructional strategies,two novice teachers usecertain teaching activities to attract students' attention and improve their teaching effect.However,teacher Y is not good at grasping the pace of the whole class as teacher W.Through the above mentioned comparison,the author analyzes the reasons influencing the differences of PCK among novice English teachers in junior high school,including “teacher's belief in teaching”,“teacher's educational background” and “school management”.Afterwards,this paper puts forward some suggestions for improving the PCK of novice English teachers in junior high school.Novice teachers should learn advanced teaching concepts,expand their subject knowledge structure,and cultivate their sense of self-reflection.Besides,schools should also organize professional training for novice teachers.