Relationship Between Pre-Service English Teachers’ Teacher Belief And Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge

With the development of information technology,having the ability to integrate technology into teaching and learning is of great importance to teachers’ professional development.To promote teachers’ ability to use technology more effectively in teaching,Koehler and Mishra proposed the TPACK(Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge)framework in 2005.In addition,previous studies have shown that teacher belief is a key factor influencing teachers’ behavior.In recent years,a large number of scholars have focused on the study of the relationship between in-service teachers’ teacher belief and TPACK,yet existing research has neglected the study of the relationship between pre-service teachers’ teacher belief and TPACK.As the backbone of future education,pre-service teachers play an important role.Therefore,this study is carried out to explore the current state of preservice English teachers’ teacher belief and TPACK,and also investigate the relationship between pre-service English teachers’ teacher belief and TPACK.This study is based on Borg’s(2003)teacher cognition theory and Koehler and Mishra’s(2009)TPACK framework.The participants in this study are 89 postgraduate students in a two-year Master of Education program at a comprehensive university in Jiangsu Province.The participants are required to complete two questionnaires,namely,the Teacher Beliefs Questionnaire and the TPACK-EFL Questionnaire.Moreover,in order to provide more detailed information on the statistical results,a semi-structured interview was conducted with six participants who were purposively selected.The following is a summary of the major findings of this study based on the questionnaires and the interview data.First of all,the pre-service English teachers’ teacher belief reaches a high level(M=3.59),with the pre-service English teachers’ evaluation belief reaching the highest level(M=3.76)and student management belief reaching the lowest level(M=3.20).Secondly,pre-service English teachers’ TPACK reaches a high level(M=3.78),with the highest mean score of 3.90 for CK and the lowest mean score of 3.49 for TCK.The Mean scores of each dimension are ranked as CK>PK>PCK>TK>TPK>TPACK>TCK.Last but not least,there is a moderately positive correlation between pre-service English teachers’ teacher belief and TPACK(r=0.45,p<0.01).The multiple linear regression shows that teacher belief can predict pre-service English teachers’ TPACK.The R square value presents that 24%of the variance in pre-service English teachers’ TPACK can be explained by this model.Moreover,stepwise regression models indicate that teachers’student management belief and evaluation belief explain 23.7%of the variance in preservice English teachers’ TPACK.Based on the above findings,this study offers some insights for different stakeholders.For preservice English teachers,they should gain insight into their own levels of teacher belief and disciplinary pedagogical knowledge of integrated technology,and take positive actions to seize opportunities to improve their own teacher beliefs and disciplinary pedagogical knowledge of integrated technology.In addition,teacher educators should rationalize the curriculum to help preservice English teachers improve their disciplinary pedagogical knowledge of integrating technology within the curriculum.