Research On The Development Of EFL Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) At Senior High Schools

The professional standards for middle school teachers(For Trial Implementation)(2012)issued by the Ministry of Education put forward clear requirements for middle school teachers,which requires middle school teachers to have good professional ethics and master systematic and scientific professional knowledge and skills.As an important part of teachers’ professional knowledge,pedagogical content knowledge(PCK)is the key factor affecting teachers’ professional development.English pedagogical content knowledge is also the most fundamental element that distinguishes English teachers from other subject teachers.This study adopts the case study method in the qualitative research method to discuss the development of EFL teachers’ PCK at senior high schools,and aims to provide some references for improving the professional quality of English teachers and improving the quality of classroom teaching.The specific research questions of this thesis include:(1)How does EFL teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge(PCK)at senior high schools develop continuously?(2)What are the factors that influence the development of EFL’ teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge(PCK)at senior high schools? The thesis adopts purposeful sampling,follows the principle of maximum differentiation and voluntary participation,and selects five senior high school English teachers from Yuxi City,Yunnan Province as research participants.The data sources of this research mainly include interview and observation and so on.Firstly,the researcher defines the key elements and theoretical foundation of this research through literature.The researcher then designs an interview outline according to the research purpose and questions,and then conducts two interviews and multiple observations with each participant.Finally,the data is sorted,analyzed and summarized.The research finds that:(1)The development of EFL teachers’ PCK at senior high schools is closely related to their teaching background and socio-cultural environment.Teachers often use the corresponding intermediaries to construct the development scaffold of mutual transformation between personal tacit PCK and explicit PCK.Moreover,teachers realize the long-term development of personal PCK in the continuous circular transformation.(2)The development of EFL teachers’ PCK at senior high schools is mainly affected by internal and external environmental factors.Internal environmental factors include personal learning experience,development motivation and ability,educational idea and attitude towards teaching and research as well as teachers’ personal life background(such as personality traits,time and energy,and physical quality and income)and so on.External environmental factors include social interaction(such as work circle and life circle),campus cultural environment and English education reform(such as new teaching materials and training requirements)and so on.Based on the research findings,the researcher puts forward the following suggestions for the development of EFL teachers’ PCK at senior high schools.First of all,for EFL teachers at senior high schools,teachers should give full play to their personal learning initiative,and expand PCK and strengthen PCK cognition in learning.Meanwhile,EFL teachers at senior high schools should pay attention to teamwork,jointly build a PCK learning community to promote the sharing and development of PCK and improve their personal teaching ability in dialogue and interaction.Secondly,for schools,they should build a good campus cultural atmosphere to promote the development of teachers’ PCK and stimulate teachers’ professional initiative through giving teachers more humanistic care and reducing teachers’ non-teaching activities and administrative work.Finally,for the educational administration departments,they should consciously fulfill the responsibility of promoting the development of teachers’ professional knowledge and provide policy and institutional support for teachers to develop PCK and teaching ability.