Multi-case Study Of The Development Of Chinese College EFL Teachers’ Conception Of Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Since the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) was first put forward in the1980s, it has drawn much attention from researchers and its components have remained an important research area. So far, most of the research have taken the theoretical perspectives to explore the PCK issue and those based on data from teaching practitioners are inadequate. The situation is even worse when research on EFL teachers’ conception of PCK components are compared to those on teachers of other subjects. Given this, the present study is aimed at exploring the development of Chinese EFL teachers’conception of PCK components. By selecting five Chinese college English teachers with different teaching experiences and working contexts as the participants, it attempts to find out the initial and updated conceptions of PCK components of Chinese EFL teachers, the over-time changes of their conceptions, the constituents of EFL teachers’PCK components, and the sociocultural factors that have influenced the teachers’conception of PCK components.The multi-sourced data of this study come from interviews, classroom observation and teachers’reflection journals. Interviews are the major source of data to investigate teachers’conception of PCK components when they started teaching and when they participated in the study. Classroom observations and teachers’reflection journals provide supplementary and complementary information for interviews.Results of the study show that the participants’conception of PCK has gone through over-time changes regarding what constitutes the components and the importance of the components. New PCK components were found added to their initial conception of PCK components, though to different degrees. In total, thirteen PCK components were finally found to have made teachers’PCK as a whole. With regard to the importance of PCK components, the participants initially regarded subject-related components as the major PCK components but later thought human-related components as the most important PCK components.As to the influential factors, it has been found that subject, object, community, tools, rules, and roles within the framework of Activity Theory all have played important parts in the development of teachers’conception of PCK components. The most important factors include students, colleagues, traditional Chinese culture, rules of the university, teachers’previous learning experience, and the internet. In addition, factors like mentorship for young teachers and professional autonomy were found to have an impact on teachers’development of PCK conception, since most participants responded that they had experienced a period of bitter struggling and their opportunities for practicing and reflecting on teaching had been limited.While taking the PCK as an integrity, this study has found its components are interrelated with each other, with the development of one component influencing the development of another. Among the PCK components found in the study, knowledge of students, knowledge of self, and knowledge of teaching purposes are the driving force that mostly triggers the development of the other PCK components.Based on the discussion of the results, the study puts forward a ladder model of the development of teachers’conception of PCK, in which the importance of sociocultural factors on teachers’conceptualization of PCK components are highlighted. This model shows that the development of teachers’PCK conception goes through stages of fossilization and leaping forward and each leap is the result caused by external factors.The study concludes that PCK is a personally distributed, culturally related and contextually influenced dynamic concept. It is suggested that the universities establish effective mentorship for novice teachers, provide more flexible teacher development programs and more opportunities for teachers to communicate with peers, and allow more professional authority to EFL teachers. The teachers are encouraged to take part in more social activities and communicate more with colleagues and students. The limitations of the study and tentative suggestions for future studies are finally provided.