An Investigation On The Current Situation Of Senior High School Novice English Teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Pedagogical content knowledge not only has the ontological nature of subject knowledge,but also has the practical nature of teaching knowledge.It is the core connection and link of teacher knowledge structure and is also an important component for teacher's professional quality.Pedagogical content knowledge of novice English teachers in senior high school,who are an emerging force of English teachers,plays a vital role in senior high school English classroom and even in the whole English education circles.However,novice teachers at a preliminary stage of teaching lack in teaching experience.As it is well-known,the key to promote the professional development of novice teachers is to promote the development of PCK.Therefore,it is extremely urgent to develop pedagogical content knowledge of novice English teachers.On the basis of the research background above,this research aims to specifically improve senior high school novice English teachers' pedagogical content knowledge.The following three research questions are to be answered:(1)What is the current situation of senior high school novice English teachers' pedagogical content knowledge?(2)What are the existing problems of senior high school novice English teachers' pedagogical content knowledge?(3)How can the existing problems of senior high school novice English teachers' pedagogical content knowledge be solved?In order to answer the three questions above,questionnaire,classroom observation and interview are adopted.This research takes 52 novice English teachers from 9 urban senior high schools in Baoji City who are employed less than 3 years as research subjects.The research shows that the the current situation of pedagogical content knowledge for senior high school novice English teachers is not so good as expected in general.In terms of the five components of pedagogical content knowledge,knowledge of self-reflection is relatively poor and the knowledge of teaching objectives,students and teaching situation also has deficiency in varying degrees while they have relatively less problems regarding the knowledge of English subject matter.Based on the constructivisim theory and the zone of proximal development theory,corresponding countermeasures are put forward according to the existing problems of senior high school novice English teachers' pedagogical contentknowledge from the perspective of novice teachers and schools so as to promote the professional development.