A Comparative Study Of Novice And Experienced English Teachers' EPCK In Junior Middle School

With the promotion of basic education curriculum reform and with more attention put on the professional development of foreign language teachers,English teachers in junior middle school are facing with more requirements and challenges.Pedagogical Content Knowledge(PCK)put forward by Shulman(1987)is an important part of teacher professionalism.Therefore,it is necessary to study their English pedagogical content knowledge.However,less attention are paid on the researches about the difference between novice and experienced English teachers' PCK.In this paper,teacher knowledge theory and constructivism are taken as the theoretical bases;three research methods: questionnaire,classroom observation and interview are employed.Besides,it takes junior middle school English teachers in Nanning,the capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region as an example,aiming to investigate the current situation of junior middle English teachers' PCK and finding out the differences between novice and experienced English teachers' PCK based on Cochran et al.'s Developmental Model of PCKg.Suggestions are also offered accordingly.There are two research questions:(1)What's the general level of junior middle school novice and experienced English teachers' EPCK?(2)What are the differences in EPCK between novice and experienced junior middle school English teachers? Why?The research findings are demonstrated as follows: first of all,junior middle school English teachers' PCK keeps at an optimistic level.Among them,knowledge of English subject matter is mastered the best;knowledge of English pedagogy and knowledge of students characteristic are mastered relatively better;knowledge of educational contexts is mastered the worst.Secondly,by comparison,there do exist significant differences on knowledge of English subject matter,knowledge of English pedagogy and knowledge of students' characteristic between experienced and novice English teachers.Experienced English teachers have a better command of these three kinds of knowledge than novice teachers.However,fewer differences in knowledge of educational contexts,both of them have relatively poor mastery in this aspect.Therefore,the promotion strategies which are offered to junior middle school English teachers will truly enhance their PCK level.