Research On The Current Situation Of English Subject Teaching Masters' Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge

The increasing development of information technology has brought tremendous influence on various aspects of life,especially on education.In the information age,more and more emerging information technologies are applied into education.Technology knowledge(TK)becomes an important and indispensable domain of knowledge for teachers'effective teaching.Building upon Shulman's pedagogical content knowledge(PCK),Mishra and Koehler(2005)put forward the concept of technological pedagogical content knowledge(TPACK),adding TK to Shulman's PCK.With the development of education informationization,it is necessary to take teachers' technology knowledge into consideration.Within TPACK framework,there are three core domains of knowledge and four compound domains of knowledge,that is,technology knowledge(TK),content knowledge(CK)' pedagogical knowledge(PK),pedagogical content knowledge(PCK),technological content knowledge(TCK),technological pedagogical knowledge(TPK),technological pedagogical content knowledge(TPACK).TPACK refers to an understanding that emerges from interplay and interactions among TK,CK,and PK.Therefore,it is regarded as the guarantee for effective teaching with technology.Since TPACK framework was widely accepted and utilized to describe teacher knowledge,more and more studies on TPACK have been conducted by researchers and scholars at home and abroad.Compared with studies conducted abroad,empirical studies conducted at home are relatively scarce.In addition,most studies selected in-service teachers as research subjects.As pre-service teachers,more attention should be paid to the development of English subject teaching masters'TPACK.Based on this,the current research will investigate the general level of English subject teaching masters'TPACK.In this study,there are three research questions:(1)What is the current situation of English subject teaching masters' TPACK?(2)What deficiencies do English subject teaching masters have in TPACK?(3)What strategies can be adopted to improve the level of English subject teaching masters' TPACK?A mixed research method is adopted to answer these three research questions.TPACK questionnaires are used to collect quantitative data and interviews are conducted to obtain qualitative data.In this study,418 English subject teaching masters are invited to fill in TPACK questionnaires.Based on the results of questionnaires,a semi-structured interview is conducted with 12 interviewees to further understand their general level of TPACK and deficiencies they have in TPACKThrough detailed analysis of data both from questionnaires and interviews,the study has four main findings:(1)The general level of English subject teaching masters' TPACK is in a moderate level.The general mean of the seven dimensions is 3.185.(2)Specific to the three core components in TPACK framework,CK(3.2896)>TK(3.1742)>PK(3.1448),there is much room for them to improve these three core domains of knowledge.(3)Specific to the four compound components of TPACK framework,the means are ranked as follow:TCK(3.346)>PCK(3.212)>TPACK(3.068)>TPK(3.062).It is a great challenge for English masters to integrate two or three kinds of knowledge at the same time in teaching.(4)Although there are no significant differences between English subject teaching masters' TPACK and the school year,whether graduating from normal school,teaching experience,and English level on the whole,there are significant differences between different dimensions of TPACK and various background factorsAccording to the current situation of English subject teaching masters' TPACK level and the deficiencies they have,the author puts forward some effective suggestions and strategies for their TPACK development.Undoubtedly,the current research has some limitations which need to be overcome in the future research.