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Chapter 1 Introduction

Research in teaching has a long history. Before the 1970s, the dominant view inteaching research was the behavioral idea—teaching-as-doing. This kind of ideaexisted under the paradigm of process-product research. Since late 1970s， theresearch area has shifted from a behavioral to a cognitive view of teaching，soresearchers began to describe teachers’ thought, judgments, and decisions as thecognitive process that shaped their behaviors (Bailey & Nunan, 1996).In the 1980s, the teacher professionalization movement in America led to adiscussion of “what counts as knowledge base for teaching”. At that time, Shulman(1986a, 1986b, 1987) pointed out there is a “knowledge base for teaching” and heidentified seven categories of teachers’ knowledge (see p.4, line.17). Among thosekinds of knowledge, Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) became the focus ofresearches in teacher knowledge of different subjects. In this study, I make a casestudy of an experienced college English teacher’s PCK about students.

1.1 Background of the study
College English (English as a foreign language) is a compulsory course inChinese universities. College English teachers play an important role in languageteaching and learning because teachers are central to the understanding of and theimprovement of English language teaching (Freeman 1991; Johnson 1992). Actually,a lot of college English teachers in China graduated from comprehensive universitiesrather than normal universities and there are some discrepancies in their knowledgebase which may prevent them from teaching English effectively (Gao Zhangrong,2008). However, in China, most researchers studied English teaching approaches andsecond language acquisition and few researchers studied knowledge base of Englishteachers.Teachers’ knowledge is a relatively new area of inquiring in second/foreignlanguage education. In 1987, Shulman proposed seven categories knowledge base ofteachers among which Pedagogical Content Knowledge become a focus of inquiringteachers’ knowledge of specific subject because it represents the blending of contentknowledge, pedagogical knowledge, curriculum knowledge, knowledge of studentsand so on. At abroad, a lot of researchers have studied teacher’s knowledge from theaspect of PCK since then.

1.2 Significance of the study
In China, empirical researches on teachers’ PCK are rare and none of themexplored experienced college English teachers’ PCK in depth. In my study, I explorean experienced college English teacher’s PCK about students and it is supposed tohave certain contributions to English teaching.In China, teacher certificate combines pedagogy, educational psychology andteaching skills which are tested separately. The prospective teachers of English,Math, Physics, etc are tested by the same items when they need to get teachercertifications. However, that is not reasonable enough to qualify prospectiveteachers to teaching a certain subject. Studying of PCK is helpful in designing morereasonable standards to test teachers of specific subject for specific learners’ level.PCK is one important aspect for improving college English teacherdevelopment (Zhou Yan, 2005; Wu Yian, 2005, Zhang Lian, 2005). Exploring theknowledge of students of experienced college English teachers will help teacherdevelopment program designers set more reasonable standards for colle本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。