Abstract:

Shulman (1986) proposed three kinds of knowledge that effective teachers should master: content knowledge (CK), pedagogical knowledge (PK), and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). There have been quite a number of studies focusing on CK and PCK in the domain of mathematics (Hill et al. 2004; Baumert et al. 2010; Schmidt et al. 2007), however, little is known about language teachers’ PCK and CK in teaching the target language. In this article, we present a conceptualization of PCK and CK of CFL teachers in teaching Chinese pronunciation by using semi-structured interviews and questionnaires to elicit CFL teachers’ (n=25) PCK and CK on teaching Chinese. Our methodological approach is based on a PCK-CK framework, in which PCK and CK are determined as the core elements. In line with our theoretical framework, the PCK investigation includes two parts: a semi-structured interview on three subscales, including the knowledge of Chinese tasks, knowledge of student misconceptions and difficulties, and knowledge of Chinese pronunciation-specific instructional strategies; and a questionnaire the items of which were selected from reviewed literature on instructional pronunciation strategies (IPS) by testing the relationship between CFL teachers’ implemented IPS in-class and in the literature. Our CK investigation is constructed as a semi-structured interview to cover relevant CFL pronunciation areas (e.g., initials, finals, tones, intonation, and stress). The results show that CFL teachers emphasize the importance of CK and PCK in teaching Chinese pronunciation, but we also notice that some teachers are weakest in terms of CK in Chinese pronunciation domain while a number of teachers are weakest with regard to PCK to have enough IPS on solving students’ pronunciation problems.

Keywords:

Content knowledge (CK), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) teachers, Chinese pronunciation.