学生感知商务英语教师 PCK 水平对其学业自我效能感影响的实证研究—以广外商英学院为例

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background 
Teachers  are  the  driving  force  in  determining  the  effectiveness  of  teaching  and learning  (Vandervoot  et  al.  2004; Darling-Hammond  2006;  Ballard  &  Bates  2008). Nonetheless, many novice college teachers with doctoral degrees and a certain level of subject  matter  knowledge  (hereinafter  called  SMK)  were  not  able  to  be  effective teachers  (Clarke  & Hollingsworth  2002;  Major  &  Palmer  2006;  Jang  2008),  which leads to scholars’ growing interests in the notion of teachers’ professional development. Researches on teachers’ professionalism mainly focus on such cognitive components as professional knowledge. Researchers have directed increased attention to teachers’ knowledge  and  how  it  is  developed (Borko  and  Putnam  1996;  Calderhead  1996). Much of this interest was stimulated by Shulman’s (1986) report that introduced the concept  of  pedagogical  content  knowledge  (hereinafter  called  PCK)  as  a  distinctive body of knowledge for teaching. 

It has been reported that the success of college teaching depends not only on the teachers’ SMK but also on their personal understanding of students’ prior knowledge and learning difficulty (Grossman 1990; Lederman, Gess-Newsome & Latz 1994). In most cases, teachers’ beliefs about learners were largely based on assumptions derived from their own student experiences (Cantillon &de Grave 2012). That is to say, aside from the SMK, they needed more pedagogical knowledge (Leinhardt & Smith 1985). Other  factors  of  success  also  include  teachers’  teaching  methods  and strategies, curriculum  knowledge,  educational  situation,  goal  and  value  (Shulman  1987).  In particular, the college teachers’ PCK is the main issue of the current college education revolution (Shulman 1986, 1987). 

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1.2 Research Rationale

1.2.1 Research Purposes 
Currently, there are deep deficiencies in relevant researches on BE teachers’ PCK from  home  and  abroad  both qualitatively  and  quantitatively.  Wu  &  Qin  (2014)  were the  first  scholars  that  have  conducted  studies  on  BE teachers’  PCK  and  have tentatively  established  the  theoretical  framework.  However,  there  is  still  a  gap  to  be filled in quantitative study of BE teachers’ PCK. Moreover, existing researches mainly emphasize  teachers-based perspective,  which  explores  what  should  be  included  in teachers’  PCK.  But  Bailey  (2001)  proposed  that  the teacher  self  is  viewed  as  the source in pursuing professional development. It means that BE teachers should play an active  role  in  his  or  her  professional  development.  In  teaching  practice,  they  should take initiative to cooperate with students, learn how their students perceive their PCK and how practical teaching influencing students’ academic motivation and persistence. In  other  words,  researches  from  a  learner-centered  perspective  carve  out  a  new path for BE teachers’ professional development and teaching effectiveness improvement in practical teaching. To be specific, studies focuses on students’ perception of business English teachers’ PCK is worth studying. In addition, based on Criu &Marian’s (2014) findings  on  a  positive  correlation  among  students’  perception  of  BE  teachers’  PCK, cooperation  between  teachers  and  students  and  self-efficacy  in  self-regulating,  it  is necessary to explore the relationship among them in BE teaching.

GDUFS  with  other  6  universities  (University  of  International  Business  and Economics, Shanghai University of International, Business and Economics, Shanghai University  of  Finance  and  Economics,  Heilongjiang  University，，Xi’an International Studies University and Yangzhou University) were the first batch of universities being officially approved to establish the undergraduate BE program2.Up to 2014, School of English  for  International  Business  (hereinafter  called SEIB)  in  GDUFS  has successfully cultivated 3 batches of graduates of BE program. It possesses a relatively outstanding  BE  teacher  group,  among  which  100%  of  teachers  have  master  degrees and above, and 85% of professional teachers have experience of studying abroad. Its instructional  mode,  curriculum  design,  teaching philosophy  and  suchlike  have attracted  many  others  universities’  emulation  and  learning.  To  some  extent,  its program construction reflects the direction of business English development in China. Therefore,  it  is  representative  to take  SEIB  in GDUFS  for  an  example  to  conduct studies on business English teachers’ professional development.  

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge 
2.1.1 Defin5.1.1 Current Status of Students’ Perception of BE Teachers’ PCK ................................ 45ition of PedagChapter 

There  is  a  growing  tendency  of  researches  on  teachers’  professional  knowledge base,  especially  on  teachers’ PCK.  Teachers’  professional  knowledge  has  been conceptualized  in  various  ways.  As  a  pioneer  of  categorizing teachers’  professional knowledge, Shulman (1987) identified seven categories of them as illustrated in Table 2-1.  Among those  categories,  pedagogical  content  knowledge  is  of  special  interest because it identifies the distinctive bodies of knowledge for teaching (Shulman 1987). He  defined  PCK  as:  it  represented  the  blending  of  content  and pedagogy into  an understanding of how particular topics, problems, or issues are organized, represented, and  adapted  to  the diverse  interests  and  abilities  of  learners,  and  presented  for instruction. This definition implies that “PCK is both an external and internal construct, as it is constituted by what a teacher knows, what a teacher does, and the reasons for the  teacher’s  actions”  (Baxter  and  Lederman  1999).  Hence,  PCK  involves  both teachers’ understanding and teaching practice. 

Based  on  Shulman’s  (1987)  original  definition ， scholars  elaborated  and interpreted  the  nature  and  constituent components  of  PCK  differently.  Carter  (1990) viewed PCK as what teachers know about their subject matter and how they transform that  knowledge  into  classroom  curricular  events.  As  for  Geddis,  Onslow,  Beynon  & Oesch (1993), they  defined  PCK  as  knowledge  that  played  a  role  in  transforming SMK  into  forms  that  are  more  accessible to students.  PCK  is  defined  as  a  special domain of knowledge produced by the transformation of other knowledge domains for creating  effective  learning  opportunities  (Gess-Newsome,  1999).  Park  and  Oliver (2008) defined PCK as teachers’ understanding and enactment of how to help a group of  students  understand  specific  subject  matter  using multiple  instructional  strategies, representations,  and  assessments  while  working  within  the  contextual,  cultural, and social limitations in the learning environment. Atay, Kaslioglu & Kurt (2010) defined PCK  as  the  knowledge  base needed by  teachers  to  guide  them  to  make  decisions  or take  any  action  in  teaching  in  the  classroom.  From  all  the definitions  above,  one commonality can be found that PCK is regarded as the transformation of SMK for the purpose of teaching, which is vital when defining PCK.

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2.2 Academic Self-efficacy 

2.2.1 Definition of Academic Self-efficacy 
Bandura  (1977)  defined  self-efficacy  as  beliefs  in  one’s  capabilities  to  organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments. According to this definition, two important aspects should be emphasized: 1) self-efficacy is a belief about  one’s  capability,  which  does  not  necessarily  match  one’s  actual  capability;  2) individuals’ efficacy judgments are based on task and domain-specific goals. 

In terms of sources of self-efficacy, information for shaping self-efficacy beliefs comes from the following four major sources (Bandura 1986, 1997): enactive mastery experience，vicarious experience，verbal persuasion，physiological reactions. In other words,  they  refer  to  ones’  prior  experience,  similar  others’  performance  on  the  task, persuasive communication and evaluative feedback from significant others (e.g. their professional  teachers)  and physiological  arousals  (e.g.  sweating,  heartbeats,  fatigue). Among these four sources, research has shown that enactive mastery experiences are the  most  influential  source  of  efficacy  information  because  they  provide  the most direct, authentic evidence for an individual’s personal resources necessary to succeed. During  practical  teaching, cooperation  level  between  teachers  and  students  and students’  perception  of  their  teachers’  level  of  PCK  would influence  a  large  part  of students’ prior experience in learning. If students experience negative student-teacher relationship  and  perceive  their  teachers  with  low  level  of  PCK,  they  tend  to  have negative  enactive  mastery experiences.  In  the  contrary,  with  positive  student-teacher relationship  and  high  level  of  perception  of  teachers’ PCK,  they  tend  to  be  more confident in learning and have higher level of self-efficacy in academic domain.

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Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework ........................... 22
3.1 Model of Pedagogical Content Knowledge .............. 22
3.1.1 Conceptualization of PCK Model ............... 22

Chapter 4 Methodology ................ 32
4.1 Research Design ................ 32

4.2 Instrumentation .............................. 32

Chapter 5 Data Analysis and Discussions ............. 45
5.1 Descriptive Analysis ................ 45

Chapter 5 Data Analysis and Discussions

5.1 Descriptive Analysis

A mean of the scale and each item will be preferred rather than a sum, according to Owen and Froman (1988). Hence, the mean of Scale 1 and each dimension in the scale  is  obtained.  More  details  of  each  item’  mean  and  standard deviation  can  be referred to in Appendix 6 Table 1. As is illustrated in Table 5-1, the mean of the whole scale  is  3.69. The  mean  of  students’  perception  of  BE  teachers’  knowledge  of instructional  language  and  strategies  (ILS)  and instructional  objectives  and  context (IOC) are 3.86 which are the highest among all the four dimensions. The mean ranked in  descending  order  is  students’  perception  of  BE  teachers’  knowledge  of  BE curriculum (BECK, M=3.73) and knowledge of student understanding (KSU, M=3.53). In  brief,  it  can  be  concluded  that  students  are  relatively dissatisfied  with  teachers’ knowledge of student understanding (KSU) but they perceive BE teachers as having good knowledge of instructional language, strategies, objectives and context. 

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Chapter 6 Conclusions

6.1 Overview of Study

Based  on  the  investigation  of  current  status  of  BE  teachers’  professional development and the ignorance of BE teachers’ PCK by both teachers themselves and researchers,  this  study  conducts  this  study  which  is  of  both theoretical  and  practical significance.  The  purpose  of  this  study  is  to  assess  influence  students’  perception  of business  English  teachers’  level  of  PCK  and  cooperation  between  teachers  and students  on  students’  academic self-efficacy  taking  undergraduates  from  SEIB  of GDUFS  as  an  example  so  as  to  fill  a  gap  in  existing literature of  empirical investigation on BE teachers’ PCK and provide quantitative guidance for researches in this field and similar fields. Furthermore, its ultimate goal is to draw scholars and BE teachers’ attention to students’ perception of teachers’ PCK, cooperation level between teachers and students and students’ self-efficacy in BE teaching and make contribution to improve  BE  teachers’  professionalism  and  students’  academic  self-efficacy  in practical BE teaching. 

reference(omitted)