Teachers’ Pedagogic Knowledge Base: a Comparison between Experienced and Less Experienced Practitioners

Abstract

Second language teacher education community has become increasingly interested in the pedagogical knowledge base of teachers as a window into practitioners' mental lives. The present study was conducted to document likely differences between the pedagogic thoughts of experienced and less experienced teachers. Eight teachers participated in the project. Data were collected through the use of stimulated recall. The analysis of the data shows that there are differences both in the number and the order of the thoughts teachers produced in different groups. Experienced teachers produced an average of five pedagogical thoughts per minute, while their less experienced counterparts produced 3 thoughts. The top thought category for less experienced teachers was Language Management, while for the experienced teachers Self-Reflection ranked first. Some thought categories were also absent in the report of less experienced practitioners.

Is a Degree Relevant? A Comparison of Pedagogical Thought Units of Teachers with and without ELT-related Academic Credentials

“…In addition, the two studies showed that experienced practitioners generated a larger quantity of pedagogical thought units than novices (907 and 819 respectively); however, no statistical comparison was made to determine whether this difference was significant. This was the central concern by Akbari and Tajik (2009) which concluded that experienced ELT teachers produced a significantly larger number of pedagogical thought units, supporting the claim that teaching experience can be an influential factor in enlarging teachers' knowledge base. Mullock (2006) undertook a partial replication of Gatbonton's (1999) study.…”

“…Since then, more attention has been paid to teachers' knowledge base and thinking on the grounds that what teachers do in the classroom originates from their mental acts, which have their roots in attitudes, values, knowledge and beliefs collected through their experience as students and teachers (Gatbonton, 1999;Mullock, 2006). Terms such as 'teachers' pedagogical knowledge base' (Shulman, 1987) and 'teacher cognition' (Borg, 2003) grew out of this swing of pendulum to describe thoughts that shape teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning and influence their classroom practices (Akbari & Tajik, 2009). …”

“…The present research is part of a series of studies that look at second language teachers' pedagogical knowledge base, and more specifically teachers' pedagogical thought units, taking into account different educational and demographic variables. Earlier published studies in this series dealt with the impact of experience on teachers' thoughts (Akbari & Tajik, 2009), the effect of formal education on their thinking patterns (Akbari & Dadvand, 2011) and teachers' moral thoughts as influenced by their gender and experience (Akbari & Tajik, 2012). It is the authors' belief that partial replication of previous studies, with changes in variables and data collection contexts, while using the same data collection methodology, can result in the development of a solid, comprehensive knowledge base that can have practical and theoretical implications.…”

The Role of Opportunities to Learn in Teacher Preparation for EFL Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge

“…In order to ascertain the extent to which teachers possess the requisite professional knowledge for TEFL, educational researchers have conducted empirical studies in a wide range of areas (e.g., Akbari & Tajik, ; Freeman & Johnson, ; Freeman et al., ; Karimi, ). To date, qualitative studies have tended to explore the domain‐specific challenges EFL teachers face in the process of teaching from a phenomenological perspective (e.g., Baker, ; Baleghizadeh & Shahri, ; Gatbonton, , ; Liu, ; Mullock, ).…”

Codeswitching in the Language Classroom: A Study of Four EFL Teachers’ Cognition

“…These studies, however, encompass a rather small proportion of those realms which are affected by teachers’ beliefs and thought processes. As an incipient research area in the ELT context (Gatbonton, 2008), more studies are needed to investigate the role of teacher cognition in other aspects of the language classroom (Akbari and Dadvand, 2011; Akbari and Tajik, 2009).…”