Summary: | 博士 === 國立政治大學 === 華語文教學博士學位學程 === 105 === Recent research indicates that conventional teaching Chinese as a second language (TCSL) teacher education methods that involve mainly mastering language knowledge and teaching skills and imitating model teachers’ teaching methods have become inadequate to cope with the diverse need from culturally different TCSL systems and environments worldwide. Instead, future TCSL teachers should possess more adaptive disposition and expertise in order for learning and solving problems in new situations.
To this end, the purpose of this study is to apply some innovative knowledge building principles to help teacher education students develop more adaptive pedagogical design abilities for TCSL.
A case study method was employed in this study. A set of knowledge building principles was adopted for the pedagogical design in this course, and a Knowledge Forum platform was used for online discussion and feedback. Activities including designing a teaching plan, reflecting on literature reading, and providing peer feedback were integrated with knowledge building principles to guide the participating teacher education students to develop more innovation-oriented instructional design abilities. Data collected during the research process included the participants’ discourse content in Knowledge Forum, classroom teaching video records, interview data transcripts, and the teaching plans designed. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted subsequently. The research results are presented as follows.
First, the participating teacher education students’ overall instructional design orientation and their teaching beliefs were both moving towards more student-oriented direction. The participants were able to revise their initial instructional design method in their teaching plans to promote more student participation in learning activities. With the guidance of the knowledge building principles, the teacher education students were able to substantially improve their learning outcomes regarding TCSL teaching. For example, during the literature report activity, they greatly reduced discussion on a theoretical level and were able to better translate theories into TCSL teaching practices. During the teaching plan feedback activity, the participants were able to propose more procedure-oriented questions related to teaching methods rather than just declarative-oriented questions concerning only with details in teaching plans. Finally, during the instructional design activity, the participants were also able to minimize lecture-based teaching activities in order to implement the teaching principle of “teach concisely and practice frequently” for the students.
Second, the results showed that if the participants are willing to make good use of existing learning theories to revise conventional teaching methods, they will be more likely to develop adaptation-oriented instructional designs that highlight both teaching innovation and efficiency. In contrast, if the participants rely merely on their acquainted teaching experiences and ignore the potential support availed by learning theories, their resistance to change can lead them to adopting more routine-oriented pedagogical designs. Moreover, for those participants who lack teaching experience, although they are willing to apply various learning theories in practice, they typically cannot reach the desired teaching effectiveness and as a result, they become frustrated easily.
Based on these research results, suggestions were made regarding how to better cultivate teacher education students’ adaptive pedagogical design abilities for knowledge building education, TCSL teacher training departments, and TCSL education policy departments.
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