This study examined native-speaking English teachers' pedagogical knowledge through the analysis of transcriptions of videotaped lessons and interviews with six novice English teachers teaching at middle schools. The goal was to discover what pedagogi...
This study examined native-speaking English teachers' pedagogical knowledge through the analysis of transcriptions of videotaped lessons and interviews with six novice English teachers teaching at middle schools. The goal was to discover what pedagogical knowledge these teachers have and how the knowledge was represented in the form of instructional acts. The dominant categories of the teachers' instructional actions were repetition of input and instructions. Hence, there were a lot of repetitions of input out of behavioristic perspectives of language learning and teaching. Also, there were lots of teacher-initiated questions and directives to elicit responses from the students. The primary way of delivering the meanings of text was translation. The findings indicated that the native-speaking teachers' instructional knowledge deduced from pedagogical thoughts mostly concerned about general educational knowledge not about language teaching. This knowledge compared to that of teachers (participated in Gatbonton's 2000)who have had more experience than they had. The novice native-speaking and experienced teachers’' pedagogical knowledge were examined specifically in relation to language management (how to handle language input and student output), procedural issues, and handling student reactions and attitudes. The results of the study showed that the pedagogical knowledge of novice teachers is comparable to that of experienced teachers in terms of major categories but not in terms of details within these categories. Implications for teacher training were discussed.