A mixed method study of EFL teacher knowledge and practice in Chinese kindergartens

ABSTRACT

Despite an increasing research interest in subject-specific teacher knowledge, there is limited research on teachers’ knowledge of English as a foreign language (EFL) in early childhood education (ECE). This paper, therefore, reports a mixed-methods study which investigated the relationships between ECE EFL teachers’ knowledge and their practices in the Chinese context. Four hundred and twenty-four Chinese kindergarten English teachers completed questionnaires and six of them participated in stimulated recall classroom observations. Quantitative and qualitative data analyses revealed two knowledge factors that had significant effects on the teachers’ practice, namely pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and knowledge of context. There was one common classroom practice, influenced by PCK and knowledge of context. This was the process-product-mixed pedagogy. In addition, not all teacher knowledge could be applied in practice because contextual factors intervened in the process. The study revealed the complexity of ECE English teaching and the influence of teacher knowledge. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood English education
• English as a foreign language
• teacher knowledge
• pedagogical content knowledge
• teacher practice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Chinese Ministry of Education’s Humanities and Social Sciences Project for Youth Scholars [No. 23YJC880089].