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.