This article firstly discusses some important studies on teacher professional development among beginning teachers. Then,several major research results in terms of models and stages are contrasted and specific nature is thus drawn.With this,teacher educators are better informed of some related issues before designing both pre-and in-service teacher education programmes.
The study of Pedagogical Content Knowledge(PCK),has been closely connected with three research paradigms(teacher behaviours,teacher thinking and teacher knowledge) over past decades.This paper first reviews several diagrams of PCK's components and various models proposed by Shulman(1986,1987),Grossman(1990,1995),Turner-Bisset(1999,2001).Then it conceptualizes a framework of six-component PCK on the basis of analytical discussion being conducted in the study.Since PCK reflects an integration of several fundamental elements of teacher knowledge held by expert teachers,it should serve as one of the knowledge bases for developing foreign language teacher education programmes.
