Contexts for Teacher Education: The significance of Content and Pedagogic Knowledge Asst.Prof.Dr. Bengi Sonyel August 2008 Eastern Mediterranean University Faculty of Education Department of Educational Sciences Famagusta, North Cyprus, Mersin 10 Turkey

B.S. - August Introduction Aim of the research: The significance of content and pedagogic knowledge in teaching English as a second language, Those raised from the reflecting on the global agenda in teacher education on my local context, North Cyprus and Developing researchable questions and their relevance in my local context

B.S. - August Literature Review The importance of being collaborative and reflective practitioner considering the significance of content and pedagogic knowledge in teaching English as a second language : As (Schulman, 1987) expressed: “ To teach all students according to today’s standards, teachers need to understand subject matter deeply and flexibly so they can help students create useful cognitive maps, relate one idea to another, and address misconceptions. Teachers need to see how ideas connect across fields and to everyday life. This kind of understanding provides a foundation for pedagogical content knowledge that enables teachers to make ideas accessible to others.”

B.S. - August (Schön, 1983) expressed that: “Whether this learning is described as the monitoring and adjustment of good practice or analyzed more completely according to a model of pedagogical reasoning, teachers gain new knowledge and understanding of students, schools, curriculum, and instructional methods by living the practical experiments that occur as a part of professional practice.”

B.S. - August (Fenstermacher,1986) said that: “The teacher can transform understanding, performance skills, or desired attitudes or values into pedagogical representations and actions. These are ways of talking, showing, enacting, or otherwise representing ideas so that the unknowing can come to know, those without understanding can comprehend and discern, and the unskilled can become adept. Thus, teaching necessarily begins with a teacher’s understanding of what is to be learned and how is it to be taught.”

B.S. - August How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition” “Proponents of the new approaches to teaching engage students in a variety of different activities for constructing a knowledge base in the subject domain. Such approaches involve both a set of facts and clearly defined principles. The teacher’s goal is to develop students’ understanding of a given topic, as well as to help them develop into independent and thoughtful problem solvers.”

B.S. - August President’s Report Statement of (Arthur E. Wise, 2002) it was stated that: “Strong teacher education programs tend to share a common vision of what good teaching is; well-defined standards of practice and performance; a core curriculum; extensive use of problem-based methods such as case studies and strong relationships between teacher education programs and schools.”

B.S. - August As a researcher, the examination of these countries education systems was relevant to the issues of pedagogic and content knowledge because to the reader; it gives a global perspective shows the significance of pedagogic and content knowledge in other countries education systems helps to develop further the structure of the current education programs, e.g teacher education programs

B.S. - August The researchable questions To what extent being specialized in your own subject-matter can contribute to raise the standards of current education system? Does it mean that being specialized in your own ‘subject matter’ makes a teacher ‘good/effective’ enough in teaching?

B.S. - August Are there any other core issues like ‘pegagogical knowledge’ which plays an important role in teaching? if so what are these and how they can contribute to raise the current education sytem in secondary schools ? What are the implications of ‘content- knowledge’ in in-service trainings?

B.S. - August Methodology Informal semi-structured interviews with teachers from both private and state secondary and high schools in North Cyprus. Weekly/monthly observations. Reflections of different teachers from other countries on the WebCt (OCCA) program at University of Nottingham.

B.S. - August Who are the participants 125 teachers from state schools and 20 teachers from private schools. 6 teachers from different countries in the Webct (OCCA) of University of Nottingham.

B.S. - August Findings The significance of the content and pedagogic knowledge is emphasized by reflecting upon different countries education systems. It can be deduced that in my local context, North Cyprus the importance of content and pedagogic knowledge is also emphasized. One way to train teachers as suggested earlier is in-service trainings.

B.S. - August In the area of the significance of pedagogic and content knowledge, it can be said that in teacher education teachers pedagogic and content knowledge plays an important role in order to raise the current standards in education and apply new methodologies in teaching. The significance of content and pedagogic knowledge in teaching English as second language.

B.S. - August Recommendations Successful learning for teachers, requires a continuum of coordinated efforts that range from pre-service education to early teaching to opportunities for lifelong developments as professionals.

B.S. - August THANKS ALOT FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION & ATTENTION...