Jianping Zheng  Tongji Li

Institute of Vocational and Technical Education, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

Abstract

The subject specific didactical competence is the keyword in the vocational education reform and development in China. To identify its nature and structure, to find a way of its development attracts the most political and research interest.

The study on teacher thinking (teachers’ cognition research) since 1980s have given a new perspective to the discussion on teachers competence and revealed its character and structure in many aspects. These findings have great impact on the teacher education and professional development but stay rather unnoticed in the VTE teacher education discussion in China.

First, leading questions and the theoretical backgrounds which have driven the study on teacher thinking are briefly reviewed. Then, Leading empirical research on mathematics teacher COACTIVE and two research on VTE teachers in German are introduced. This leads to the conclusion that how important it is to reveal teachers’ practical knowledge for the description and development of VTE teachers’ subject specific competence, and that the knowledge about teachers’ knowledge in specific vocational domain as a highly valued black box is actually seldom studied in detail.

Two studies in Shanghai on VTE teachers and teacher students with the goal to reveal the teachers thinking (teachers self-conception, their didactical thinking) are then reported. Possible content focus and methodological ideas are then discussed.

1  Introduction

The subject specific didactical competence (abbreviated to SSD Competence) is the keyword in the vocational Education reform and development in China. Since 2003 the Ministry of Education of China (Mo E) organizes a series of programs to enhance VTE teachers’ quality, one of the tasks is to define the domain specific teacher competence and to find a way of its development and improvement. What is its nature and structure? The modelling of teacher competence is a core theme in teacher research which attracts most of the research interest, thus the discussion on it and attempts of its modelling are not seldom. The study on teacher thinking (teachers’ cognition research) since 1980s have given a new perspective to the discussion on teachers competence and revealed its character and structure in many aspects. These findings have great impact on the teacher education and professional development but stay rather unnoticed in the VTE teacher education discussion in China. And there are not so much empirical results as substantial supports except for science education teacher.

First, in order to understand the structure and character of teachers SSD Competence, the most important insights from the study on teacher thinking are selectively summarized. The conceptualization and methods of SSD Competence in relevant research are afterwards introduced. Then the report on two studies in Shanghai: one about the didactical self-concept of VTE teachers and the didactical thinking of teacher students for economy education. Based on all of these, the possible content focus and methods in the future research is discussed.

2  Important Insights from the Study on Teacher Thinking

It is not necessary here to complete a resume for the research on teachers’ thinking. The relevance lies in what this research means for the conceptualization of SSD Competence and its development. Therefore, the leading research question and the popular used terms will be going through for a better understanding of the complexity and integrity of the SSD Competence and its connection to the knowledge.

Driven by the positivisms and behaviourisms the Paradigm “Process-result” for effective teaching ruled once the research on teacher and teaching. It was expected that the researchers could find and explain the knowledge which can be formed as “instruction package”, the teachers could get skills or strategies through training and in the end the students’ achievement could be improved. But the fact is that this knowledge for teachers didn’t achieve the effect as expected (Verloop et al., 2001; Li, Ni, 2006). This kind of professional development route still has great impact on the VTE teacher education in China.

The difficulty in teacher education practice led to an important perspective change in the research on teacher and teaching: teachers’ thinking became and stays as the new focus instead of teachers’ behaviour. Following were key questions: how does the thinking process looks like (Decision-making and the information process)? What is the practical knowledge base for their thinking (practical knowledge, beliefs)? What should they know for teaching (prescriptive knowledge structure)? How does a teacher come to all of this knowledge? In this sense the research on teachers’ thinking is the study on their knowing and knowledge.

The Study on the thinking process is the beginning. Stimulated by the cognitive psychology and Information Process theory the Planning and Decision-making of teachers were studied, “loudly thinking” and “Stimulus Recall” were often used (Clark, Yinger, 1977). The teaching expertise became in the late phase the research focus, the distinguish between expert and novice reveals that expert teacher not only know more but also know it in a different way: their knowledge are effectively organized in forms such as Schemata, Routines and Scripts.

With the development of the Study on teachers thinking the practical knowledge of teachers came into the public attention of researchers. Practical knowledge, personal practical Knowledge were labelled mainly by Elbaz (1981), Cannelly and Clandin (1997) etc. They tried to understand what teachers practically know through their story telling, through their narrative report about their experience and biography. Interpretation of individual experience takes the place of prescriptive view. The reflection and reconstruct of teachers experience are seen as an important possibility for their professional development. Schön (2007) for example paid their attention to teachers’ thinking in the action with the motto of “reflective practitioner” and “reflection in action”. The difference between practical and formal knowledge were emphasized. Teacher as practitioner must interpret and make decision with an inner uncertainty; there is a continuous dialog between them and the situations which are always changing. The most difficult thing is to define the problem in the situation.

With Shulman as the leader there was another approach which focuses on the knowledge bases of teaching. Shulman’s (1987) Structure Proposal and the concept of Pedagogy content knowledge had great impact on the following discussion and research: content knowledge (CK, syntactic knowledge), general pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge (PCK, teachers’ own special form of professional understanding, explanations and representation of content according to the learner), knowledge of learners and their characteristics, knowledge of educational contexts, knowledge of educational ends, purposes and values. The concept of PCK highlights the uniqueness and integrity of teachers’ profession. But the possible distinguish between CK and PCK in practice is still a critical point. But there was also different voice. Based on other critical arguments and her empirical studies Turner-Bisset (1999) claimed that PCK is not one part of the teachers’ knowledge, but the overarched formulation for it, and it includes something more besides the factors listed by Shulman: beliefs about the subject, beliefs about the teaching, knowledge about self, and the knowledge about the learner is differentiate to empirical and cognitive; the knowledge about the educational purpose is not so evident, and the general pedagogy knowledge was difficult to grasp because of its context-dependence and tacit character. So it’s here better to observe what teachers do than what the (can) say.

The actual discussion switched from the individual teachers to their interaction with their surroundings. The working knowledge in teaching is described as ecological intelligence which interacts with its surroundings consequently: knowledge exists not only in individual mentality, but also comes from different systems: culture system, physical system, social system and personal system; it comes into being in specific activity and practice and becomes available; all participants and systems create together these knowledge in the activity (Yinger & Hendricks-Lee, 2012).

The Research on teacher thinking until now mainly focuses on teachers’ knowledge, teachers knowing and known, although not each approach explicate or mention it. The term“knowledge” here doesn’t mean generally accepted truth and includes not only cognitive results but also emotional affected beliefs. Verloop describes therefore teacher knowledge as “all profession-related insights that are potentially relevant to the teachers’ activities…, overarching, inclusive concept, summarizing a large variety of cognitions, from conscious and well-balanced opinions to unconscious and non-reflected intuitions. This is related to the fact that, in the mind of the teacher, components of knowledge, beliefs, conceptions, and intuitions are inextricably intertwined.” (Verloop, 2001). The Discussion about the nature of teacher knowledge is even one topic in the relevant research (Fenstermacher, 1994).

Due to the difference in the research subject and interest there are many terms that were used to label the researchers’ different understanding of the teacher knowledge’s nature or structure. For example，“personal knowledge” emphasizes its individuality,“beliefs” means those emotional principles;“intuitive theories” describe the instinctive nature of teacher knowledge which was not scientifically examined. “Practical knowledge” and “Practical wisdom” pay more attention on the aspect that it was acquired through practical experience. “Implicit theory” pointed out the unawareness of the teachers about their own knowledge sometimes. “Knowledge about the context and situation” is clearly about the context.

The Research on teachers’ thinking and knowing reveals the integrity and complexity of teachers’ knowledge. It is personal, based on (reflection on) experience in a social interaction, mainly tacit, contextual, guides teaching practice, and content-related (domain specific). The knowledge difference between teachers lies not only in its amount but also in its structure and accessibility. Therefore, teachers become the centrality: no longer the passive knowledge consumer but also constructor of knowledge. The knowledge base for teaching has not only common part but also individual construct. Teachers’ knowledge arises from many origins: practical experience and schooling (preparation study and training). The context and surroundings has great impact on the professional development of teachers. The connection of theory and practice in the teacher education is re-examined too. There are many theoretical propositions in teachers’ knowledge that needs to be adapted to the specific situation. How is this propositional knowledge connected to teacher’s knowledge? How are they integrated so that it can really work as knowledge base for teaching? That is all problems that need to be deepened.

Those insights are of great importance for teacher education and professional development. “…the most challenging question with respect to teachers’ professionalism is no longer how we can best provide teachers with insights developed elsewhere, but how the process of “dialogue with the situation” takes place in teaching context, which insights are developed in this context, and how these insights relate to insights from other sources.…” (Verloop, 2001) especially to find out what that dialog with the situation in domain specific field looks like, namely their practical knowledge. It is still an actual challenge in the research on teacher thinking.

3  Modelling and Revealing of SSD Competence in Selected Researches

What is the connection between competence and teachers’ knowledge? In authors’ view, the expression of competence emphasizes more the performance side of knowledge. So the defining of teachers SSD competence is actually in the end the description of teachers' practical knowledge. The competence development of teacher is the change of knowledge in amount and also in structure.

Competence as an often-used concept not only in the science community but also in the daily life is yet seldom mentioned in the research on teacher thinking. Instead of that there is expression like “know-how”. And the concept of competence is different interpreted by different users, to explain that a new article is needed. The main difference lies in authors’ view in the width of the interpretation.

Nowadays the most accepted interpretation in empirical reserach is from Weinert (2001) who investigated and conceptualized it for the purpose of international student assessment. According to his interpretation competence is the personal capacity to cope with specific situational demands, which includes in broader sense the cognitional, motivational aspects, learnable and teachable. What the research on teacher thinking studied is exactly how they think, knowledge base for the thinking process in coping with the demands in the classroom teaching. So in this sense it reveals from the aspect of content and nature what the teacher didactic competence looks like. The description about the teacher (subject specific) didactical competence will finally lead to the study on different kinds of knowledge base of teachers. The discussion on the structure, nature and development of teachers’ knowledge is actually the discussion on that of teachers’ competence. When teachers practical knowledge is defined as core of the teaching quality of teaching (Benjaard &Verloop, 1996), that is yet similar to (when not exactly) what the didactic competence means.

A view on empirical research can support this viewpoint. Leading researchers are mostly on mathematics and science education teacher. Research topics are typically based on the knowledge structure of Shulman and therefore about the CK and (part of) the PCK: the relationship between teachers subject background and their didactical disposition, teachers understanding of specific subject matter, about the nature of the subject, about the typical students’ errors, about the learning task. Existing researches proved that the study on teacher’s competence should be carried out in specific domain, because the subject content decides teacher’s actual action spectrum, and there is a deep connection between the teachers’ understanding of the subject content and their behaviour in the classes (Baumert& Kunter, 2006). But there are only a few studies on VTE teachers, when then mostly by German researchers. With respect to specific subject, what is the dimension of their CK and PCK knowledge? the SSD Competence in research conceptualized and methodologically revealed? Followed are three selected research which tried to grasp empirically the theoretical certified components of teachers’ knowledge.

The COACTIVE Project (Kunter, 2013) on mathematics teacher has done a leading work in the theoretical conceptualization and empirical grasping of mathematics teachers’ knowledge. The concept of Profession Competence of teacher is defined as the individual coping with demands in profession situation, based on the competence concept of Weinert and Shulman’s knowledge structure. It is divided into four dimensions: beliefs/values/goals, motivational orientations, self-regulation and professional knowledge. Under professional knowledge were CK, PCK, pedagogical and psychological knowledge (PPK), organizational knowledge and consulting knowledge. The PCK again in three categories: explanatory, knowledge of students’ mathematic thinking, knowledge of mathematic tasks Knowledge of the didactic and diagnostic potential of tasks, their cognitive demands and the prior knowledge they implicitly require, their effective orchestration in the classroom, and the long-term sequencing of learning content in the curriculum; Knowledge of student cognitions (misconceptions, typical errors, strategies) and ways of assessing student knowledge and comprehension processes, Knowledge of explanations and multiple representations. Under CK are four kinds mathematical knowledge distinguished: (1) academic research knowledge, (2) a profound mathematical understanding of the mathematics taught at school, (3) a command of the school mathematics covered at the level taught, and (4) the mathematical everyday knowledge that all adults should have after leaving school. This theoretical conceptualization inspired many later researches.

Lindmeier (2013) distinguished extra the competence and the knowledge of teacher. He described the teaching core requirement as: basic knowledge (including CK and PK of Shulman), reflection competence and action competence (intuitive and direct action: response to students’ words, instant explanation, providing pro- or contra- examples in a short time). For the revealing of the action competence, teachers were asked to give their first reaction and reason after watching a simulated video episode about a specific teaching situation. Actually this is just similar to the intuitive part of teacher knowledge.This research intended to emphasis the observable side of the knowledge, eventually performance of the competence.

Kuhn & Brueckener (2014) examined if economic teacher students or pre-teachers thought didactically. The core of economy teaching was defined as: transfer/analysis and reasoning. Selling, Purchasing and macro-economy were selected as the subject matter. The didactical aspect was decision-making and conflict management. First, Teachers had to Pencil Paper Work: to finish some described teaching tasks which were simulated teaching situations, and then were interviewed on their thinking process (so-called cognitive interview). The study showed that there was thinking and knowledge difference between different groups with different pedagogical and didactical education and practice backgrounds. The validity of the test concept was verified. The definition of core teaching activity and the selection of subject matter is illuminating.

4  Reports on Researches in Shanghai and Discussion

4.1  Self-conception of VTE Teachers in Shanghai

In 2003 nineteen VTE teachers in business field from 7 vocational schools in Shanghai were investigated through a half-structured interview by Zheng. The goal was to find out their views and practice about successful teaching, in order to examine the acceptance of a planned reform in VTE Schools. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed with the content analysis technique of Mayring. The results revealed mainly teachers’ beliefs about good teaching, self-conception, conceptions about the students, and conception about the surroundings, which are important aspects of teacher practical knowledge.

The investigation showed that “to combine the practice and the theory” was a highly valued didactical principle. But the personal interpretation differed; the most common understanding was to illustrate the propositional theory or concept with examples from daily life or business activity (Beliefs). Teachers’ talk ruled the class time mostly and the autonomous learning seldom took place, learning tasks were not really cognitive challenging. That naturally leaded to unsatisfied effectiveness, most of interviewed teachers reported the feeling of failure and lower teaching efficacy. Confusion and Disappointment were the key words in the self-report (didactical self cognition). The study confirmed the statement that beliefs, self-cognition and their willingness to reform are relevant.

This pioneer study on VTE teachers thinking in China had revealed mainly the one dimension of SSD competence of business teacher due to the resource constraint and investigation background. Interview took place often with a very short warming-up phase and under time pressure, observation in the classroom wasn’t possible, so the tacit part of teacher knowledge couldn’t be effectively revealed. The subject or courses mentioned so widely spread that it was impossible to find a content focus in order to find out the relative representations and knowledge about the students preconception or typical errors.

4.2 Didactical Thinking of Teacher Student

It was an embedded diagnose test on 22 teacher students of IBB in the subject of economy education in 2011. The students planed in 4-er group a teaching episode for a stimulated learner on a given economy concept. Their planning process and reasoning were documented. The test showed:

CK: There was an obvious content difficulty which makes the teaching plan especially challenging for those teacher students. They didn’t understand the inner connection between economy phenomena. What they learned didn’t changed their conception, their false pre-conception stayed unchanged, although they knew the definition of the term.

Pedagogy Goals: they had a narrow understanding of goals in the teaching. Only a few of them planned the episode with the goal to stimulate learning in the future. Some of them regarded the teaching of this term to the given learner was meaningless.

Knowledge about the learner: they had already the sensibility to take the background of the learner into consideration; specifically the learner’s understand level. Personal experience was activated and therefor their assumption about the learner according to the given role character were different. Calculation Skill and awareness of cost were two typical imagined character of the learner. But the assumption about the learner was still abstract, even empty and was made too fast. There was no critical review on the leaner background from theoretical aspect.

Explanation and Representation: They tended to use examples as illustration, but it was mostly mechanical didactical reduction. And they had difficulty to find alternative representation concepts, when yes, the inner logic and form of them were mostly the same. One of the reasons was that they couldn’t make the correct diagnose of the understanding difficulty of the learner. Their concepts had although two models: deduction or induction, yet they tended to give the definition of the concept very early.

These results support the description about novice teacher (Turner-Bisset, 1999). Due to the evaluation task, there was difference with the dimension. Pedagogy goals became problematical because of the different background of the given leaner not as a school-aged person. As a short episode it was impossible to reveal the long term curriculum conception of teacher students. As an embedded test in the normal course it was easier to carry out and convenient to dig deeper into the cognition of the students, but the used task is a critical point: the selection of the subject matter, the description about the learner should be done with much more attention.

5  Discussion on Possible Research Concept

Based on above, the definition of SSD competence is in the end (mostly) the description of teachers’ practical knowledge. The design of competence development strategies is meaningful only with the awareness of what teachers already know. The actual training strategy of VTE teachers in China should be reflected. The competence development of teacher needs therefore first the revealing of their practical knowledge. This revealing process is already an important step in their competence development.

As above discussed, teachers’ practical knowledge have many aspects, while CK and PCK are two important aspects which attracts the most research interest since 1980s. For VTE teachers, there is something special in the aspect of CK, because they deal with the domain of technology and occupation, which has a different character from scientific knowledge like mathematic or physic (De Vires, 2003). But besides this nowadays most accepted idea, there is little study on how the difference between technology and other types of knowledge looks like in detail, as well as differences between different types of technological knowledge. Speaking of business especially service domain in the VTE education, it is much more problematical, then this domain is often regarded neither as science nor as technology, so the term of “occupational knowledge” is selected (Xu, 2013). That makes the description of VTE teachers’ CK a challenging work. Although it is often emphasized that the VTE teachers should have a good understanding of the technological and occupational world, but how this understanding actually looks like is rarely studied until now. German researchers have done some pioneer work in the mechanical domain: revealing of the occupation knowledge of technicians (Becker & Spoettl, 2008), which builds a basis for one dimension of CK of VTE teachers, and for the research on the connection between CK and PCK. Therefore, this could be in our opinion an interesting and meaning research field: what VTE teachers know about the technology, the occupation, the related science subject, and how they explain and represent them in their classes? Because when there is something special with the VTE teachers SSD competence which is different from elementary education teachers, that is it. The theoretical conceptualization of COACTIVE is a good inspiration.

Inspired by the studies on mathematic teachers too, the learning task is a possible medium which is loaded with the personal Ck and PCK of teachers. Considering the individuality, implicit and social construction of teachers’ knowledge, there are some suggestions to the methodological design of the test as following:

First, a pencil-paper-test: teachers should write down their personal review of a given learning task and provide their reasoning. it can provide their understanding of the subject matter, their thinking about the learner, the management of learning activity, and pursuit of pedagogy goals.

Secondly: Group Discussion on a learning task: with the consideration of the great impact of teachers’ surroundings (context) on their knowledge, it’s better to observe a teacher group instead of individual teacher, in order to study the arising and development of their knowledge in the group dynamic and interactivity. The constitution of the group member should also be done with carefulness. The existing working group in the school could be an alternative.

Third, Video-Episode analysis and reacting and documenting: in order to reveal the tacit and action-related part of SSD competence. Authentic Video could be too complicated to form a focus in the test, so it needs probably a simulated Episode. But the selection of didactical situation would be a critical point.

All in one, the revealing of existing practical knowledge is an important step for the professional development for VTE teachers, and it needs a deliberate methodological design. The modelling and revealing of the CK and PCK of VTE teachers is a meaningful potential field which needs more research attention.

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