Analysis and Discussion of the Content of Pre-Service Teachers’ Chinese Language Teaching Methodology Learning Portfolios

The greatest difficulty in educating pre-service teachers is cultivating their ability to reflect on the learning in course work and apply this reflection in their teaching. Many academic articles have shown that organised learning portfolios can help pre-service teachers reflect and improve their teaching. This study focused on 20 pre-service teachers who studied the Chinese Language Teaching Methodology I module of the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK). They were asked to develop organized learning portfolios for use in their study programme (the first phase) and during field experience when they practise teaching (the second phase). The aim of the study was to explore the content of pre-service teachers’ learning portfolios. The research methodology focused on document analyses of artefacts and reflection reports in the portfolios. The study found that the learning portfolios could help teacher educators understand what the pre-service teachers had learnt in the lessons and the problems they encountered. In teaching reading, most pre-service teachers grasped how to help students understand the content of the passages, vocabulary, and sentence structure. However, they still lacked confidence in teaching different writing skills and rhetoric, and helping students deepen their understanding of 146 passages. The study also found the pre-service teachers’ reflections were generally limited to analysing the strengths and weaknesses of lessons and seldom included suggestions for improving future practice.

Keywords

Chinese language teaching methodology learning portfolios preservice teachers reflection

source

International Journal of Chinese Language Education; Dec 2018; Issue No. 4; p.145 - 165

Publisher

Department of Chinese Language Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong
Chinese Language Program, Columbia University
Chung Hwa Book Co. (H.K.) Ltd.

Language

English

ISSN

2520-7733 (Print); 2521-4241 (Online)