Teachers’ Professional Knowledge Development: Perspectives for Teacher Education Reform

Key words: 
• professional knowledge

Abstract: High quality teachers are central in the development of education and teaching reform. Thus, higher requirements of teachers professional quality are put forward. Teachers professional knowledge is one of the core aspects within teachers professional qualities. Based on the collected data through teachers professional knowledge measurement of various subjects, which we developed, general map of teachers professional knowledge condition is pictured. Results show that, the entire level of teachers professional knowledge is not satisfactory, pedagogical content knowledge needs to be improved urgently, there are gaps between preservice teacher and inservice teacher, also the difference exists within various type of preservice teacher, practice and reflection are viewed as the most useful ways to enhance their knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge exhibits several certain styles. In view of these, we suggest to pay much more attention to the structure of teachers professional knowledge, improve pedagogical content knowledge, and adjust teacher education curriculum design, continually improve reliability and validity of the measurement. Consequently, teacher evaluation and teacher professional development would be improved.