Iranian EFL Teachers’ Understanding of PCK: Voices from Pre-service and In-service Teachers

The notion of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) has been considerably studied in science education. Despite its contextual nature, scant attention has been given to exploring PCK constituents of language teachers who are working in different settings. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the PCK subdomains among Iranian EFL pre-service and in-service teachers who are working in public and private sectors. The participants were eight EFL teachers (four in-service and four pre-service). The qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews and field notes. The collected data were analyzed through thematic analysis. The results revealed the contextual essence of EFL teachers’ PCK in the Iranian context. In addition, the findings indicated that in-service teachers emphasized the knowledge of curriculum as the most important element of PCK while pre-service teachers highlighted the importance of knowledge of strategies as the main subareas of PCK. Moreover, findings highlighted the fact that Iranian EFL teachers pay less attention to knowledge of students as one of the components of PCK. Finally, practical implications and suggestions for future research are offered.