Influencing Factors and Mechanisms of the Construction of Practical Knowledge for Chinese as a Foreign Language Intern Teachers in an Online Internship Program: A Qualitative Study Based on Key Events

A persistent challenge in teacher education is that intern teachers often struggle to effectively apply theoretical knowledge to classroom practice. While constructing practical knowledge is key to bridging this gap, current research has paid insufficient attention to the dynamic processes and triggering mechanisms through which such knowledge develops among Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) intern teachers during the internship stage. This study focuses on the “key events” encountered by 7 CFL intern teachers participating in an online internship program at a teacher education institution in Northeast China, through 83 class observations and semi-structured interviews. Using qualitative analysis methods, it explores the content, influencing factors, and mechanisms of practical knowledge construction. The results show that CFL intern teachers generated seven types of practical knowledge. Among them, teaching belief knowledge was the most frequently coded category (20.5%), while teaching context knowledge was the least frequently constructed (6.7%)—a pattern largely attributable to the online teaching environment in which all internships were conducted. Negative key events outnumber positive events in terms of quantity, depth of reflection, and persistence of impact. Reflection is the core mediating mechanism connecting key events and knowledge construction, but the “reflection-in-action” ability of intern teachers is weaker than that of expert teachers. This study reveals the dynamics and cross-cultural particularity of practical knowledge construction for CFL intern teachers, providing empirical evidence for optimizing teacher education internship training.