Alternative perspectives for analyzing expert, novice, and postulant teaching.

Abstract

The investigation of expertise in teaching has followed the lead of research in domains other than education in that it has focused on the cognitive processes that define expertise. This study has shifted the focus to the actual classroom teaching, comparing expert, novice, and postulant (those without pedagogical training) teachers. Each of six teachers (two experts, two novices, and two postulants) taught the same unfamiliar lesson to the same group of students, in the same classroom. These half hour lessons were videotaped. Two aspects make this study unique. First, the teaching situation was controlled to the extent that each teacher taught the same lesson to the same students. This was done to try to separate expertise from the experience gained from teaching a familiar lesson to students known to the teacher. The second aspect pertains to the method of analysis. Instead of viewing these tapes from just one perspective, four perspectives were used. Observers knowledgeable in the areas of subject matter knowledge and delivery, connoisseurship and criticism, nonverbal communication, and teacher evaluation instrumentation viewed each of the six tapes and analyzed what they saw from their individual perspectives. These analyses were then content analyzed by the author. Results and discussion were first analyzed for each perspective separately, comparing the three groups of teachers for similarities and differences. This was followed by a discussion of similarities and differences among the four perspectives, particularly focusing on the interplay of the four perspectives within the three groups of teachers. A key point made was the diversity of information provided by each perspective and the unique insights provided from the use of all four.