Teacher expertise and the development of a problem representation

Abstract

This study examined ways in which expert and novice teachers mentally represent classroom problems in matters of instruction, assessment, and curriculum planning. A triad judgement task was administered to expert teachers (n=20) and novice teachers (n=98) to determine whether deep, structural features (i.e. the theoretical underpinnings associated with the problem) and/or surface features (narrative characteristics of the problem including grade level and subject) were used to interpret and represent a problem situation presented in a classroom context. Findings were consistent with results from previous studies examining problem representation among experts and novices in other domains. That is, the experts in this study primarily relied on the deep features to form a mental representation of a problem situation whereas the novices tended to rely on surface structures to do so. However, findings also revealed that novice teachers relied on the deep, structural features of the problem under certain conditions.

Keywords:

• expertise
• teacher cognition
• problem representation
• problem solving