David C. Berliner

In Pursuit of the Expert Pedagogue

Like many others, we believe the observational, correlational, and experimental literature on research on teaching has been very fruitful. From observational and correlational findings, for example, we have determined that the presence of opening homework reviews in mathematics classes are associated with higher achievement. This idea was studied further by creating levels of review and using these levels as variables in experiments. Opening homework reviews were again confirmed as important. Re-

Comment: Educational Research:The Hardest Science of All:

Under the stewardship of the Department of Education, recent acts of Congress confuse the methods of science with the process of science, possibly doing great harm to scholarship in education. An otherwise exemplary National Research Council report to help clarify the nature of educational science fails to emphasize the complexity of scientific work in education due to the power of contexts, the ubiquity of interactions, and the problem of decade by findings interactions. Discussion of these issues leads to the conclusion that educational science is unusually hard to do and that the government may not be serious about wanting evidence-based practices in education

Learning about and learning from expert teachers

Abstract Studies of expertise in teaching have been informative, despite problems. One problem is determining the relative roles of talent vs. deliberate practice in the acquisition of expertise. When studying teachers, however, a third factor must be considered, that of context. The working conditions of teachers exert a powerful influence on the development of expertise. A second problem is that of definition because expertise in teaching takes different forms in different cultures, and its characteristics change by decade. A distinction is drawn between the good teacher and the successful teacher, characteristics of expertise that are often confused. A prototypical model of expertise is described and found to identify teachers who were both good and successful. Discussed also is the importance of understanding adaptive or fluid expertise, automaticity and flexibility. Finally, the development of teacher expertise is seen as an increase in agency over time.

Differences Among Teachers in a Task Characterized by Simultaneity, Multidimensionality, and Immediacy

Expert, beginning, and novice teachers viewed three television monitors, each focusing on a work group of a junior high science class, simultaneously. Participants expressed their thoughts as they viewed the monitors, indicated the monitor to which they were referring, and answered questions about classroom management and instruction. Differences among the groups were found in their perceptions, monitoring, and understanding of classroom events characterized by simultaneity, multidimensionality, and immediacy. This study illustrates how more than content knowledge is required for successful teaching, and that learning to teach requires a great deal of time. Findings from this study have implications for the development of preservice and inservice training programs, which may require redesign to facilitate the development of pedagogical expertise.

Describing the Behavior and Documenting the Accomplishments of Expert Teachers

Propositions about the nature of expertise, in general, and expertise in pedagogy, in particular, are discussed. The time needed to develop expertise in teaching and the highly contextual nature of teachers’ knowledge are also discussed. Four theories of teacher development are presented, with an elaboration on the heuristic value of the theory of Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986). Examples from the pedagogical literature are used to illustrate this theory. The recent research establishing causal relationships between those identified as experts in teaching and their students’ academic achievement is also presented. This research allows those who study expertise in teaching to have a more objective measure for identifying and studying expert pedagogues.

Processing and Using Information about Students: A Study of Expert, Novice, and Postulant Teachers.

Abstract Expert and novice mathematics and science teachers, along with a group of postulant teachers (content matter experts from business with a desire to teach but with no pedagogical training) participated in a simulated teaching task. All subjects were given extensive information about a class they were asked to take over and then questioned about their plans for instruction, and their recall of information about students. Analysis of the protocols resulting from these queries yielded nine propositions about how expert, novice, and postulant teachers process and use information differently. The differences and similarities among the three groups of subjects in ability to perceive, remember, and solve problems related to teaching indicate how expert teachers resemble experts in other fields and provide insight into the unique aspects of expertise in pedagogy.

Rational responses to high stakes testing: the case of curriculum narrowing and the harm that follows

The inevitable responses to high stakes testing, wherein students’ test scores are highly consequential for teachers and administrators, include cheating, excessive test preparation, changes in test scoring and other forms of gaming to ensure that test scores appear high. Over the last decade this has been demonstrated convincingly in the USA, but examples in Great Britain abound. Yet the most pernicious response to high stakes testing is perhaps the most rational, namely, curriculum narrowing. In this way more of what is believed to be on the test is taught. Curriculum narrowing, however, reduces many students’ chances of being thought talented in school and results in a restriction in the creative and enjoyable activities engaged in by teachers and students. The tests commonly used with narrower curricula also appear to restrict thinking skills. In addition, responses to high stakes environments can easily retard the development of achievement in later grades as a function of the restrictions on learning in earlier grades. Finally, narrowing compromises interpretations of construct validity. The dominance of testing as part of American and British school reform policies insures that many of the skills thought to be most useful in the twenty-first century will not be taught. Thus students and their national economies will suffer when nations rely too heavily on high stakes testing to improve their schools.

Laboratory Settings and the Study of Teacher Education

The reform efforts of the past several years threaten teacher education just at a time when researchers have created a conceptual and empirical basis for the preservice teacher curriculum. The re search base in the study of teaching is better and broader than it has been, and the methodology for studying teaching is both more sophisticated and more ec lectic than ever before. Berliner argues that the most obvious use of this re search on teaching is as content for teacher education programs. The author discusses some of the significant find ings and describes how the preservice curriculum must be transformed to in clude training for teachers in real labora tory settings.

Impediments to the Study of Teacher Effectiveness

Advocates of performanceor competency-based teacher education, state-mandated evaluation programs such as the Stull Bill in California, and teacher accountability systems all suffer to some degree from ostrichism. Ostrichism is a common disease often afflicting education. Its cause lies in a premature commitment to a particular educational movement. Behavioral symptoms include the practice of sticking one’s head into the sand when problems appear, in the hope that the problems will go away. The particular educational movement which is inducing the current epidemic of ostrichism is the commitment of educators to competency training and evaluation without the existence of empirical evidence linking teacher behavior to student outcomes in classroom settings. The Coleman report (1966) and its offshoots (Jencks, 1972; Mosteller and Moynihan, 1972) have minimized the role of the teacher in accounting for educational outcomes. These investigators claim that family background, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and the like are the major causal variables that affect between-school differences in achievement. They imply that teachers only minimally affect student achievement. Heath and Nielson (1974) reached the same conclusion in their review of the studies of teacher clarity, use of student ideas, criticism, enthusiasm, and other variables commonly accepted as skills or competencies. They concluded first that there is

A Personal Response to Those Who Bash Teacher Education.

To each of a dozen common charges against formal programs of teacher education a personal response is made. Among other responses, it is argued that contextual knowledge of classrooms and schools is crucial for novice teachers; raw intelligence is insufficient for accomplished teaching; and as in other fields, accomplished performance will develop—if it ever develops—only over many years of effortful, deliberate practice. It is argued that programs of teacher education can offer the novice teacher the findings, concepts, principles, technologies, and theories from educational research that are relevant to teaching and learning, as they are provided to other professionals before they enter their fields of practice. It is concluded that high-quality teacher education programs are profoundly challenging, indispensable, inaugural components in the development of accomplished performance by teachers.