1. Becoming an Expert Chapter One
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Becoming an Expert
Chapter One

2. The Big Picture The teacher...
What does it mean to be an expert teacher?
What are the ingredients a person needs to maximize the likelihood of becoming an expert teacher?
What is the best way to gain teaching expertise?
Have students reflect, individually or in groups, on some of the following questions.

3. The Big Picture The learner...
What does it mean to be an expert learner?
How can you be an expert learner now, as you read this and other textbooks and prepare for classes?
How can you spot expert learners in your classes in the future?
What is involved in becoming an expert learner, and how can you help every student you teach become an expert learner?
Why are the topics covered in this book important for teachers?
Have students reflect, individually or in groups, on some of the following questions.

4. The Thinking Triangle
Throughout this book a triarchic approach will be used to help you learn and appreciate the material.
Think
Analytically
Creatively
Practically
Most classrooms situations can be examined from a variety of viewpoints. In this class, the following three approaches to understanding a situation will be used throughout the term.
Thinking Analytically - analyze, compare and contrast, or evaluate concepts or information.
Thinking Creatively - invent, discover, or design. Stretch your thinking; go beyond what you already know.
Thinking Practically - learn how to apply in everyday life what you already know.

5. Expert Teachers Expert teachers
Have a broad base of knowledge and experience
Can motivate students
Can manage behavior
Are creative and reflective
Expert teachers evolve over time. They develop many qualities like these that enable them to work productively and efficiently in the classroom environment.
[ACTIVITY]
Divide the class into groups. Each group should summarize the characteristics of effective and ineffective teachers in their own learning experiences. The groups may then relay their findings to the class.

6. Expert Learners Expert Learners Learn Efficient Study Strategies
Are Open to Challenges
Are Willing to Overcome Problems
One should also keep in mind that expert teachers not only teach students, but they were once students themselves.
Like their teacher counterparts, expert students have many qualities that allow them to maximize their learning experience. Some of these qualities are listed on the slide.

7. What Expert Teachers Know that Novice Teachers Do Not
Expert teachers differ from novice teachers in the amount and depth of their knowledge, their efficiency, and their insight.
This book will help you develop these three attributes.
There are two important questions to ask when trying to examine the qualities of experts.
Question One - Consider what your three best teachers did differently from the rest of your teachers. What did your best teachers have in common?
Question Two - Consider how students can be motivated when they are already burdened with work from other subjects. How do teachers handle teaching students that substantially differ in ability?

8. What is an Expert Teacher?
Reflective thinking – Thinking about your actions and attempting to understand what you are doing wrong or right and why.
Reflect on your progress at teaching
Develop a personal list of behavioral differences between experienced and less experienced teachers
One important quality that expert teachers posses that is frequently reported is reflective thinking.
Consider how this quality can help you to develop your own expertise.
What are some qualities that you have noticed that expert teachers have in common?

9. Remember...
Reflection
Expert
Behaviors
The
Reflecting on your teaching and knowing behaviors that work are only part of the whole “Expert” picture.
People become expert teachers. They are not the product of sudden insight.
Becoming an expert teacher is not merely the sum of a list of “expert” behaviors coupled with a tendency to reflect on the effectiveness of one’s behaviors; instead, expert teaching results from a combination of these things and how they interact with the individual.
Everyone brings something unique to a situation and because of this, what works for one teacher may not work for another.

10. Expert Teachers have Expert Knowledge
Some qualities of expert teachers.
Expert teachers have gained greater knowledge through their experiences.
They do not appear to have better memory in general.
Teachers don’t start out as experts.
Expertise develops as one gains experience and knowledge.
Expert teachers do not appear to have better memories overall (Gobet & Simon, 1998; Petre & Blackwell, 1999), but they have better knowledge about their domain of expertise.
Example - Chase & Simon, 1973, investigated expert versus novice chess players and their memory for configurations of chess pieces. They found that expert chess players only demonstrated better memories for configurations that might have come about from a real game. They were no better than novices if the chess piece configurations were entirely random.

11. Types of Expert Knowledge
Content Knowledge – knowledge of subject matter
Pedagogical Knowledge – knowledge of how to teach
Pedagogical-content Knowledge – How to teach what is specific to the subject being taught
So, if experts have more knowledge, then what do they have more knowledge about?
Content Knowledge - knowledge of the subject matter to be taught.
Pedagogical Knowledge - specific knowledge of how to teach, like motivating students, how to manage groups, and how to design and administer tests.
Pedagogical - content Knowledge - specific knowledge of how to teach a particular topic or subject matter. This is a combination of content and pedagogical knowledge and will typically develop as you gain experience teaching the things you know about.

12. Organization of Expert Knowledge
Experts
Deep Structure
Novices
Surface Structure
Researchers have noted that one key difference between experts and novices lies in how they organize their knowledge.
Experts tend to be sensitive to the deep structure of the issues they confront. For example, Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser (1981) found that when experts are presented with several physics problems, they tend to sort them according to the physical principle underlying the problem.
In contrast, novices tended to sort the problems according the surface structure; specific things (i.e., inclined planes) mentioned in the problem.

13. Organization - Lesson Plans
Global Plans
Local Plans
Decision Elements
Expert Teacher - Lesson plans are more interconnected and can provide more developed content based examples.
Research has also shown that expert and novice teachers differ in how they organize knowledge for teaching.
Lesson Plans typically contain the following three elements:
Global Plans - not related to the subject matter.
Local Plans - related to the specific content being taught.
Decision Elements - that make the lesson plan responsive to
expected and unexpected events.
Expert teachers typically spend more time teaching and less time on administrative tasks. They are also better able to guide the student’s learning through the use of relevant, content sensitive, examples.

14. Knowledge about the Teaching Context
Expert teachers…
can advocate effectively for their teaching approach.
can compete effectively for limited school resources.
can “work the system” to obtain needed services for their children.
Expert teachers are also aware of the realities of teaching in today’s educational system.
They are able to work within the system to obtain the necessary support to run their classrooms effectively.

15. Expert Teachers are Efficient
Experts automatize well-learned skills. This allows them to
handle more information per unit time than novices.
handle the information with less effort.
Experts have an organized body of knowledge that responds more sensitively and appropriately to classroom situations.
Teaching is a combination of planning and execution.
As teachers develop, much of their planning becomes automatized so that they can devote more of their resources to guiding students in their appreciation of the material.
Novice teachers are not as fluent with their planning and, therefore, tend to have less efficient execution of their instructional plans.

16. Planning, Monitoring, and Evaluating
Experts and novices differ in their processes related to planning, monitoring, and evaluating.
Metacognition - thinking about thinking.
The result is that experts are able to teach with less effort, thus having mental resources freed to invest in higher-level problem-solving.
Expert teachers also develop an ability to think about their thought process and decision making. This is typically called metacognition.
Expert teachers are better able to make plans for a learning environment that is sensitive to the students being taught.
They are also able to monitor the effectiveness of their plans and to alter their approach as needed, evaluating the usefulness of the approach for the future.
As teachers become more automated in basic skills, they are able to devote more resources to higher level thinking.

17. Expert Teachers have Creative Insight
Experts frequently redefine a problem, providing insightful solutions.
Three key ways experts think about problems:
Distinguish relevant versus irrelevant information
Recognize important combinations of information
Apply information learned in another context
Expert teachers often redefine a problem, rather than accept it at face value.
There are three key ways that experts think about problems to make this possible (Davidson & Sternberg, 1984, 1998).
1) Experts are able to see the importance of seemingly irrelevant information.
2) Experts are able to recognize that two things that are not particularly useful for solving a problem, may indeed be useful when combined.
3) Experts are able to make appropriate analogies from other experiences to help the students understand a particular lesson.

18. Implications for Teaching
Teachers become expert by learning from experience.
Teachers become expert by growing in efficiency.
Teachers become expert by developing their insight and ability to solve problems.
Experience - There is no one magic recipe for becoming an expert. Instead, many pieces of a large puzzle must be assembled individually by each person wishing to become an expert.
Efficiency - Most important skills start out seeming harder than they will seem in the future. Expertise grows over time.
Insight - These are skills you can develop, as long as you are willing to put in the work.

19. What Do We Know About Expert Learners?
Use Effective Learning Strategies to learn, remember, and use information
Monitor the Effectiveness of these Strategies
To better understand what makes for an expert teacher, one needs to consider what makes for an expert student.
Expert students learn over time to use effective learning strategies. These strategies will vary according to the individual, but experts are similar in that they gravitate to the most productive strategies.
This is possible because they actively monitor the effectiveness of the strategies they use. If a strategy is not working, they engage in problem solving until a better strategy is developed or found.

20. Memory Strategies
1.5

21. Views of Intelligence
Incremental View (mastery-oriented beliefs) - intelligence can be increased.
Entity View (performance-oriented beliefs) - intelligence is fixed.
Successful learners believe that
intelligence can be increased
A student’s motivation to find the best learning strategies is impacted by their view of an individual’s ability.
An entity view of ability or intelligence is not particular effective for students because it tends to promote negative evaluations of a student’s ability and performance. This tends to lead to a lower motivational level.
An incremental view of intelligence tends to facilitate a student’s appreciation that things can change with appropriate effort.
Similarly, mastery- oriented students tend to adopt an incremental view of intelligence because this supports their goal to master the material.
Performance-oriented students are concerned with performing well without regard to actual learning. They tend to adopt an entity view of ability.

22. Qualities of Expert Learners
High Aspirations
High Perceived Self-Efficacy
High Pursuit of a Task to Completion - Volition
High Responsibility for Self and Actions
High Ability to Delay Gratification
Expert Students…
believe that they can achieve highly in life, and they work to make these achievements happen.
believe they are capable of succeeding in school and attempt more challenging tasks and achieve more academically.
use many different methods to help them through the stumbling blocks encountered during learning and see tasks through.
tend to take responsibility for their successes and their failures.
are able to work for long periods without a reward.
[ACTIVITY]
Ask students to break-up into groups. Ask the students to reflect on themselves and how many of the presented qualities they possess. Then have each group pick one of the above qualities and develop a plan for facilitating the development of the quality in students.

23. Implications for Teaching
Expert teachers work to help their students become experts.
Expert students use strategies to help them learn.
Expert teachers recognize that development of expertise in any area is a process that takes time, patience, and hard work.
Expert students adopt strategies and personal characteristics that make effective learning possible.

24. How Educational Psychology Helps Create Experts
Applies psychological knowledge in order to improve quality and outcome of the educational process.
Uses research in educational psychology to find scientific answers to questions about best ways to educate people.
Develops guiding principles and theories.
Educational Psychology seeks to facilitate the development of expert teachers and students through the scientific study of teaching and learning.

25. Descriptive Research
Researchers observe and describe what is happening in a situation without changing the dynamics of the situation.
Researchers find a correlation, which is a relationship between two measurements.
A positive correlation is a relationship where as one-measurement increases, the other also increases.
A negative correlation is a relationship where as one-measurement increases, the other decreases.
Researchers can try to determine whether the results are statistically significant.
Research can also take the form of a case study, an in-depth observation of one individual.

26. Positive Correlation Negative Correlation
A positive correlation means that high scores on one thing are associated with high scores on another thing. It can also mean that low scores on one thing are associated with low scores on another thing. Both things are moving in the same direction.
For example, studying and grades.
Hours Studied: 10 Grade: 89
A negative correlation means that high scores on one thing are associated with low scores on another. It can also mean that low scores on one thing are associated with high scores on another.
For example, temperature and clothing.
Temperature: 94 Pounds of Clothes 1
24 8
0 15

27. Experimental Research
Researcher designs a test to answer a question and actually changes what happens to people so that effects can be observed.
People in the study are called subjects (or participants).
Subjects often are chosen at random.
Groups who undergo a change by researchers are called experimental groups.
Groups for whom nothing is changed are called control groups.
The purpose of the research is to compare outcomes for people in the experimental groups with outcomes for people in the control groups.

28. Implications for Teachers
Educational psychology uses science to uncover information that helps teachers solve problems and teach effectively.
Educational psychology uncovers trends in how teachers teach and how students learn.
Teachers can learn from descriptive and experimental research.
Educational psychology is not simply folk wisdom or people’s intuitions about teaching.
Educational psychology can be a powerful tool for anyone wishing to develop teaching expertise.
Many useful sources of valuable information are available about how to teach.
[ACTIVITY]
In a small group, have students develop five multiple choice questions on the research section. Each question should contain an example of a research experiment.

29. End Chapter One