24 Expertise and Expert Performance in Teaching James W

24 Expertise and Expert Performance in Teaching James W. Stigler Department of Psychology, University of California at Los Angeles, California Kevin F. Miller School of Education, University of Michigan, Michigan Introduction domains of expertise. But in education, teachers are in a very real sense at the mercy of students, There are approximately 3.5 million full-time and policy-makers, and curriculum designers, elementary and secondary teachers working in and so on. This is something we will need to US public and private school classrooms (US address as we consider what it means to be an Department of Education, 2016). Given their expert teacher. potential to impact the lives of young people, it Another obstacle to understanding expertise in would seem to be of great importance to under- teaching is the “pseudo-expertise” one develops stand what makes one teacher more effective than as a student. Before anyone starts their formal another, what expertise in teaching looks like, and training as a teacher, they already have experi- how it develops. Despite the fact that teaching is enced well over 10,000 hours as students in class- one of the oldest and largest of human profes- rooms, making teaching the profession with the sions, however, we still lack a clear conception of most intensive and lengthy apprenticeship of any. what it means to be an expert teacher. This is not One consequence of this experience is that every- because researchers have not tried to pin this one in our society, including teachers, thinks they down. They have, and we will try in this chapter already know what an expert teacher is, without to make a contribution to this effort. But it is any serious consideration of the research. This worth discussing, at the outset, why these ques- leads to bias in research on teaching, with a dis- tions have proven so difficult to answer. tinct lack of research designed to investigate Perhaps the biggest challenge to understanding theories that “everyone knows aren’t true.” It expertise in teaching is that teaching is not an also may reduce variation in teaching methods individual endeavor in which the teacher him- within our culture, which makes it more difficult or herself is the only actor. Teaching is a complex to explore alternatives. system of interacting elements, and effective Finally, our work is hampered by a lack of a teaching requires that all of these elements work consensus on the aims of education. We have a together to produce the desired outcomes. Later wide array of desired educational outcomes, yet we will consider the nature of this system. But teaching practices that prove effective for one for now, consider simply that teachers cannot outcome might be ineffective, or worse, for achieve their goals without the cooperation of others. Similarly, practices that yield impressive students. Chess experts don’t require the coopera- short-term results (e.g. high scores on year-end tion of the chessboard. The chessboard, the musi- standardized tests) may have negative effects on cal instrument, and so on are invariants in many 432 part v.i domains of expertise: professions long-term outcomes such as career advancement The Nature of Teaching and satisfaction decades later. Work by Jackson and colleagues (Jackson, 2012; Jackson, Rockoff, A Definition of Teaching and Staiger, 2014), for example, has shown that Coach John Wooden famously said, “Everyone’sa teachers who produce the strongest gains on teacher, to someone” (Gallimore & Tharp, 2004, achievement tests are not the ones who succeed p. 119). The ubiquity of teaching means that we at reducing absences and suspensions, variables need to restrict the domain we seek to describe. In shown to predict future educational attainment this chapter we will narrow the focus somewhat to and adult earnings. This complicates the straight- include only classroom teaching. Despite this forward strategy of studying teaching expertise narrow focus, classroom teachers make up the by studying acknowledged experts. largest segment of public sector employment, Although it is tempting to rally round a single with 3.5 million teachers in the United States measure of student outcomes (e.g. the currently (US Department of Education, 2016) and more popular “value added” models of student achieve- than 29 million in the world (UNESCO Institute ment), we must be careful not to get too focused for Statistics, 2015). on the metric instead of on the underlying process We base our definition of teaching on one the metric is intended to reflect. Campbell (1979) offered by Lampert (2003; see also Ball & warned of this in what came to be known as Forzani, 2007). Lampert sees teaching as “work- “Campbell’s law”: ing in relationships,” specifically, the relationships The more any quantitative social indicator is used among the three core elements of a classroom for social decision making, the more subject it will lesson: the teacher, the students, and the content be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be that is being taught. Teachers must manage the to distort and corrupt the social processes it is content and the students, but most importantly intended to monitor. (Campbell, 1979, p. 85) they must manage the relationship between stu- These concerns don’t invalidate the effort to dents and content, over time. These relationships understand and measure student educational define the “problem spaces” in which teachers outcomes or to understand how teachers develop work. So, for example, teachers must relate to the skill to promote these outcomes, but they do students, and must collaborate with students to help explain why understanding teaching exper- get work accomplished, which generally means tise is not a simple matter of identifying and getting students engaged with studying the con- studying acknowledged experts. tent. Problems arise in the management of each of In this chapter we try to take a broader these relationships, and teachers, over time, approach to understanding the nature and develop routines for handling the problems that development of expertise and expert perfor- recur. mance in teaching. Because the literature on Although we find this model to be a useful expertise in teaching is limited, we instead try starting place for a full definition of teaching, to integrate a number of ideas and findings from we will broaden it in three ways. First, teaching literatures as diverse as cross-cultural compar- always implies some goal for students (e.g. a isons of teaching, cognitive psychology, and learning goal) and some sequence of events systems improvement, among others. At a designed to achieve that goal. Although some minimum, we hope to start a new conversation educators may prefer a more democratic view of about what expertise looks like in the highly relationships within the classroom, we believe it complex domain of classroom teaching. is important to see the teacher as an actor with a Expertise and Expert Performance in Teaching 433 specific agenda for what she wants students to of time. And there are only a finite number of learn. This goal-directed nature of teaching was lessons in the school year to cover the prescribed cited explicitly in some early definitions of teach- curriculum. Thus, in some sense, planning of ing. For example, Thorndike (1906) defined individual lessons and sequences of lessons is a teaching as the methods used to help students zero-sum game: as new activities are added, achieve the learning goals valued by society. others must be deleted. The importance of making this agenda explicit The centrality of time in teaching becomes has grown over the past 10 or 20 years as states even clearer when we consider students. and districts have focused more on creating and Berliner (1990) noted that the amount of time implementing clear academic content and perfor- students spend actively engaged in learning is mance standards for what students should know often a small fraction of the time they spend in and be able to do at each grade level. Despite the school. The amount of such engaged time can recent influence of national and local standards, vary greatly across classrooms, and this can be a however, the teacher must still decide what learn- strong predictor of student learning (Fisher et al., ing goals the students in her class can and should 1980). Teachers’ skillful management of time is a achieve – at the end of the lesson, at the end of the key factor in determining student learning. That unit, or at the end of the whole school year. management, and the planning and decisions that A second modification we make to Lampert’s undergird it, are an important aspect of teaching. model of teaching is to broaden “teaching” to Thus, we offer this definition of teaching: include the planning and reflection that go on Teaching consists of the interactions of teachers, before and after the lesson. It is common in the students, and content, in classrooms, that are United States to overemphasize the importance of intended to achieve some goal or goals for stu- what happens during the lesson – the classroom dents, within a specified period of time (e.g. a performance of the teacher – and de-emphasize classroom lesson), together with the planning the intellectual work outside the classroom – that takes place before, and the analysis that what happens during planning and reflection. In takes place after, the lesson. fact, the effectiveness of a classroom lesson can be determined as much or more by the plan as by Teaching Is a System the on-the-fly decisions made by the teacher during the lesson. Planning is a teacher’s single More than many domains of expertise, teaching is most powerful leverage point for improving the a complex system with many moving parts.

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