Cognition and Improvisation: Differences in Mathematics Instruction by Expert and Novice Teachers

TLDR

This study compares the planning, teaching, and reflection practices of novice student teachers with those of experienced cooperating teachers to identify expertise differences and provide recommendations for student teaching. Participants were observed teaching mathematics for one week and interviewed before and after each lesson. Novice teachers spent more time planning, were less efficient, struggled to stay on scripted plans when responding to students, and produced more varied reflections, reflecting less elaborate and interconnected cognitive schemata and weaker pedagogical reasoning compared to experts.

Abstract

This study investigates the nature of pedagogical expertise by comparing the planning, teaching, and postlesson reflections of three student teachers (two secondary and one elementary) with those of the cooperating teachers with whom they were placed. Participants were observed teaching mathematics for 1 week of instruction and were interviewed prior to and following each lesson. Differences in the thinking and actions of these experts and novices were analyzed by perceiving teaching both as a complex cognitive skill and as improvisational performance Novices showed more time-consuming, less efficient planning, encountered problems when attempts to be responsive to students led them away from scripted lesson plans, and reported more varied, less selective postlesson reflections than experts. These differences were accounted for by the assumptions that novices’ cognitive schemata are less elaborate, interconnected, and accessible than experts’ and that their pedagogical reasoning skills are less well developed. We offer several recommendations for student teaching based on this analysis.