By Dennis Sale
Reframing Education for Better Educational Outcomes(Part 5: Types of Teacher Expertise)
In the previous column, I focused on the generic competencies of teacher expertise, as these are foundational to forming positive learning relationships between teachers and students.
Equally important are the functional competencies, as these largely shape students’ perceptions of their teachers as being ‘organised’. Collectively, with creativity, they have a synergistic impact on student learning, and one could argue that this is the ‘gold-standard’ of teacher expertise.
Being organised is a very general term and can cover anything from arranging the furniture and teaching resources in the learning space, (eg classroom, lab) to lesson design, delivery and assessment.
Of course, all contribute to the students’ learning experience, but my focus here is on the pedagogic design and delivery in terms of maximising student learning opportunities for high attainment and engagement.
Framing teacher expertise involves modelling of what constitutes expertise generically and then contextualising it to the practices of teaching. The work of Hatano & Inagaki (1986), who distinguished between two broad categories of expertise, ‘routine expertise’ and ‘adaptive expertise’, is a useful reference point. They suggested that routine expertise is characterised by a high-level of technical proficiency across the typical range of real-world problem-solving contexts.
In the context of teaching, this would mean a teacher’s ability to apply the key knowledge and skills of pedagogy effectively and efficiently in their everyday practices (eg lesson planning, delivery and assessment). However, they noted that as problems become less familiar or novel, the performance of routine experts can dip significantly.
In contrast, adaptive experts can reframe problems in different ways, modify or invent strategies and combine skills to deal much more effectively in solving such problems. As experienced teachers will confirm, student behaviour is rarely easily predictable, as students have different personality configurations, motivations, capabilities, moods, etc, which all impact their orientation to learning in different situations. In the teaching content, then, it is adaptive expert teachers who can consistently reframe, reinvent, and apply new instructional methods in situ when the existing plan is not being effective and/or students are losing interest.
Do these teachers – the adaptive experts – always get the desired results in terms of student engagement? Of course not, just as the most expert sportspeople don’t always get it right – even Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have missed easy scoring chances, that I would have scored in some cases. The point is that adaptive experts have that added creativity – ‘star quality’ – that makes them that bit better than the rest.
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Cognitive Scientific Principles (the foundation for teacher expertise)
As mentioned before, teachers only need to learn a single unified theory of learning that captures the empirical generalisations about how humans learn. This theory essentially comprises ‘core principles of learning’ that have been derived from extensive research in cognitive psychology and best teaching practices.
Willingham (2009) referred to these as cognitive scientific principles and, through an analogy with engineering, illustrates their value to teaching effectiveness:
Principles of physics do not prescribe for a civil engineer exactly how to build a bridge, but they do let him predict how it is likely to perform if he builds it. Similarly, cognitive scientific principles do not prescribe how to teach, but they can help you predict how much your students are likely to learn. If you follow these principles, you maximise the chances that your students will flourish.
In Creative Teachers: Self-directed Learners (Sale, 2020), I detailed nine principles of learning, these are (in heading form only):
1. Learning goals, objectives and proficiency expectations are clearly visible to learners.
2. Learner’s prior knowledge is activated and connected to new learning.
3. Learning is enhanced through multiple methods and presentation modes that engage the range of senses.
4. Content is organised around key concepts and principles that are fundamental to understanding the structure of a subject.
5. Good thinking promotes the building of understanding.
6. Learning design utilises the working of memory systems.
7. The development of expertise requires deliberate practice.
8. Assessment is integrated into the learning design to provide quality feedback.
9. A psychological climate is created which is success-orientated and fun.
These principles of learning are not meant to be exhaustive or summative, and they are being refined and extended as research offers greater insights into the human learning process, both at the level of psychological functioning and brain neurology.
Both routine and adaptive expert teachers have high-level capability in applying these principles to both the design and facilitation of their teaching and, as a result, are likely to be perceived by their students as ‘well organised’.
However, what distinguishes the latter from the former is the added capability of being able to creatively reinvent their pedagogic strategies in situ, to meet changing and challenging situations.
Creative teachers can make connections between methods, activities and resources that may not always seem to be logically connected, but, in practice, make a significant impact on aspects of the learning process. An example I have used many times is the teacher who taught Newton’s Second Law of Motion through an analogy of David Beckham taking his famous free kick. Can you work out how this was done, and what makes it creative? The answer is found in one of my previous columns, but I will reiterate it in the final column of this series, and how it works generically.
From extensive observation of teachers who are perceived as being creative, the following instructional components are typically employed:
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Relevant and powerful Stories.
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Appropriate situated Humour.
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Meaningful challenging Activities.
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Excellent Presentation style (a generic competence).
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Clear illustrative Examples.
Together, these can be easily remembered using the acronym SHAPE. The very best teachers are typically in great SHAPE, and when employed effectively, skilfully, and with creativity, these powerful resources have a significant positive impact on all aspects of the learning process. It often feels magical, but it is a heightened expertise that can be learned by motivated teaching professionals over time. Once attained it is exactly as Intrator (2003) depicts in his description of excellent teachers:
A potent teacher will skilfully and gracefully create conditions and stage activities that inspire students to have a sustained and meaningful encounter with a subject – because they can.
In the final column of this series, I summarise the key components that need to be addressed and thoughtfully calibrated by policy makers, educational leaders, and teachers, to evolve educational experiences that are most useful for better educational outcomes. Such outcomes are critically important, both for student attainment and well-being, and for the future of human learning, thinking, and behaviour globally.
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Dennis Sale worked in the Singapore education system for 25 years as advisor, researcher, and examiner. He coached over 15,000 teaching professionals and provided 100+ consultancies in the Asian region. Dennis is author of the books Creative Teachers: Self-directed Learners (Springer 2020) and Creative Teaching: An Evidence-Based Approach (Springer, 2015). To contact Dennis, visit dennissale.com.
