Interactive Thinking and Teacher Expertise

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A lot has been written on expertise in teaching. This research has merged with the studies of teacher cognition, as teachers’ observable behaviour cannot be analysed separately from underlying thought processes. Researching teachers’ interactive thinking provides an interesting angle for looking at expert/novice teacher differences, as dealing with complexity of the classroom places great demands on teachers’ cognition. This study investigates stimulated recalls of 3 teachers with differing levels of experience. Unlike much of the previous research it does not focus exclusively on decision-making, but tries to take a more general view. The findings, although tentative, indicate that there are differences in how experienced/inexperienced teachers structure their lessons, how their prior images influence the teaching process. The study emphasis that identifying teachers’ priorities and their goals could provide useful insights for expertise studies in language teaching. The book is of value as an initial empirical exploration and can be useful to researchers investigating issues of teacher expertise and teacher cognition as well as teacher educators.