Teaching, Coordinations, and Chaotic Attractors

• In Event: Millennium Hotel Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Complexity Perspectives on Teacher Professional Development

Abstract

This study uses a dynamic systems approach to examine teaching and teacher evaluation. This approach considers teaching to be a dynamic process that is created in the performance rather than a set of skills that is possessed by a teacher. By examining some anecdotal instances of teachers in classrooms, careful examination of previous studies of teaching, and the standards and requirements of various teacher evaluation instruments, new insights into teaching, teacher evaluation, and teacher preparation are generated. These insights call for a closer look at the components that contribute to good teaching, rather than the mere identification of good teaching, and explore how those components and their coordinations may be promoted.

Authors

• Bernard P. Ricca, Saint John Fisher College

• Donald L. Gilstrap, The University of Alabama