Identifying and Characterizing Expertise in Teaching Mathematics With Disposition to Attend to Professional Obligations

• In Event: Teacher Knowledge and Teacher Practice in Mathematics

Abstract

For more than 30 years, education researchers have been trying to characterize and differentiate between the practice and thinking of expert and novice teachers (Borko, Roberts, & Shavelson, 2008). However, since the heyday of this research tradition (the 1980s and 90s), much education theory has been developed that we expect better equips us to overcome these challenges and understand expert and novice teachers. In this paper, we provide one example of a construct that we have suggested influences mathematics teachers’ instructional decisions and that we therefore expect may be used to characterize and differentiate between the practice and thinking of expert and novice teachers — a set of four professional obligations (Authors, 2016a).

Authors

• Nicolas Boileau, University of Michigan

• Inah Ko, University of Michigan

• Patricio G. Herbst, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor