Many states (e.g., Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Virginia) have invested considerable resources in developing programs for the induction of beginning teachers. The teacher behaviors identified through such state initiatives are not sufficient to guide the development of a comprehensive evaluation or professional development plan since they do not include the additional behaviors pertinent to experienced teachers. This study seeks to identify the behaviors of effective, experienced teachers, including teachers' cognitive processes. BackgroundWhile there is abundant research on what effective teachers do, there is limited research on the cognitive processes of teachers (Clark & Peterson, 1986), and even less research on the thought processes of experienced teachers (Lavely et al., 1986). Because the literature on experienced teachers' thought processes is sparse, this study depended on the professional judgment of Connecticut educators when identifying and validating those thought processes that experienced teachers believe facilitate effective instruction. The problem this study addressed consists of two parts: 1) to identify what the literature supports as the behaviors of effective experienced teachers, and 2) to validate these behaviors for experienced teachers in Connecticut. Studying behaviors of experienced teachers in the areas of subject-matter knowledge, planning, decisionmaking, class management techniques, motivation skills, and professional development requires more than observing teachers' actual classroom behavior; it also requires insight into these teachers' thought processes, while there is abundant research on the correlates of effective teaching and student achievement, the literature has failed to establish a concrete distinction between the teaching effectiveness behaviors of experienced and beginning teachers. This failure can be attributed to the following factors: 1) there has been little research on the thought processes of teachers, so the reasons experienced teachers operate differently from beginning teachers have not been investigated; 2) there has been even less research on contrasting the thought processes and behaviors of experienced and beginning teachers; and 3) the research attempting to 326 E.A. COVINO & E.E IWANICKI differentiate expert or experienced teachers from beginning teachers is very sparse. Since specific teaching behaviors that would clearly differentiate between experienced and beginning teachers' have not been established empirically, a quantitative methodology was used in this study, which enabled experienced (and beginning) educators to rate which teaching behaviors facilitated their teaching effectiveness. Review of the LiteratureThis review of the literature is presented in four sections as follows: 1) a summary of the findings of empirical research on effective teaching to establish a base of effective teaching practices from which to look at experienced teachers, 2) a rationale for exploring and relating research on the cognitions and thought processes of tea...