Keeping an Eye on Learning

Abstract

Classroom management represents an important skill and knowledge set for achieving student learning gains, but poses a considerable challenge for beginning teachers. Understanding how teachers’ cognition and conceptualizations differ between experts and novices is useful for enhancing beginning teachers’ expertise development. We created a coding scheme using grounded theory to analyze expert and novice teachers’ verbalizations describing classroom events and their relevance for classroom management. Four categories of codes emerged. These referred to perceptions/interpretations, thematic focus, temporality, and cognitive processing expressed. Mixed-method analysis of teachers’ verbalizations yielded a number of significant effects related to participants’ expertise levels. Notably, teachers’ cognitive processing diverged significantly based on expertise level. Differences in focus included themes such as student learning, student discipline, and teacher interaction and influence. Experts focused on learning in the classroom and the teacher’s ability to influence learning, whereas novices were more concerned with maintaining discipline and behavioral norms.

Different approaches to classroom environments based on teacher experience and effectiveness

“…Similar to other studies, our study found highly effective teachers focus on the intrinsic motivation of students rather than motivating students extrinsically (Dolezal et al, 2003). Even with an increase of more technology in the classroom, the highly effective teachers focused more on building relationships with their students and engaging students in the content rather than on extrinsic rewards (Gaskins, 2005;Roehrig et al, 2012;Wolff et al, 2015;Wolff et al, 2017).…”

“…Classroom management focuses on a teacher's behavior within the classroom to engage students with instruction and promote learning in the classroom (Wolff, Jarodzka, & Boshuizen, 2017). Classroom behaviors and management of behaviors were viewed and managed differently by different levels of teachers, with new teachers focused on students being off-task and discipline problems and highly effective teachers focused on student engagement and the learning process (Wolff, van den Bogert, Jarodzka, & Boshuizen, 2015;Wolff et al, 2017).…”

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“…Only teachers with thorough understanding of constructing the HOTS items will be able to engage students actively in responding to HOTS items. Wolff et al (2015) also highlighted that less experienced teachers often practice strict classroom rules and procedures. Hence, students getting feared and the capacity of thinking level gets lower due to uncomfortableness .…”

Eye Movements and Word Recognition during Visual Semantic Search: Differences between Expert and Novice Language Learners

“…There is a lot of evidence identifying the specific perceptual patterns used by experts as they solve visual tasks in their fields. The level of expertise in visual tasks has been investigated in eye-movement studies of chess players (Grigorovich & Zyzlova, 2016;Reingold & Sheridan, 2011); medical staff (Wood, Batt, Appelboam, Harris, & Wilson, 2014); teachers (Asaba, 2018;Wolff, Bogert, Jarodzka, & Boshuizen, 2014); chemists (Blinnikova & Ishmuratova, 2017) and others. All the above-mentioned studies showed significant distinctions between the eye movement patterns of experts and novices in their fields.…”