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Recent research on teachers’ achievement goals suggests that the teacher with a mastery goal is more likely to retain a high degree of interest in teaching, more willing to seek help with their teaching, and less likely to report professional ‘burnout.’ Section one of this study extends this line of research by testing the hypothesis that teachers with mastery goals toward teaching are more likely to display the traits of the adaptive expert. Achievement goals and adaptive expertise are measured for a sample of secondary school mathematics teachers who have attained National Board Teacher Certification. A multiple regression model is used with score on the adaptive expertise measure as the dependent variable and four independent variables. The second part of this study proposes the development and evaluation of a challenge-based model of professional development. The Legacy Cycle has been used extensively to teach transfer and adaptive expertise to college students. It has not been used, however, in the professional development of teachers. A professional development program using the Legacy Cycle for teaching high school Algebra teachers how to implement a new conceptually-based Algebra 1 curriculum is proposed. Its accompanying evaluation plan will enable further exploration of the role teacher goal orientation and school climate play in a teacher’s willingness and ability to innovate; and if having an adaptive expert in the classroom can improve student learning. / text

Hiring, retaining, and developing quality instructors is arguably one of the most important ways of ensuring a high quality education (Hagedorn, Perrakis & Maxwell, 2006; Sprouse, Ebbers & King, 2008). However, identifying what makes a teacher an expert (i.e., someone who excels at teaching) is difficult. Indeed, Berliner (2005) argued that quality teaching is almost indescribable. Good teaching, he suggested, starts with a combination of skills -- such as modeling, motivating, and mentoring -- and the ability to produce acceptable student performance. Beyond these basic characteristics, he continued, "... a highly qualified individual, always requires keen insight and good judgment" (p. 207). But Berliner saw no way for society to measure this latter aspect of quality teaching. Recent scholarship on expertise, however, is providing new means for understanding what expertise is and how it is acquired (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993; Ericsson, 2006; Hatano & Inagaki, 1984). This study applies the theory of adaptive expertise to an investigation of the factors that influence the acquisition of teaching expertise among mathematics instructors. The relations among the institutional environment and instructors goal and problem-solving orientations was measured for mathematics instructors who taught Algebra I, Algebra II/Intermediate Algebra or College Algebra during the past two academic years. Algebra instructors in secondary schools, community colleges, and four-year institutions were asked to participate. This study extends the work of Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) by applying their theory of an expert career to teaching, an area in which much of the public discussion focuses on the need for more excellent performance. Structural Equation Modeling and Cluster Analyses were used to examine the effects of the reward structure of the institution, the extent to which a teacher identifies himself or herself as mastery goal oriented toward teaching and engaged in a conscious process to improve their teaching practice, and a teacher's acquisition of content and pedagogical knowledge, on a teacher's expert performance. Although the institutional reward structure and mastery goal orientation were found to have a positive effect on a teacher's engagement in continuous improvement behaviors, these behaviors were not found to have a significant impact on expert performance. / text

The purpose of this research was to investigate special educators’ problem solving approaches through the lens of adaptive expertise. An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was used with participants of varying experience levels and teaching contexts from one Mid-Atlantic state. Participants responded to a researcher-developed survey about their orientations to problem solving (N = 162), then a purposive sample completed semi-structured interviews (N = 8). Following survey measure refinement and validation, quantitative data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, z-scores, correlation, and chi-square test of independence. Subsequently, qualitative data were analyzed through iterative cycles of hypothesis and open coding. Finally, quantitative and qualitative data were linked through mixed methods analysis. Results of exploratory factor analysis identified an 18-item, two-factor structure within the survey measure. Survey results indicated most special educators had more adaptive than routine expertise orientations to problem solving; for some these orientations were balanced, while others had a much stronger orientation to adaptive expertise. Though no statistical relationship was found between teaching experience and participants’ degree of adaptive or routine tendencies when problem solving, teachers interviewed spoke of the role of experience in shaping their problem solving approaches. Many also noted that the application of particular approaches were dependent upon characteristics of their teaching contexts. Literature-based indicators of adaptive expertise were evident across examples of problem solving in special educators’ narrative data. Together, survey and interview data captured a more comprehensive and nuanced picture of special educators’ problem solving in practice than either approach could have alone.

This study compares engineering expert problem-solving on a highly constrained routine problem and an ill-defined complex problem. The participants (n=7) were recruited from two large public Research I institutions. Using a think aloud methodology, the experts solved both routine and non-routine problems. The protocols were transcribed and coded in Atlas ti. The first round of coding followed a grounded theory methodology, yielding interesting findings. Unprompted, the experts revealed a strong belief that the ill-defined problems are developmentally appropriate for PhD students while routine problems are more appropriate for undergraduate students. Additional rounds of coding were informed by previous problem solving studies in math and engineering. In general, this study confirmed the 5 Step Problem Solving Method used in previous challenged based instruction studies. There were observed differences based on problem type and background knowledge. The routine problem was more automatic and took significantly less time. The experts with higher amounts of background knowledge and experience were more likely to categorize the problems. The level of background knowledge was most apparent in the steps between conducting an overall energy balance and writing more problem specific relationships between the variables. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for improving undergraduate engineering education. / text

The dissertation is comprised of two qualitative, exploratory studies with an overarching research goal to deepen understanding of Olympic level sport coaching expertise through the development of an in-depth case study. These studies take a constructivist view that emphasizes the active construction of knowledge with social boundaries in which meaning is constructed by the reasoning of the individuals who experience it (Rockmore, 2011). In this case, the individuals include an Olympic rowing coach and 18 of his athletes, from a particular period of his coaching career. With an emphasis on the context of Olympic level rowing, this dissertation followed ethnographic traditions in developing a case study of an Olympic level rowing coach within his coaching community in Canada during three Olympic quadrennials (from 2001 to 2012). Informed by the elements of the integrated definition of expert and effective coaching (Côté & Gilbert, 2009), the two distinct but interconnected studies in this dissertation contributed to a detailed examination of the Olympic coach and his philosophy, principles, knowledge and coaching practices and the impact of these elements on athlete outcomes within the specific context of Olympic level rowing. Outcomes from the two studies are indicative of the utility of the knowledge framework and the integrated definition of coaching effectiveness and expertise (Côté & Gilbert, 2009) to guide this study of expert coaching. The extensiveness of this research goes beyond the question of which criteria determine whether a coach is identified as an expert, to reveal the expert's coaching philosophy, his unique practices, and methods interwoven with clear linguistic and behavioural intentionality. The Olympic coach directed all of his efforts at striving for continued expertise for himself and his athletes. Mutuality of trust and respect was the basis of the athlete-coach effective and valued partnership, which supported their collective goal of achieving Olympic excellence. The findings identified that this productive relationship was supported by the integration of the Olympic coach’s professional, intrapersonal and interpersonal knowledge with a superior contextual understanding. In particular, the interpersonal knowledge of the Olympic coach was identified as essential to the commitment of the participant athletes to his training program and the shared goal of Olympic success. The Olympic coach’s expert practice was facilitated by his deliberate presence in the training venue, his transformative leadership and adaptive expertise, a form of expertise that provides clarity on specific features of the Olympic coach’s practice and accounts for his innovations in the sport of rowing. These explanatory constructs of deliberate presence, transformative leadership and adaptive expertise emerged from both studies. The findings also provide perspective on the lasting impact of his coaching on his athletes and the sport of rowing. / Graduate

This thesis is a descriptive theoretical study dealing with the work of the Interpreting Studies scholar, teacher and interpreter Barbara Moser-Mercer. This thesis analyses individual stages of her research and follows the development of her opinions and research interests. It looks into Moser-Mercer's dominant research areas - i.e. interpreting expertise, quality and interpreters' working conditions - and also introduces her model of interpreting and outlines its use in teaching. Furthermore, this thesis explores Moser-Mercer's teaching and interpreting projects and, last but not least, addresses her contribution to interdisciplinary cooperation. Key words: Barbara Moser-Mercer, interdisciplinarity, quality in interpreting, working conditions, adaptive expertise, information processing model