The purpose of this study was to examine novice teachers? (n=7) and expert teachers? (n=7) learning experiences and how these experiences were integrated into the teachers? practices. The participants reflected upon experiences from professional development and their classroom during a semi-structured audiotaped interview. Data were analyzed using concept maps and matrices to distill the multipage interview transcriptions into manageable and comparable elements. Theoretical constructs underlying the analysis drew from expertise and situated learning theories. Comparisons between novice and expert teachers found that the acquisition of the knowledge bases in developing teaching expertise is a nonlinear process and that there are many factors upon which this development is predicated. The knowledge bases that are constructed as a part of developing teaching expertise are not acquired in a certain sequence, after a designated amount of time, nor as a result of particular experiences in a teacher?s practice. While there are distinct differences between novice and expert teachers, the findings indicate that most teachers seek guidance from colleagues rather than from staff development opportunities. Novices and experts both expressed concern regarding lack of time and that student academic diversity demands impact the quality of their job. Novices? concerns included classroom discipline, inability to level lessons for student needs, and insufficient time to observe more experienced teachers. The most significant difference between novices and experts was the directly inverse proportional relationship between experts? abilities to properly level instruction and manage the classroom and the novices? inability to do so.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-11172003-140523 |
| Date | 19 November 2003 |
| Creators | Crawford, Paula Hickman |
| Contributors | Dr. John Pettitt, Dr. Diane Chapman, Dr. Saundra Wall Williams, Dr. Carol Kasworm |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-11172003-140523/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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