written by Matty Lau

From one moment to the next, what and how a teacher teaches may change. In this paper, I discuss two examples from one teacher, showing shifts in her practice from one moment to the next, within the same activity. These shifts are characterized by different ways in which assessed her students' ideas and interacted with her students. Common accounts that attempt to explain teachers' practice as the result of a unified set of beliefs, knowledge, and goals (e.g., teacher-type) cannot account for these two examples. While these broad generalizations may be useful for studying broader patterns in large populations, they assume a consistency in teacher cognition that is not born out by the data. I argue that frame analysis can provide insight into how to think about variability in teacher cognition- namely that consistency is local and depends on what is going on in that moment.

• Download PERC2010_Lau.pdf - 101kb Adobe PDF Document

Published August 24, 2010
Last Modified October 29, 2010

This file is included in the full-text index.