ASU Research E-Magazine: Building Master Teachers

Most of us can remember at least a few educators in our lives who had the “gift” for expert teaching. They could electrify us with a reading of Julius Caesar, infuse a tenth-grade biology lab with excitement and enthusiasm, explain a calculus problem with such clarity that the clouds lifted and we knew how to reach the answer.

They maintained control of the class, moved easily through each lesson despite interruptions, and monitored classroom behavior as if they had eyes in the back of their heads. Remember?

David Berliner was fascinated when he came across these star performers while observing in public school classrooms.

“Occasionally I’d stumble on teachers who just broke it all apart, they were so wonderful,” he says. “I saw teachers that were stupendous, and I began to study them and compare them both to novice teachers and to teachers that were simply competent.”

By videotaping teachers in a lab setting, and using a research methodology developed by cognitive psychologists and computer scientists in the 1980s, Berliner was able to pinpoint many of the techniques and behaviors of expert teachers. He found that they bring a deeper grasp of their subjects, sensitivity to the classroom environment, intuitive knowledge of how to handle unexpected events, automaticity for repetitive tasks such as roll-taking, and remarkable flexibility. They can “go with the flow.”

Expert teachers develop their expertise over a period of years, and seem to be continually refining their techniques. Reflectiveness combined with years of experience are key.

What disturbed Berliner, however, is that little provision is made in most schools for experienced teachers to share their successful techniques with novices. First-year teachers are plunged into a full classload, often with the most difficult-to-teach students, and are expected to be proficient right off the bat.

“That’s nuts,” Berliner says. “Plumbers and auto mechanics have longer apprenticeships than teachers. It’s a difficult job, and we give them 12 weeks of student teaching and they’re done.

“The saddest statistic is that in the first five years there’s a disproportionate number of dropouts from the profession among the top 25 percent in academic ability. They leave because of lack of support, loneliness and poor placements.” Mentoring is a key support to a beginning teacher, he says, because many teaching skills are gained only through experience. Novices benefit when long-time teachers share their rich personal experiences.

“There’s an enormous amount of case knowledge that goes into being a good teacher, and you can’t give it to them in college. One of the things we learned is that it takes at least five years to become a competent teacher, and maybe seven or eight. Some never do reach that level.”

Unrealistic workloads and difficult assignments cause many young teachers to burn out; as many as 30 to 50 percent leave within three to five years. Berliner would like to see an additional year or so of teacher education, to include an apprenticeship, and additional pay for expert teachers who supervise or mentor novices.

His observations, first made a few years ago, are in stunning agreement with a report issued in September 1996 by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future. The 26-member bipartisan panel recommended major reform in the way America trains, recruits and rewards teachers, calling for more mentoring and better preparation for new teachers and more recognition for veteran educators.

Schools should invest their major resources in their teachers, said the panel, because they are the single most important component of student achievement. —Sarah Auffret