SIMILARITIES IN PERCEPTIONS OF PEDAGOGICAL EXPERTISE BY TURKISH AND AMERICAN STUDENTS


SENEMOĞLU N.

HANDBOOK ON COMPARATIVE AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES IN EDUCATION, ss.623-644, 2017 (SSCI) identifier

Özet

This is a study on the student perceptions of teachers' expertise in Turkey compared with studies completed years earlier by researchers in the United States. After exposure to a lesson from science teachers they did not know, middle-school Turkish students were asked to identify whether the teacher they had was an expert teacher, an experienced but non-expert teacher, an advanced beginner, or a novice teacher and postulant. Following the lessons all students filled out questionnaires and a subset of the students were interviewed. Experimenter notes about the lessons also were a data source. Turkish students have clear beliefs about what expert teachers were like, and these characteristics matched closely those described by U.S. students. The Turkish students also were able to do well in distinguishing between the four types of teachers. The kinds of statements the students made to characterize the teaching behavior of each of the four types of teachers was similar to those made by U.S. students. Among the more interesting findings is the inability of some experienced teachers to explain well. Explaining is now seen as a coach able skill, suggesting that professional development on this skill might help many experienced teachers improve their students' achievement while also improving their students' perceptions of their teaching ability.