Expert teaching: what matters to expert teachers? A cultural-historical perspective on relational expertise
type: CreativeWork
description: Teacher expertise is commonly regarded as fast and fluent pedagogical decision-making. Research in this area has predominantly applied models of expertise based on the notions of deliberate practice or a novice to expert continuum to the practice of teachers. Expert teachers’ perceptions of what matters to them in their own practice has been under-researched. Drawing on cultural-historical theory, this study considers teachers’ own understandings of expert teaching, and how their motives relate to their teaching actions. The study focuses on 9 expert secondary school teachers in one secondary school in England to discern how they work with pupils and the curriculum. The analysis explores the different elements of the teachers’ activities, identified as: (i) the kinds of teaching actions used in their work; (ii) the relational space between the pupil and the subject-matter of the curriculum and (iii) the concepts that mediated expert teachers’ practice. The Vygotskyian perspective taken by this study entailed an inquiry into the teachers’ intentional actions in everyday teaching. School-based fieldwork was bookended before and after by interviews with each teacher, exploring their beliefs on expert teaching and what matters to them about their own teaching. In between these interviews each teacher was observed in 3 lessons and undertook up to 5 structured reflections. The data were analysed deploying concepts from cultural-historical theory, particularly two sets of concepts within the approach. One was an adaptation of the analytical model developed by Edwards (2010) in her work on the relational expertise of multi-agency professionals. The other was from the research of Hedegaard (2005) into development and learning: the ‘double move’ (between situated activity and subject matter). The findings indicate that teachers work relationally with pupils and the subject-matter of the curriculum. Two key aspects of expertise surfaced: subject agency, where the teachers aim …
abstract: Teacher expertise is commonly regarded as fast and fluent pedagogical decision-making. Research in this area has predominantly applied models of expertise based on the notions of deliberate practice or a novice to expert continuum to the practice of teachers. Expert teachers’ perceptions of what matters to them in their own practice has been under-researched. Drawing on cultural-historical theory, this study considers teachers’ own understandings of expert teaching, and how their motives relate to their teaching actions. The study focuses on 9 expert secondary school teachers in one secondary school in England to discern how they work with pupils and the curriculum. The analysis explores the different elements of the teachers’ activities, identified as: (i) the kinds of teaching actions used in their work; (ii) the relational space between the pupil and the subject-matter of the curriculum and (iii) the concepts that mediated expert teachers’ practice. The Vygotskyian perspective taken by this study entailed an inquiry into the teachers’ intentional actions in everyday teaching. School-based fieldwork was bookended before and after by interviews with each teacher, exploring their beliefs on expert teaching and what matters to them about their own teaching. In between these interviews each teacher was observed in 3 lessons and undertook up to 5 structured reflections. The data were analysed deploying concepts from cultural-historical theory, particularly two sets of concepts within the approach. One was an adaptation of the analytical model developed by Edwards (2010) in her work on the relational expertise of multi-agency professionals. The other was from the research of Hedegaard (2005) into development and learning: the ‘double move’ (between situated activity and subject matter). The findings indicate that teachers work relationally with pupils and the subject-matter of the curriculum. Two key aspects of expertise surfaced: subject agency, where the teachers aim …
author: Shires, Lorna
language: en
date published: 2022
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:43:19Z
provider: Oxford Brookes University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Oxford Brookes University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.24384/2p1g-0x96