{"id":3563,"date":"2018-06-30T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2018-06-30T13:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=3563"},"modified":"2018-06-26T11:36:48","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T16:36:48","slug":"expert-teachers-see-meaningful-classrooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/expert-teachers-see-meaningful-classrooms\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Expert Teachers See More Meaningful Classrooms?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why do chess experts win more chess matches than novices?<\/p>\n<p>This question has a perfectly straightforward answer: they know more about chess. Obviously.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/AdobeStock_73891708_Credit.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3567 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/AdobeStock_73891708_Credit-300x201.jpg\" alt=\"expert teacher vision\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/AdobeStock_73891708_Credit-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/AdobeStock_73891708_Credit-768x513.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/AdobeStock_73891708_Credit.jpg 793w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Forty-five years ago, William Chase and Herbert Simon tested another hypothesis. Perhaps, they speculated, <a href=\"http:\/\/citeseerx.ist.psu.edu\/viewdoc\/download?doi=10.1.1.601.2724&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">chess experts see the world differently than do chess novices<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>They don&#8217;t just\u00a0<em>think<\/em> differently. The literally\u00a0<em>see<\/em> differently. Their chess knowledge changes their perception.<\/p>\n<p>Sure enough, as Chase and Simon predicted, chess experts see chess boards as meaningful groups of chess pieces.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>This<\/em> chess board shows a modified French Dragon Attack.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>That<\/em> chess board shows a King-and-Bishop vs. King-and-Rook problem.<\/p>\n<p>Chess novices, however, see chess boards as scatterings of individual pieces.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>This<\/em> chess board shows&#8230;a bunch of pieces.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>That<\/em> chess board shows&#8230;a different bunch of pieces.<\/p>\n<p>Because the expert sees a different chess board, she sorts through her possible moves much more efficiently. And: she&#8217;s likelier to win the game.<\/p>\n<h2>Expert Teacher Vision: Are Experienced Teachers Like Chess Grand Masters?<\/h2>\n<p>Does this finding hold true for teachers? Does expert teacher vision differ from that of novice teachers?<\/p>\n<p>Charlotte Wolff (and others) explored this question in <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/content\/pdf\/10.1007%2Fs11251-016-9367-z.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a study that used eye-tracking software to understand where teachers look<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Sure enough, they found that expert teachers look at classrooms differently.<\/p>\n<p>For instance: expert teachers &#8220;appear to be searching for activity between students,&#8221; even &#8220;following posture and body movements.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Novices, on the other hand, focus on irrelevant details: for example, a student&#8217;s &#8220;fluorescent green shoelaces.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When you look at the photos in the study, you&#8217;ll see that novices spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at unimportant details. A painting on the wall. People walking by in the hallway. Even an electrical outlet oddly placed in the wall.<\/p>\n<h2>Expert Teacher Vision: Eyes and Words<\/h2>\n<p>Intriguingly, Wolff &amp; Co found that experienced teachers used different words to describe what they saw. In particular, they commented more frequently on <em>feelings<\/em>, and on the events <em>happening<\/em> in the room.<\/p>\n<p>For my taste, this part of the study needs further elaboration. I&#8217;d love to hear about they ways that experts describe their classrooms differently from novices.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s why.<\/p>\n<p>A novice teacher might reasonably ask this question: &#8220;How do I train myself to have expert teacher vision?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The likeliest answer is: practice, practice, practice. We don&#8217;t know many good shortcuts for developing expertise. It just takes time.<\/p>\n<p>However, if we knew more about the <em>words that experts use<\/em>, we might train new teachers to speak and think that way when they comment on classrooms. These verbal habits &#8212; a kind of deliberate teacherly practice &#8212; just might help novice teachers hone their <em>visual<\/em> skills.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why do chess experts win more chess matches than novices? This question has a perfectly straightforward answer: they know more about chess. Obviously. Forty-five years ago, William Chase and Herbert Simon tested another hypothesis. Perhaps, they speculated, chess experts see the world differently than do chess novices. They don&#8217;t just\u00a0think differently. The literally\u00a0see differently. Their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":3567,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[41,81],"class_list":["post-3563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-experts-and-novices","tag-teacher-development"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3563"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3569,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions\/3569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}