Models of Teachers' Interactive Thinking

Student teachers and their supervisors have reported to the author general disillusionment with traditional teaching skills as schemata for guiding teachers' interactive information-processing and in-class behaviors. Some reasons for this are discussed, and some emerging alternatives to traditional teaching skills are reviewed briefly. An alternative approach to developing schemata using elementary teachers' self-reports of their interactive thinking is then outlined, and the results of a study based on this approach are reported. Schemata in the form of 3 models of interactive thinking are described. These incorporate patterns of thoughts, purposes for which models were used, details of contexts in which they were used, the types of students involved, and frequency of occurrence. Finally, some issues pertinent to further research of this kind and teacher education are discussed.