Making Meaning in Classrooms: An Investigation of Cognitive Processes in Aspiring Teachers, Experienced Teachers, and Their Peers

In an effort to describe the knowledge teachers use to understand and interpret teaching and learning in classrooms, 28 respondents representing four levels of teaching experience were shown a videorecorded vignette of classroom life and asked to explain their understanding of it. Application of qualitative analysis techniques to these descriptions suggested a main assertion that “As people gain education and experience in teaching, the understanding they express of classrooms they observe is characterized by an increase in quantity and complexity of linkages among ideas and by a shift in the focus of these linked ideas toward issues more central to classroom teaching, including content taught and learned, pedagogical processes used and experienced, and basic educational purposes.” Subassertions that support this general assertion are discussed in terms of their contribution to the literature on teacher knowledge and its development.