Ways of Evaluating Teacher Cognition: Inferences Concerning the Goldilocks Principle

Although research on teacher cognition is no longer in its infancy, it has largely failed to affect the ways in which programs and teachers are evaluated. In accordance with what Raths and Katz (1985) call the Goldilocks Principle, the notion of teacher cognition may simply be “too big” (too general and vague) for mundane application. This review was designed to compare alternative approaches to the evaluation of teacher cognition and to consider ways in which the literature of this subfield may be discouraging its application. Teacher cognition is defined as pre- or inservice teachers’ self-reflections; beliefs and knowledge about teaching, students, and content; and awareness of problem-solving strategies endemic to classroom teaching. This paper describes and critiques five different approaches to the evaluation of teacher cognition: (a) direct and noninferential ways of assessing teacher belief, (b) methods that rely on contextual analyses of teachers’ descriptive language, (c) taxonomies for assessing self-reflection and metacognition, (d) multimethod evaluations of pedagogical content knowledge and beliefs, and (e) concept mapping. In the final section, ambiguities and paradoxes inherent in this literature are discussed, particularly the continued use of rhetoric associated with process–product research. Questions regarding the ecological validity of measurement tools and tasks are raised. A suggestion is made that it may be politically exigent to begin relating measures of teacher cognition to valued student outcomes.