Research on Teachers’ Pedagogical Thoughts, Judgments, Decisions, and Behavior

Abstract

This review assesses the progress made in research on teachers’ pedagogical thoughts, judgments, and decisions over the past decade and identifies areas of substantive and methodological research needed to improve the practice of teaching. Based on this research, we formulate “schema” or tentative “models” of teachers’ judgments, planning decisions, and interactive decisions. We then set forth recommendations for future research, including (1) the need to develop a taxonomy of critical teaching decisions, which link these decisions to their consequences in the classroom; (2) the need to intervene and alter teachers’ plans and decisions in our research, as well as describe them, with the goal of improving teaching; and (3) the need to link recommendations based on research to the implementation of them in practice.

The Soft Power of Teacher’s Instructional Decision Making: An Empirical Study of 4 Chinese EFL Teachers and Native English Teachers

“…Teachers' decision-making soft power is, to a large extent, demonstrated in the process of teaching practice, the research of instructional decision-making soft power is closely related to teacher's cognition, and the use of cognition to explore the soft power of instructional decision making is based on the concept of teaching as a complex mental process, it is affected by a teacher's mental and information processing capabilities (Shavelson & Stern, 1981). Teachers' beliefs, thinking, judgment can guide their teaching behavior.…”

“…Teacher cognition mainly includes teachers' knowledge, belief and thinking (Calderhead, 1996). The research of teachers' decision-making soft power mainly involves investigating teachers' beliefs, judgment, planning and teaching process (Clark & Peterson, 1986;Shavelson & Stern, 1981).…”

“…A core idea from these teaching practice is that teachers do not simply enact curriculum in the classroom but instead are complex decision-makers whose problem-solving capabilities are shaped by a combination of the characteristics (and constraints) of cognition as well as features of the instructional situation (Lee & Porter, 1990;Shavelson & Stern, 1981). It is recognized that teacher decision making is not immune from the effects of contextual factors, and many of teachers' instructional decisions are made on the basis of teacher's perceptions of instructional context.…”

Exploring Planning Decisions and Interactive Decisions in EFL Teaching Practice——A Multi-case Study of 2 Chinese EFL Teachers and 2 Native English Teachers

“…Just as Nunan (1992) pointed out, the teachers' prior planning decisions provided a structure and framework for their interactive decisions, and the majority of the interactive decisions made by the teachers were connected with classroom management and organization. Shavelson and Stern (1981) also stated that analyzing the instructional decision-making and mechanism behind instructional plans, teaching processes and the explicit or implicit factors affecting teaching behavior would be basically conducive to the improvement of teacher development. Planning decisions generally provide a framework or structure for approaching a lesson and help the teacher go through the lesson in advance, and this framework will substantially facilitate teacher's response to students' understanding and participation, which will then help the teachers' redirecting the lesson.…”

Analysis of Teacher Beliefs and Efficacy for Teaching Writing to Weak Learners

“…Their teaching experiences, classroom practices, and their personalities contribute in the shaping of their beliefs (Borg, 2003). Research has shown that teachers have a wide range of beliefs about pedagogical issues such students and teaching (Borg, 2003;Farrell & Lim, 2005;Burns, 1992;Shavelson & Stern, 1981).…”