“It’s strange that in our society, expertise is important in just about all professions except teaching”

Paul Kirschner, Nidhi Sachdeva:

This is the second in a series of posts about teacher expertise. The first is here.

It’s strange that in our society, expertise is important in just about all professions except teaching. It’s ‘normal’ that expertise matters in medicine, engineering, aviation, law, and architecture. We don’t say, “Any experienced pilot will do,” or “A surgeon with a decent survival rate is good enough.” Yet in education we’re strangely enough tempted to treat teaching as though ‘good enough’ is good enough and that it’s possibly more important to look at things like personality, enthusiasm, or simply enough years in the classroom than expertise.

Spoiler alert!! Good enough isn’t good enough.

Teaching’s a very serious profession with expertise at its core. The problem is that teacher expertise is often hidden in plain sight. When we look at an expert teacher it looks really easy. They explain things clearly, quickly notice student confusion, ask the right questions at the right times, and shift the pace, adjust their examples, and respond to errors and misconceptions in ways that seem almost natural. And that apparent ease is misleading, because all of this is possible as a result of expertise.

Great teaching isn’t accidental, mystical, or reducible to charisma or other personality traits. It’s built on knowledge, judgment, and years of deliberately working on the gradual development of expertise.

Good teaching vs. expert teaching

Let’s begin with a subtle but essential distinction. A good teacher is already doing something difficult and important. Good teachers know their subject, plan thoughtfully, manage their classrooms, explain and instruct, and care about their pupils. None of this is trivial. But expert teaching goes further. Expert teachers don’t simply do the basics better. They see more, notice more, infer more, and respond more precisely.

That matters because classrooms are complex and full of ambiguity. While one pupil’s silence may mean they’re thinking deeply, by another it could signal confusion, disengagement, anxiety, or just mind-wandering. A correct answer may signal deep understanding, but it may also reflect superficial rehearsal or even luck. A noisy classroom may be productive or chaotic and a quiet one may be focused or anxious. Teaching is full of subtle (and not so subtle) signals that must be interpreted and acted upon. Expertise lies partly in knowing which signals matter, what they’re likely to mean, and what then to do.

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Foundations of Reading Results: 2015–2024: Wisconsin Educator Preparation Programs