Event Date: 10th September 2022
Abstract:
This webinar provides an introduction to research on ‘expert teachers’, and what we have learnt about their practice and cognition since the 1980s. It looks critically at how expertise itself is theorised and how expert teachers are typically identified and studied in research projects.
It also identifies a significant bias in this research to date – given that over half of all expert teacher studies have been conducted in the USA, and the vast majority of the remainder report on other high- and upper-middle-income countries, the presenter asks whether expert teachers also exist in the low-income, challenging contexts typical of the global South.
The answer is, of course, ‘yes, they do’! Dr. Jason Anderson provides evidence to support this from his own research conducted with expert secondary school teachers of English in India, one of the first such projects carried out in the South. He also outlines how and why expert teachers working in challenging, low-resource contexts necessarily differ in their practices from their peers working in the global North, and why we need more Southern research into how expertise manifests itself in our profession.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Jason Anderson is a multiple-award-winning teacher educator, author, educational consultant and researcher, working in both language teaching and mainstream education.
He has supported teachers in over 30 countries worldwide, pre-service and in-service, for national ministries of education and organizations including UNICEF, the British Council, and the University of Warwick.
He has published research on aspects of language teaching, multilingualism, teacher reflection, teacher expertise and teacher education. His interests include teaching methodology, multilingualism, and the contextual challenges of primary and secondary teachers working in low- and middle-income contexts, where he has spent much of his career as a teacher educator.
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