Looking for the Prototype of Teaching Expertise: An Initial Attempt in Taiwan.

This study followed Sternberg and Horvath's (1995) prototype view to sketch a teaching expertise schema as the hypothetical model. An interview of 13 novice, beginning, and expert teachers was used to examine the adequacy of the model. The participants were asked to comment on slides of classroom events. Their think-out-loud protocols were coded using two coding systems (knowledge domains and levels of processing). Then, their active pedagogical knowledge was drawn for further content analysis using quantitative and qualitative methods. Results indicated the appropriateness of the hypothetical model to treat experts' knowledge as the prototype of teacher expertise. However, significant differences existed between novice, beginning, and expert teachers' knowledge, so some modifications (e.g., fuzzy nature, knowledge element features, weights of subdomains, and knowledge organization) were recommended. Expert teachers possessed more knowledge than beginning and novice teachers. (Contains 26 references.) (Author/SM)