Adaptive expertise in teaching: adaptivity as a key characteristic of effective teaching, with identifiable core practices¶

Theory · All theories
Evidence · 5 claims (5 for) · 2 studies (1 associational, 1 qualitative), q2 · 0 of 2 report an effect size · 5 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article works within a framework in which being adaptive is central to effective teaching: "While being adaptive is a key characteristic of effective teaching, teachers can be resistant to change." The framework identifies "core practices of adaptive experts" that teachers can enact, and distinguishes ordinary adaptation from "transformative teaching practices." The study uses extreme change in teaching conditions as a window on how teachers exercise and develop this adaptivity.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Investigating adaptive expertise requires observing teacher responses to changed teaching conditions, as the study did with the sudden shift to distance learning

Constraints¶

• The framework is applied here to K-8 teachers in the U.S. during the Spring 2020 pandemic transition to distance learning

Target Learners¶

• K-8 teachers

Target Learning Objectives¶

• Teacher professional adaptation and transfer of distance-teaching learning to future in-person instruction

Claims¶

• Covid Distance Teaching Three Adaptive Expert Practices [+M]
• The pandemic disruption promoted teacher adaptation and may have prompted lasting new practices, per the authors [+W]
• Most surveyed teachers planned to transfer what they learned during pandemic distance teaching to adapt future in-person teaching [+W]
• 30% of surveyed K-8 teachers planned to adopt transformative teaching practices after pandemic distance teaching [+W]
• PD support type and salience depends on a teacher team's current phase in the adaptive learning cycle [+W]

Related Theories¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Connolly, H., Abowd, N., & Chase, C. C. (2022). The instructional legacy of COVID-19: Teacher adaptation in response to the pandemic. Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences – ICLS 2022. https://www.nwea.org/research/publication/the-instructional-legacy-of-covid-19-teacher-adaptation-in-response-to-the-pandemic/