A Comparative Research Of Mathmatics Expert And Novice Teacher Decision Making Based On Problem Solving At Primary School

Decision making in teaching is the connection of teacher behavior and cognitive process and is very important to effective teaching. The expert-novice paradigm has been widely used in educational psychology to study the decision making of expert and novice teacher.Based on the theory background, this paper study the cognitive process differences of expert and novice teacher in elementary school by using the expert-novice paradigm. Besides, questionnaire regarding teacher knowledge system is also used to investigate if and how teacher knowledge influences their decision making. Specifically, expert-novice paradigm, think aloud and stimulated recall method are used to investigate proactive and interactive teaching decision making of 15 expert teachers and 15 novice teachers. A self-composed questionnaire is used to investigate teacher knowledge system.To analyze the decision making data, a decision making cognitive model is constructed and a scoring criteria is made to rate decision making at different level. Another scoring criteria is created to rate teacher knowledge system to different levels. Then SPSS software is used to analyze the data regarding decision making and knowledge system of two kinds of teachers.The result showed that expert teachers really outperformed novice teachers during three stages of the decision making cognitive process, that is, identifying problems, using thumb rules and justifying solutions. Regarding the stage of describing solutions, expert and novice teachers didn’t show obvious differences. Besides, Expert teachers’ knowledge system is also much better than novice teachers, no matter the quality of knowledge, the amount of knowledge and the structure of knowledge.The correlation between decision making and knowledge system for expert and novice teachers show that teacher’s knowledge system affects their decision making, which can be proved from their teaching plan, classroom teaching activity, etc.This paper try to construct a decision making model based on problem solving from the perspective of cognitive psychology and investigate decision making differences at every stage. I think, this is the innovation of my study. The study may provide a potential thinking for the study of decision making. Teacher may improve their decision making skills by making good use of every stage of decision making.