National Formosa University

This study describes and explains four expert reading teachers ’ thinking and interactive thoughts within the social and cultural environment of freshmen English classroom. It aims to outline how features of the classroom may be mentally represented by the expert teachers, and how the expert teachers perceive and interpret the classroom events. To understand the meanings of expert teachers ’ decision-making and interactive thoughts, qualitative procedures were utilized to analyze the data, which contains field notes of participant observation, ethnographic interviewing transcripts, and pertinent written documents. Results indicated that better developed knowledge structures and effective classroom strategies, along with on-going assessments and reflections, constituted the expert teachers ’ schemata, which in turn increased their skills in processing information in the unpredictable classroom world and led to their expertise in reading instruction. Four major themes that elaborate the expert teachers ’ cognitive processes in teaching are: (a) network of teachers ’ BAK (beliefs, assumptions, and knowledge), (b) mental representation and information-processing, (c) schemata about students, and (d) knowledge-in-action. Although the results may not be generalizable to other teachers, they provide a holistic understanding of and fruitful insights for reading instruction