An empirical model of exceptional teaching

Ideas from philosophy, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, and teacher education are molded into a description of exceptional teaching. Especially important for establishing a model of exceptional teaching is Habermas's (1970) theory of knowledge-constitutive interests. Specifically, Habermas's three knowledgeconstitutive interests (technical, practical, and emancipatory) are expected to define wisdom in teaching. By adopting technical, practical, and emancipatory knowledge as the basis for a model of exceptional teaching this study will extend some current descriptions of exceptional teaching (i.e., Berliner, 1986) that define exceptional teaching as expertise. Evidence for this conclusion stems from the results of a principal components analysis on respondents' ratings of descriptors of "wise" teaching, as compared to the results from a principal components analysis on respondents' ratings of descriptors of "expert" teaching. Wise teaching seems to involve all three of Habermas's ways of knowing, whereas, "expert" teaching involves practical and especially technical ways of knowing. Therefore, the difference between "wise" and "expert" teaching seems to be in what Habermas has called emancipatory knowing. A second set of findings supports the above findings by showing that teachers hypothesized to be closer to the prototype of a wise teacher (department heads) utilize their "wisdom" in response to two general questions about education; whereas, a sample of teachers who were not department heads and a sample of student teachers do not utilize these three ways of knowing to the same extent. The difference between the three samples of teachers was primarily in the use of emancipatory knowledge by the department heads. In a third set of findings a teacher hypothesized to be "wise" was observed to determine whether or not Habermas's three ways of knowing were evident in her teaching practice. This was found to be the case. The general conclusion from the present study is that a comprehensive description of exceptional teaching seems to be possible based upon people's everyday conceptions of what it means to be a "wise" teacher. Thus, an empirical model is provided for future research on exceptional teaching. This empirical model seems to best fit into a developmental framework based on constructivism because the essence of constructivist descriptions of exceptional teachers (e.g., Arlin, 1993; Lee, 1993; Prawat 1992) correspond closely with the present description of exceptional teachers.Education, Faculty ofEducational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department ofGraduat