Class Planning Strategies of Expert and Novice Teachers

Teaching is an exercise in problem solving. Every moment, a teacher must consider questions of what to teach and how to teach it, based on the subject matter, the students' current understanding of the material, and new issues that students bring to the class. Teacher planning is a complex skill consisting of assembling schemas into sequences that meet specific goals, assembling these goals into sequences that will meet higher teaching objectives, and accomplishing the latter two within the constraints of the total system. Continually, teachers must balance student needs with the syllabus, while remaining "flexible, responsive, and consistent" (Leinhardt 1989).