ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the decisions that teachers make while planning and carrying out instruction. We assume that underlying teaching behavior are complex cognitive processes, and that planning and interactive decision making are central aspects of teacher cognition. The conception of teaching as a cognitive process has had a significant impact on the educational research community's approach to the study of teaching. This impact is attested to by the large number of studies of teachers’ thoughts, judgments, plans, and decisions conducted within the past 15 years (e.g., Clark & Peterson, 1986). However, despite the inherent appeal of this view of teachers and the recent attention it has received, Shulman (1986) contended that “little that is remarkable has emerged from these studies” (p. 24). He suggested as one reason for this problem the lack of attention to much of the cognitive psychological work of the 1970s, which uses “key terms such as schema, script, frame, metacognitive strategy, and other words to describe those mental tools or structures employed by learners to make sense of what they are being taught” (p. 25).
