ABSTRACT
Cognitive psychology provides a powerful array of methodological and theoretical tools for examining the components of teaching and the nature of the task demands. Regardless of the model of education–discovery based, facilitator, or didactic leader–the act of teaching is complex, both in the intricacy of the performance required and in the shifting nature of the cognitive activity that generates it. Quantitative and qualitative changes occur during the process of becoming an elementary or secondary teacher. All teaching requires that some level of selection and limitation be made by both silencing specific classes of goals and ignoring some incoming information. Routines help facilitate management in the classroom, the people/product-moving events of lining up, pencil sharpening, and so forth; they support actual instruction by establishing ways to display or share; and they help facilitate exchanges of knowledge, understanding, and evaluation.
