Using pedagogical reasoning to explicate expert practice that aligns with national teaching standards

Standards and accountability are being used to measure and judge teachers, thus the ability to determine pedagogical expertise is increasingly important. Standards alone give little about the teacher reasoning and expertise required to demonstrate them. This project will research how pedagogical reasoning (PR) can be used to understand expert teachers' professional knowledge, to offer richer ways of interpreting and using Standards in judging expertise in practice. We intend to map the PR of science teachers whose pedagogy generates deep understandings and high levels of engagement onto the Standards and research how to represent the outcomes to provide others with scaffolds and expertise to make the Standards meaningful in daily practice.