1. SCORE Seminar Expert teachers in Science
Professor Peter Main

2. What is SCORE? Partnership Work includes:
IOP, RSC, RS, Society of Biology, ASE, Science Council
Work includes:
Policy, workshops, projects, conference

3. Aims Agree and define terms Recognising and assessing expertise
specialist, expert
Recognising and assessing expertise
Accrediting teachers
Recognition for accreditation
Bullet 1.
The term that has become commonly used is ‘specialist’;
however, this has become ambiguous and degraded through overly general use. We are going to suggest using the term expert. 3

4. Specialist teachers? Terms Uses specialist
person with experience beyond A-level (knowledge)
expert
Uses
Research; e.g. Smithers, NFER
Head teachers and schools
In use, specialist can mean:
Someone with a degree in the subject
- someone who has decided to teach that subject
- someone that a head teacher has designated to that role.
And it goes the other way. Some schools and teachers do not refer to specialists at all in Biology, Chemistry and Physics. Instead, on principle, they call all their teachers of the sciences, science specialists.
Smithers acknowledged the difficulty in using the term specialist.
In his fourth report, he refers to teachers with some physics experience beyond A-level. (This would apply to Biology and Chemistry as well. Let’s call this knowledge. 4

5. Specialist teachers? Specialist Knowledge -post A-level experience
Expert
But both specialist (someone designated to that subject) and knowledge beyond A-level are proxies for what we are really interested in which is expertise.
There will be some overlap between people being labelled specialist and their experience beyond A-level.
And there will be some overlap between these two and expertise.
However, the amount of overlap – or correlation – is open to debate. Because the top two are proxies.
They have the advantage that they are (relatively) easy to measure through questionnaires.
But should we not look at what we actually want to find out – which is expertise.
Or, alternatively, use sampling to find out what the correlations are between these three and then use the proxies. 5

6. Expert teachers Some recognisable descriptions Through
Engages, enthuses and inspires students
Enables learning
Through
Subject knowledge
Good pedagogical practice
Awareness of developments
Enthusiasm for and interest in subject
Breadth of knowledge
Either way, we need to have an idea of what we mean by an expert teacher. And that is one of our aims today.
These are some early thoughts – and we hope they will be developed.
We’d also like to get an idea of the balance between these different aspects. 6

7. Expert teachers But how to assess them . . . Exam results
Progression rates
Written test/diagnostic tool
Observation
Personal development plan
Our second aim is to think how we might assess expertise.
And at what stage(s) in a teachers’ career. Because teachers develop and progress. 7

8. Career progression Levels of expertise Ages taught Qualification
Qualified, accomplished, expert
Ages taught
KS3, KS4, A-level
Qualification
M-level, chartered
And they progress in (at least) three ways:
Through their career, most teachers get better at what they do. We might say they start out as Qualified teachers and develop into experts. Maybe we need an intermediate level of accomplished.
We also find that teachers will teach different age groups. So, one teacher might be an expert teacher of physics at KS3 but not have the subject knowledge or confidence to teach beyond age 16.
And finally, some teachers go on to get higher qualifications; in the past M Ed and in the future MTL. How will these (research-based) qualification relate to expertise. 8

9. Accreditation Frequency of renewal CPD (amount)
Subject knowledge/pedagogy
Making it valued
Lawyers have a ‘practising certificate’ which has to be renewed annually and requires 16 hours of CPD to enable its renewal.
Doctors are currently registered and, from 2009, will be licensed. The licence will have to be revalidated and includes a CPD element (though there are no details yet).
Should teachers have a practising certificate?
Should it need to be revalidated?
What role should CPD and expertise play in that?
All of these should take into account the need to make the accreditation valued. 9

10. Aims Agree terms Recognising and assessing expertise
Accrediting teachers
Recognition for accreditation
Returning to the aims of today . . . 10