EDUCATIONAL-PSYCHOLOGY HAS FALLEN, BUT IT CAN GET UP

Educational psychology has fallen, but it can get up. It has fallen be cause of its uncertainty, as a field, as to its own core. I argue that the core of the field ought to be in the multifaceted analysis of the teaching-learning process. A useful construct for analyzing this proc ess is that of expertise-what is it that makes for an expert teacher a nd an expert learner? Expertise is a prototype, and so in order to und erstand expertise, we need to understand the prototypes we have formed for expert teachers and students. I discuss the prototype of the expe rt teacher in terms of knowledge, efficiency, and insight; and the pro totype of the expert student in terms of the kinds of abilities that a re currently valued in schools and that we might further value. This d iscussion therefore points out that prototypes are not fixed: We can d ecide what we value, and thereby, what constitutes expertise in a give n domain.