Trends in expertise studies in the domain of teaching

Education permeates the entire society and without doubt what teachers do matters. Therefore, it is no surprise that researchers, practitioners, and policy makers share an interest in understanding outstanding performance and are eager to learn more about possibilities to support expertise development in the domain of teaching. Since the very beginning, expertise research is intrigued by the extraordinary cognitive processing of experts. In this contribution, we revisit the roots of expertise research and identify challenges when transferring this paradigm to the teaching profession. A literature review including 40 empirical studies is presented aiming at providing a historical overview and identifying trends in expertise research. Several commonalities, systematic differences and trends are apparent regarding the selection of participant groups, the role of the domain, the authenticity of setting and task, macro- and micro-level measurement, the development of tools and methods, and dynamics in research goals including merging of research paradigms. The discussion of the findings includes a plea for future directions of expertise research.