Resilience to Change- Expert Blind Spot Among Preservice

and Inservice Teachers: Beliefs About Algebraic Reasoning

and Potential Impact on Engineering Education

ANTHONY J. PETROSINO

Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The University of Texas at Austin, 1 University

Station, Mail Stop D5700, Austin, Texas 78712-0382

Email: ajpetrosino@austin.utexas.edu

PRATEEK SHEKHAR

Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Michigan

Email: pshekhar@utexas.edu

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Introduction
Engineering education has received growing interest and attention among K-12 education
researchers (DeGrazia, Sullivan, Carlson, & Carlson, 2001; Lou, Chung, Dzan, Tseng, & Shih,
2013; Lou, Liu, Shih, Chuang, & Tseng, 2011; Poole, DeGrazia, & Sullivan, 2001; Zastavker,
Crisman, Jeunnette, & Tilley, 2006). Reports from policy makers, education researchers and
research councils have emphasized the importance of engineering as a platform for improving K-
12 STEM education (Moskal et al., 2007; National Academy of Engineering, 2009; Rogers,
Wendell, & Foster, 2010; Schweingruber, Keller, & Quinn, 2012; Zeid, Chin, Duggan, &
Kamarathi, 2014). Consequently, several engineering based curricular initiatives have been
implemented at the pre-college level (Brophy, Klein, Portsmore, & Rogers, 2008).
Graduates from science and engineering backgrounds are often recruited as math teachers to
overcome the shortage of teachers in STEM fields (Grier & Johnston, 2009). Teachers with
expert-level content knowledge might not be able to teach effectively in their area of expertise
(Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). Researchers have argued that as experts in a domain we
are often poor judges of what is difficult and challenging for learners (Koedinger, 1998, p. 2). In
other words, this expert blind spot (EBS) can hinder the effectiveness of instruction in the
classroom, especially in areas that students find challenging. More formally, the expert blind spot
is the inability to perceive or predict the difficulties that novices experience as they learn a new
domain, where that inability is attributable to teachers highly-developed content knowledge.
One implication of the EPS in the to tendency rely on the structure of the domain as central
organizing structure for instruction rather than an empirical understanding of students prior
knowledge, propensities and developmental processes (Nathan and Petrosino, 2003). In this
study, we examine EBS among teaching training program participants with high content
knowledge and experience in teaching.
An important aim of engineering education is to develop engineers who can solve problems
(Jonassen, Strobel, & Lee, 2006). Undergraduate engineering programs often require one or two
years of mathematics before allowing students to take engineering courses. K-12 engineering
education has the acumen to improve college readiness for all fields and improve math and
science performance across the board (Carr, Bennett, & Strobel, 2012, p. 559). Conforming
with the recommendations for educating the engineer of 2020 report (National Academy of
Engineering, 2004, 2005), the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) has
included for ability to identify, formulate, and solve engineering problems and apply
knowledge of mathematics, science and engineering in its assessment criteria (ABET, 2012).
Mathematical modeling plays a crucial role in the problem solving process and is an integral
component of engineering practice (DiefesDux, Zawojewski, Hjalmarson, & Cardella, 2012).
To develop representation and experimentation skills, the National Academy of Engineering
(NAE) has recommended that students need to be engaged in iterative modeling and design at
the K-12 level (Rogers et al., 2010). Algebra in particular plays an important role in modeling by
allowing students to express functional relationships efficiently (Kalchman & Koedinger, 2005).

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Researchers have advocated that math curricula should develop in students the ability to
represent algebraic functions in a variety of ways and fluency in moving among multiple
representations of functions (Kalchman & Koedinger, 2005, p. 353). The use of mathematical
representations is a critical aspect of modeling that students find challenging (Singer, Nielsen, &
Schweingruber, 2012). Students often find several aspects of the content challenging that may
seem obvious to their content-expert teachers (Singer et al., 2012). Researchers in both
engineering and math education have emphasized the importance of addressing challenges faced
by students while using mathematical representations (Eisner, 1997; Grard, 1998; Goldin, 2000;
Juhl & Lindegaard, 2013; Lehrer & Lesh, 2003; Moore, Miller, Lesh, Stohlmann, & Kim, 2013).
In summary, while engineering inspired curricula assists in improving K-12 math education
(Moskal et al., 2007), a strong pre-college math education aids in instilling skills needed in
engineering graduates (Carr et al., 2012). This reciprocity underscores the NAEs calls for further
research investigating the cognitive and pedagogical implications of educational reforms in K-12
education. Effective systemic reforms requires training of both in-service and pre-service
teachers (Rogers et al., 2010). Researchers have highlighted expert blind spot can cause
hindrance while teaching content that students find challenging (Singer et al., 2012). Existing
research has reiterated the importance of addressing the challenging aspects of teaching
mathematical representations in K-12 and undergraduate engineering education (Lehrer & Lesh,
2003; Moore et al., 2013). In this article, we report the findings of our study examining expert
blind spot among pre-service and in-service teachers engaged in a teacher training program for
algebraic representational problems.

Literature Review

Expert Blind spot

Subject matter expertise is critical for effective teaching and learning (Borko et al., 1992;
Shulman, 1986; Vygotsky, 1978). However, such expertise may lead to disadvantages in
teaching, where in the teachers are not be able to correctly identify areas of content that students
find easy or difficult to learn (Bransford et al., 1999; Koedinger, 1998; Singer et al., 2012; Wiley,
1998). Nathan and Petrosino (2003) describe this inability as expert blind spot (EBS) and argue
that well-developed subject matter knowledge can lead people to assume that learning should
follow the structure of the subject-matter domain rather than the learning needs and
developmental profiles of novices (p. 3). EBS often occurs due to experts long term experience
within a narrow field of expertise (Chase & Simon, 1973; Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996). EBS
hypothesizes that teachers subject matter expertise obscures them from knowing how their
novice students learn and develop understanding of the taught content (Nathan & Koedinger,
2000a, 2000b; Nathan, Koedinger, & Alibali, 2001).
The expert-novice paradigm suggests the existence of variations in experts and novices
knowledge organization, perception and problem solving processes (Chase & Simon, 1973; Chi,
Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981). For example, from the perspective of the experts, jargon and
shorthand phrases permit easy and efficient communications; to the novice they are often off-
putting barriers to understanding (Wiggins, McTighe, Kiernan, & Frost, 1998, p. 139). Teachers

3
are often entrenched in the rigid behaviors that come along with exposure to the automated
processes of their disciplines (Nathan & Petrosino, 2003). This might lead to misjudgment of
novices learning processes by experts and hinder the effectiveness of classroom instruction.
Thus, it is important for teachers to possess both content knowledge and the ability to effectively
teach content to novice learners. Shulman (1987) refers to this ability as pedagogical content
knowledge to describe the blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how
particular topics, problems, or issues are organized, represented and adapted to the diverse
interests and abilities of learners for instruction (p. 8). Teacher training and teacher education
programs offer a platform for imparting pedagogical content knowledge. While content
knowledge is an important prerequisite for its development, pedagogical content knowledge
develops independently out of classroom teaching experiences (van Driel, Verloop, & de Vos,
1998). The lack of pedagogical content knowledge can lead to EBS among teachers, limiting
their ability to effectively teach content to novice students.
Expert Blind Spot in Algebraic Problems
Students tend to solve verbal problems easily often by using informal solution methods when
compared to solving symbolic problems (Koedinger & Nathan, 2004). In other words, students
often hold a verbal precedence view (VPV) in which they find verbally presented story problems
easier to solve than symbolic problems (Koedinger, Alibali, & Nathan, 2008; Koedinger &
Nathan, 2004; Nathan & Koedinger, 2000b; Nathan, Stephens, Masarik, Alibali, & Koedinger,
2002).

On the other hand, researchers have reported that teachers often hold a symbol precedence view
(SPV) of student mathematical development, in which symbolic problems preceded verbal
problems on the order of difficulty (Nathan & Koedinger, 2000b; Nathan et al., 2001). In one
such study, Nathan and Koedinger (2000b) asked 105 teachers to perform a ranking task
indicating their expectations about problem solving difficulties for their students for a set of math
problems. The findings confirmed EBS among the participants in which they reported that
preference for SPV over VPV. In another study, Nathan and Petrosino (2003) examined EBS
among 48 pre-service teachers engaged in teacher education program. The findings confirmed
EBS and reported that teachers with higher content knowledge held a SPV towards algebraic
problem solving.

High school mathematics teachers often place more emphasis on symbolic notation than verbal
representations for algebraic problem solving (Nathan & Koedinger, 2000a; Nathan et al., 2001;
Nathan & Petrosino, 2003). In addition, high school teachers often conform to the notion that
students should be taught to solve verbal problems after they have mastered symbolic problems
and use of algebra for solving verbal story problems is more effective than student generated
informal solution strategies such as guessing and testing (Nathan & Koedinger, 2000b). This is
because mathematics teachers with high content knowledge view symbolic reasoning as a
prerequisite for understanding the more difficult verbal applications.

This mismatch between students learning processes (VPV) and teachers held perceptions (SPV)
might lead to ineffective classroom instruction for algebraic courses thus impacting the potential
pool of engineering students. Researchers have noted that such perceptions are likely to be

4
informed by several sources, including but not limited to teacher education and professional
development programs (Nathan, Long, & Alibali, 2002). Furthermore, it is reasonable to argue
that teachers perceptions might vary based on their teaching experiences. Recent STEM
integration efforts has fuelled participation of both in-service and pre-service teachers in teacher
education programs.

While it is imperative to align instructional design with novice students learning needs for
effective teaching (Wiggins et al., 1998), limited research attention has been given to examining
EBS among K-12 STEM teachers. Guided by existing literature (Nathan et al., 2001; Nathan &
Petrosino, 2003), this study extends prior work on expert blind spot. In this study, we examine
the differences in teachers held perceptions about algebraic representational problems between
pre-service and in-service teachers participating in a teacher education program.

Methodology

The participants in the study were STEM content majors who were also pre-service (n=82) and
in-service (n=39) secondary teachers enrolled in a nationally acclaimed teacher education
program at a large research university in the US. In addition to teacher certification, the pre-
service teachers were concurrently earning degrees in mathematics or science from the
universitys college of natural sciences. The in-service teachers taught science, technology
engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM) and were enrolled in either a Summer Institute or
Masters Program in STEM education and had a major in a STEM discipline as part of
acceptance to the Summer Institute or Masters Program. The three cohorts of pre-service
teachers (A: n=42, B: n=20 and C: n=20), and in-service teachers (A: n=19, B: n=12, and C:
n=8) performed a ranking task where they ranked six problems in accordance with the ease or
difficulty that students enrolled in beginner level algebra course would experience when solving
them. These problems were representative of a broader set of problems that are typically given to
public school students at the end of an Algebra 1 course. The problems were categorized as being
a story, word, or symbolic problem. However, the participants were not made aware of the
categorization. Table 1 presents the problems included in the ranking task.
Table 1: Ranking task problems
Probl Problem Statement Varia Probl
em ble em
Numb Type
er
1 (68.36 25) /4 = P Last Symbo
lic
2 Starting with 68.36, if I subtract 25 and then divide by Last Word
4, I get a number. What is it?
3 After buying a basketball with her daughters, Ms. Jordan Last Story
multiplied the amount each daughter had paid by 4
(because all 4 sisters paid the same amount). Then Ms.
Jordan added the $25 she contributed and found the

5
 total cost of the ball to be $68.36. How much did each
daughter pay?
4 Solve for D: D x 4 + 25 = 68.36 First Symbo
lic
5 Starting with some number, if I multiply it by 4 and then First Word
add 25, I get 68.36. What number did I start with?
6 After buying a basketball with her four daughters, Ms. First Story
Jordan took the $68.36 they all paid and subtracted out
the $25 she contributed. She then divided the
remaining amount by 4 to see how much each daughter
contributed. How much did each daughter pay?

In addition, an open-ended question asked a representative subset of the

participants about their assumptions and explanations behind their indicated
rankings. The open-ended responses were coded according to themes by three
independent coders, with an 89% agreement between independently generated
codes.

Findings and Discussion

Problem Difficulty Ranking
A two-step procedure was followed to determine the rank for each of the six problems. First, the
mean of assigned ranks by participants in a cohort were calculated for each problem. Second,
based on the calculated mean scores, a rank was assigned to each problem with rank 1 assigned
to the problem with lowest mean score and rank 6 assigned to the problem with highest mean
score. This procedure was repeated for each of the six cohorts. The mean scores and assigned
rank for the problems are reported in Table 2.
Table 2: Difficulty ranking of algebra problems by Pre-service and In-
service teachers: 1 = easiest; 6 = most difficult (Mean scores in
parenthesis)

Pre- Pre- Pre- In- In- In-

Service Service Service Service Service Service
A B C A B C
(n = 42) (n = 20) (n = 20) (n = 19) (n =12) (n = 8)
1 (68.36 25) /4 = P 1 1 1 1 1 1
(1.7) (1.5) (1.8) (1.8) (1.7) (1.3)
2 Starting with 68.36, if I 2 2 3 2 2 3
subtract 25 and then (2.7) (2.1) (3.0) (2.3) (2.1) (3.0)
divide by 4, I get a
number. What is it?
3 After buying a basketball 5 4 5 4 4 4

6
 with her daughters, Ms. (4.0) (3.6) (4.4) (3.7) (3.9) (4.1)
Jordan multiplied the
amount each daughter
had paid by 4 (because
all 4 sisters paid the
same amount). Then Ms.
Jordan added the $25
she contributed and
found the total cost of
the ball to be $68.36.
How much did each
daughter pay?
4 Solve for D: D x 4 + 25 = 3 3 2 3 3 2
68.36 (3.3) (3.3) (2.3) (3.1) (3.4) (2.5)
5 Starting with some 4 5 4 5 5 5
number, if I multiply it by (3.9) (4.2) (4.1) (4.3) (4.2) (4.4)
4 and then add 25, I get
68.36. What number did I
start with?
6 After buying a basketball 6 6 6 6 6 6
with her four daughters, (5.2) (5.3) (5.5) (5.1) (5..3) (5.3)
Ms. Jordan took the
$68.36 they all paid and
subtracted out the $25
she contributed. She
then divided the
remaining amount by 4
to see how much each
daughter contributed.
How much did each
daughter pay?

Although variations in ranking were noted between the cohorts, several commonalities were
noted in the ranking patterns between the six cohorts. First, the Problem 1 (Symbolic Problem)
was consistently recognized as the easiest and Problem 6 (Story Problem) was recognized as the
most difficult. Second, story problems (Problem 3 and 6) were identified as the top three most
difficult problems by all cohorts. Third, symbolic problems (Problem 1 and 4) consistently
ranked lower when compared to story problems. Overall, all cohorts ranked problems 1, 2, and 4
as the three easiest and 3, 5, and 6 as the three most difficult for the students to solve. Thus, the
participants across the six cohorts held a symbol precedence view in which symbolic problems
preceded story problems on the order of perceived difficulty (Table 3) for novice learners
(students).
Table 3: Ordinal sequence of difficulty rankings
Cohort Difficulty Ranking (Order Symbol Precedence View

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 of questions from easiest to
most difficult)
Preservice A 124536 Present
Preservice B 124356 Present
Preservice C 142536 Present
Inservice A 124356 Present
Inservice B 124356 Present
Inservice C 124356 Present
*Items in bold indicate symbolic problems
Comparison of in-service and preservice
Independent sample t-tests are used to test whether there are statistically significant differences
between sample means from two groups with participants representing different conditions
(Fang, 2011). An independent-samples t-test was conducted to test whether there were
significant differences in the mean rank scores between in-service and pre-service teachers for
each of six algebraic problems. The results indicated that there were no significant differences in
the mean scores between pre-service and in-service teachers for all of the six ranking task
problems. Simply stated, both pre-service and in-service teachers perceived that students
enrolled in beginner level algebra would solve Problem 1 most easily. Similarly, for Problems 2
(Word), 3 (Story), 4 (Symbolic), 5 (Word), and 6 Story there was no significant difference in the
scores for pre-service and in-service conditions.
There was no significant difference between preservice and inservice teachers rank order on
pretest. These results suggest that teaching experience does not have an effect on the perceptions
of symbolic/word problem difficulty.

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Figure 1; Variation of Preservice and In Service Teachers

Comparison with Prior Work

In other words, the results of ranking tasks indicated that the participants did not differ
significantly and therefore years of experience of being a teacher or being recognized as a quality
teacher, did not produce any significant differences between pre-service and in-service teachers.
In addition, minimal variations were noted in the ranking patterns of pre-service and in-service
teachers (see Figure 1). The overall pattern of these results are consistent with the empirical
findings described in Nathan, Koedinger, and Alibali (2001), Nathan and Koedinger (2000), and
Koedinger and Nathan (1999), who found that teachers often think that students have more
difficulty solving story problems than symbolic problems. This indicates that teaching
experience has little or no effect on expert blind spot. Table 3 summarizes the difficulty rankings
for the six participating cohorts.

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Comparison of Rankings
Based on the experts rank order of the 6 questions, 1-2-4-3-5-6, the rank orders of the
respondents were evaluated. Each question of the order got 1 point when the question is placed
on the right rank or adjacent to it. For example, when a respondents rank order is 1-3-2-4-5-6, he
gets 5 points. He gets 3 points because question #1, #5, and #6 are on the right place. He gets
additional 1 point because question #2 is in the 3rd place which is supposed to be in 2nd place.
Likewise, he gets 1 more point because of question #4. However, he does not get a point for
question #3 which is supposed to be in 4th place because he ranks it as 2nd easiest question.
These scores have been compared between inservice and preservice teachers in Table 5.
Table 5: Independent sample t-test results between pre and in-service teachers.

Mean (sd)
t df Sig.
Preservice Inservice
Pre-test 4.98 (1.12) 4.61 (1.62) 1.462 119 .146

Post-test 4.73 (1.47) 5.03 (1.00) 1.152 119 .251

Average 4.85 (1.09) 4.73 (1.41) 1.069 119 .287

p>.05

There is no significant difference between preservice and inservice teachers rank order on any of
the 6 problems.
Open Ended Questions on Symbolic, Word, and Story Algebra Problems
A random subset of the original groups were utilized to analyze open ended questions.
Preservice (n= 38) and In-service (n= 26) teachers were given a series of open response
questions where they were asked to discuss their rankings. Responses were transcribed and
coded by 3 independent researchers using data reduction techniques. Four themes emerged from
the responses that were most relevant to our investigation of whether there is any significant
difference between pre and in service teachers on perceived difficulty of algebra problems for
their students (see Table 6). These qualitative results were than quantified (Chi, 1997) and
analyzed statistically for statistical significance.

Table 6: Open Ended Questions on Symbolic, Word, and Story Algebra Problems

Theme Preservice Inservice

(n=38) (n=25)
1. Word/story problems are more difficult for students 72% 62%

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 2. Lengthy story problems are more difficult for 23% 31%
students
3. Starting with the unknown is more challenging for 13% 15%
students
4. Setting up equations/translating words into 31% 35%
equations is challenging for students

An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare whether perceptions of word/story

problems are more difficult for students in preservice and inservice conditions. There was no
significant difference in the scores for preservice (M=.717, SD=.455) and in service (M=.615,
SD=0.496) conditions; t (61)=.8541, p = 0.3963. These results suggest that teaching experience
does not have an effect on perceptions of word/story problem difficulty for students by pre or
inservice teachers.
An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare perceptions of whether lengthy story
problems are more difficult for students in preservice and inservice conditions. There was no
significant difference in the scores for preserive (M=.2307, SD=..4268) and in service (M=.333,
SD=0.481) conditions; t (61)=.9022, p = 0.3704. These results suggest that teaching experience
does not have an effect on perceptions of whether lengthy story problems are more difficult for
students by pre or inservice teachers.
An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare perceptions by preservice and
inservice teachers of whether starting with an unknown value is more difficult for students. There
was no significant difference in the scores for preserive (M=.125, SD=.3349) and in service
(M=.15385, SD=0.3679) conditions; t (61)=.3271, p = 0.7447. These results suggest that
teaching experience does not have an effect on perceptions of whether starting with an unknown
value is more difficult for students by pre or inservice teachers.
An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare perceptions by preservice and
inservice teachers of whether translating words into equations is challenging for students. There
was no significant difference in the scores for preserive (M= .300, SD=.4641) and in service
(M=.3460, SD=0.4850) conditions; t (61)=.3845, p = 0.7019. These results suggest that teaching
experience does not have an effect on perceptions of whether starting with an unknown value is
more difficult for students by pre or inservice teachers.
In summary, an open ended qualitative analysis was conducted on a sample of the original
groups and it was found that there was no statistical difference between the preservice and
inservice teachers on whether high school students found word or story problems more difficult,
that lengthly story problems are more difficult, that starting with an unknown is more
challenging or that setting up words into equations is challenging for students.

DISCUSSION

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So what might be a possible explanation for the apparent resilience of teachers?
After all, the pre-service and in-service teachers involved in this study all came from
a nationally recognized teacher education program in existence for over 20 years
and with multiple grants from funding agencies and peer-reviewed published
research on findings from the program. Moreover, the instructors of these students
were mostly tenure line research faculty from a top ten Education College and a
world class university? The curriculum emphasizes disciplinary content as well as
the latest research from the learning sciences. We are told that problem solving is
better than rout teaching (REF- LTC?). Teachers are also told that contextualization
facilitates problem solving in algebra (Candace ref, LTC), and teachers are told that
verbal contexts brings in prior knowledge about reasoning (REF). But when you look
at teacher data from the present study as well as others (REFs), it seems there has
been an ability to parrot professional standards and rhetoric thus telling
interviewers and instructors that equations are going to be more difficult for
students to solve but in the ranking task teacher PCK reveals their expert blind
spot when they see equations (and THEY see them as easy) and see story problems
they think it is harder because it is more work for the students.

Future and current teachers with advanced mathematics education predicted

algebra students to be best at solving equations and much less successful at
correctly solving story problems with similar underlying mathematical relationships,
even though prior research show that student exhibit the opposite pattern (Nathan
and Petrosino, 2003). On the basis of these and other findings with practicing
teachers (Nathan & Koedinger, 2000), it appears that educators with more
advanced subject-matter knowledge have a tendency to view student development
through a domain-specific lens and ultimately make instructional decisions about
student problem-solving performance and domain specific development in
mathematics that differ from actual performance in predictable ways.
The current study replicates and extends previous results by showing that the
tendency for educators with high mathematics knowledge to conceptualize
mathematics development as following a symbol-precedence pathway is evident
among preservice and inservice teachers regardless of their affiliation with
secondary mathematics or influences from within-school settings such as choice of
curriculum or exposure to reform orientated curriculum focused specifically on how
people learn. Current evidence, now both statistical and qualitative in nature,
supports and extends the EBS hypothesis that it is well-developed subject matter
knowledge specifically that leads high content knowledge preservice and inservice
educators to inaccurately predict student problem-solving difficulty.
The results of this and other studies (refs) are ideally considered in the context of a
line of research that examines the influences of our prior knowledge on our
judgments of learner difficulty in Algebra specifically and possible in other domains
more generally.
Camerer, Loewenstein, & Weber (1989) talk about the "curse of knowledge" and
show that adults and children who know the solution to a problem tend to

12
overestimate how easy it is for someone else to solve that problem. Birch and
Bloom (2007) also talk about the Curse of Knowledge as phenomenon in which
adults are biased towards their own knowledge when attempting to evaluate the
views of a more nave individual. Ryskin and Brown-Schmidt (2014) point out the
difficulty in making valid judgments of a learner comes from an inability to set aside
ones own egocentric knowledge of reality when reasoning about anothers false
beliefs. Birch and Bloom (2007) draw two conclusions from their findings: First,
egocentric knowledge compromises adults ability to reason about another persons
false beliefs. Second, plausibility determines whether adults will suffer from the
curse of knowledge; simply having private knowledge that is not shared is not
enough to elicit the effect. These findings are of particular interest because they
suggest that adults ability to reason about mental states, in the case of this study-
algebraic reasoning- is fragile and child-like in some circumstances. Furthermore,
these findings back claims that adults are inherently egocentric (e.g.,Apperly, Back,
Samson, and France, 2008; Converse, Lin, Keysar, and Epley, 2008) and this likely
impacts instructional judgments (Nathan and Petrosino, 2003).
A related body of research considers how judgment is affected by peoples
subjective experience when they have solved a problem themselves. Kelly and
Lindsay (1993) propose that confidence in potential answers to general knowledge
questions is based in part on the ease with which those answers come to mind.
Their studies strongly suggest that easy generation of an idea during an attempt to
answer a question serves as a basis for confidence in that idea being the correct
answer. The results of Kelley and Jacoby support the hypothesis that confidence in
potential answers to general knowledge questions is based in part on the ease to
which those answers come to mind. Ease of generation is generally a reliable basis
for confidence but can also lead to easy generation of incorrect answers and
therefore to misplaced confidence as well as underestimation of difficulty for others
in solving problems.
Adults can exhibit a type of egocentrism when they rely on their own subjective
experience of the difficulty of a task to predict difficulty level for others, even when
the ease with which the problem was solved was manipulated by researchers
(Kelley & Jacoby, 1996). For example, participants' prior exposure to solutions for
scrambled words led them to rate the tasks as easier than when they had not
previously seen the unscrambled words. Faster response times and correlations
between speed and difficulty ratings implied that these participants relied largely on
impressions in making their difficulty ratings, rather than on the more deliberative,
analytical method evident among participants who judged difficulty but did not
solve the problems. Warning participants of the egocentric effect, along with
requiring them to recognize that they had previously seen some of the solution
words, eliminated the effect, leading them to use their subjective experiences less
often.
The implications of this and other findings for teacher education and professional
development are considered in a later section after we explore alternative
hypotheses.

13
Alternative Hypotheses
When evaluating the contributions of any body of work, it is critical to consider
alternative explanations other than those suggested by the EBS that could explain
these findings. One explanation is that the pre and in-service teachers base their
views on prior subjective experience in solving algebra problems. From this
perspective there is no reflection on what makes a problem difficult or easy.
Judgment is rooted in impressions of difficulty rather than thoughtful analysis of the
components of the problem or of the targeted population of students. To be sure,
Kelley and Jacoby (1996) show that subjective experience can be more accurate
than more objective or analytical approaches. This hypothesis does have some
warrant since deliberation over every instructional decision would make man
aspects of instructional decision making by teachers overwhelming to the point of
pedagogical paralysis given the enormous amount of interacting factors and
constraints of time demands.
While the subjective experience hypothesis has appeal there are also challenges it
presents as an account of the expert blind spot as well. As Nathan and Petrosino
(2003) explain, if the subjects who were strong in mathematical problem solving
were only drawing on their own experiences, symbolic equations and story
problems composed of the same quantitative relationships would be ranked at the
same difficulty level. This was not the case in Nathan and Petrosino (2003), nor in
the present study. In fact, we see story problems consistently scored as the most
difficult by those participants with greater mathematics expertise. Participants
across a number of studies and across varied grade levels of instruction, teaching
experience, and geographical location provide justifications for their rankings- a
finding inconsistent with the subjective experience hypothesis (Nathan, 2003;
Nathan and Petrosino, 2003; Nathan and Koedinger, 2000a and 2000b).
A second hypothesis hypothesis is that discipline centric views of development such
as the symbol precedence view are cultural and that the responses of the pre and in
service teachers simply echo the cultural tendency toward such views. If societal
influence was the dominant source of instructors expectations, we would not
expect to see such clear and distinct differences tied to levels of mathematics
education as reported in this study or among teachers in different grade levels as
reported previously in Nathan and Koedinger, (2000), Nathan and Petrosino (2003)
and Van Dooren, Verschaffel, and Onghena (2002).
Third, mere professional experience seems to have little to do with expert blind spot
in algebra (paragraph about this using expert-novice paradigm bringing up the issue
that simple years of experience may not be enough and it may actually be about
number of years of deliberate practice or reflective activity--- specifically on what
would make a algebra problem difficult for a novice).
Mere professional experience seems to have little to do with expert blind spot in
algebra. Perhaps more challenging, recent findings indicate that EBS may be
somewhat resilient to change. Moreover, there appears to be an inconsistency
between in service teachers explicit and tacit explanations of what problems

14
students find difficult to solve and this may be difficult to spot simply by asking
questions as part of a survey.
Finally, there appears to be an inconsistency between in service teachers explicit
and tacit explanations of what problems students find difficult to solve- may be
difficult to spot simply by asking -- supportive of the qualitative portion of the
results (see Open Ended Questions on Symbolic, Word, and Story Algebra Problems).

Conclusions/Implications
There are a number of implications for the current work. In terms of teacher education and staff
development, programs should be informed by research on pre-existing models of development
especially in the area of expertise in general (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, 1999) and
specifically in the area of the expert blind spot particularly. As we think specifically about
engineering education, we must be aware of the emphasis on advanced mathematics and the
critical role the discipline plays in the area of engineering education. Having a clearer
understanding of the EBS and the relationship between symbolic, word and story problems in
terms of instruction can better align the goals of teaching with our understanding of learning
algebra. This has the potential of scaffolding student learning better in the gateway course of
Algebra I which is so critical to further economic and professional success let alone what some
consider to be a civil right (Moses and Cobb, 2002). It is also hoped that work like this and other
research may stimulate further research of teachers implicit views of development- both their
own as well as their students.
We believe the teacher education programs must address the EBS as well as pre and in-service
teachers misconceptions about what students find difficult to learn in the area of algebra. In
terms of educational policy, is a Symbolic Presecence View (SPV) (Principles-first) the
best way to attain educational goals? We know that (a) formalisms are hard to learn
to use and do not readily generalize to applied areas; (b) Ss may draw upon
intuitions about the domain in applied areas, but not with formalisms; this is
especially important since instruction in (c) applied areas are important - and often
framed as the target of education. Finally, there are some implications for
psychology and its role in educational research. We know that teachers operate
with implicit models of student development. But we need to know what are they?
and how to they impact instruction and student outcomes. Psychology may also
assist in helping the field examine student performance from a developmental
perspective (novice to expert) and to examine curricula as cultural artifacts with
clues about implicit views of students learning and development.

FUTURE RESEARCH - Future research and policies regarding teacher preparation and
certification should take into consideration potential negative impacts of subject-
matter expertise, particularly when subject-matter expertise is emphasized over
pedagogical knowledge. Similar research should further investigate the implications
of potential Expert Blind Spots in other disciplines as well as what strategies can

15
help experts become aware of these blind spots and find ways to accommodate the
learning needs of novice students

Acknowledgment

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant
No. MSP-0831811. The opinions expressed here are those of the authors alone.
Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Anthony Petrosino at
ajpetrosino@austin.utexas.edu.

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