Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

As adults we understand that effective teachers cannot rely solely on expertise (content knowledge) in a domain, but thatteachers must also be able to efficiently communicate that knowledge to students (pedagogical skill). In three studies,we demonstrate how children fail to appropriately integrate their intuitions of expertise (Study 1) with those of under-standability (Study 2) to make coherent judgments of teacher quality (Study 3). In the context of repairing an unfamiliarmechanism, adults and children recognize that teachers should provide relevant causal information. However, children (6-and 7-year-olds and 8- and 9-year-olds) fail to acknowledge that, while jargon may indicate expertise, it is inaccessible toa student with no prior knowledge. Our data suggests that children as old as 9 years have immature conceptions of whatconstitutes great teaching. Childrens misconceptions of what characterizes good pedagogy raise questions about studentsattentional allocation in educational contexts and subsequent learning gains.