Berliner's research strategy was to study the routines of expert teachers vs. novice teachers to observe and understand how their behaviors differ. Specifically, his research utilized observational and correlational data measures which determined that teachers who began their mathematics classes with an opening homework review showed to be higher effective teaching achievement. Through the micro-analysis of an opening homework review task performed with expert and novice teachers, Berliner is able to illustrate some very interesting points about experts' internal schemata. Experts have more developed internal schemata for teaching. Experts make more inferences while non-experts views problems more literally.
Experts classify teaching problems based on deeper structures rather than surface structures.
Experts are quicker to recognize and identify patterns. Experts can represent problems and solve them using more sophisticated strategies. For example, experts will spend more time examining a problem, building a mental model, and mentally working through the initial stages of strategy planning than will a novice. Experts are more opportunistic planners. In the classroom, this translates into a better learning environment for the students with an expert whose instructional strategies are said to fail 1 out of every 5 tries.