This chapter proposes a differentiated framework for understanding teacher expertise that identifies both the most commonly reported (often shared) features of teacher expertise and those features that seem to vary more, particularly in the global South. Commonly identified features are presented as ‘generalisable’ components alongside ‘variable’ and provisional ‘Southern’ components; elements that are likely to be more commonly encountered in the South due to the frequently shared constraints, challenges and affordances resulting from lower financial investment in education and income across Southern communities. It uses the same 12 structuring categories as Chapter 9 (knowledge base, cognitive processes, beliefs, personal attributes, professionalism, interpersonal practices, languaging practices, lesson planning and preparation, balancing between structure and freedom, interaction dynamics, pedagogic strategies and assessment practices), also justifying the components included in each category briefly. It concludes by discussing a number of potential uses of the framework in teacher education, curriculum development and future expertise research.

This chapter offers a detailed ethnographic description of one of the participant teachers in the study as a concrete example of how teacher expertise may manifest itself in one of the many challenging contexts frequently found in the global South. It begins by summarising key features of her contexts and the challenges she faced in her work, also offering an overview of her personal background and her beliefs about teaching and learning. The chapter then discusses her interpersonal practices (relationships with learners) and her languaging practices – the complex ways in which she and her learners made use of resources from varied languages in the classroom. After this, I discuss how she managed curriculum content, developed resources and planned lessons before offering a detailed account of her classroom practices – how she structured lessons, balanced between whole class and learner-independent activities and offered individual support to learners in large classes. It also offers an account of her knowledge, reflection and professionalism, and closes with brief comparison of her expertise with the findings of prior expertise research, identifying both important similarities and insightful differences. Numerous lesson and interview extracts are provided to support the discussion and claims made.