Teachers’ professional experience: Solving simple and complex problems

•Novice teachers tend to use more short-term and simple responses.•Veterans use more complicated resolution plans to complicated problems.•Accumulated learning experience and novices’ errors explain differences.•Discussion: the importance of developing strategies.

What role does professional experience play in solving simple and complex problems? Fifty-eight teachers, half novice and half veteran, were presented with 4 scenarios, two depicted simple behavior problems and two depicted complex problems. Their responses to these hypothetical scenarios support the hypothesis that novice teachers use more short-term and less developed resolution plans to stop interruptions than veteran teachers; and veteran teachers suggest more complicated responses to solve scenarios of complicated problems as compared to their inexperienced colleagues. The discussion explains this difference by identifying the role of errors made by novices and the importance of strategies developed by veteran teachers.