Expert lecture 2012

EXPERT – theoretical and empirical background

Pirkko Hyvönen, pirkko.hyvonen@oulu.fi
Post-doc researher
KTK/ LET, Oulun yliopisto

AFTER THIS LECTURE
Explain, why is expertise and expert
performance important to learn in
higher education.

Describe different types of expertise
and particularly differences between
routine and adaptive expert.

Reflect, what kind of expertise is
needed in work life today.

Understand, that learning expertise
can be designed.

Pirkko Hyvönen, pirkko.hyvonen@oulu.fi
Tutkijatohtori
KTK/ LET, Oulun yliopisto

BACKGROUND
 Universities are expected to educate experts,
who are competent to excel in changing and
complex circumstances in work life, but
education does not provide competencies for
it. (Hyvönen, Impiö, Järvelä, 2010).
 LET master’s program aims to educate experts
in learning and educational technology.
 The students will be competent to work in
schools and work places and use their
expertise in adapting to changing situations,
solving problems, creating social innovations
and integrating technologies in practices.
 Education is based on LET research and it
provides a strong support for learning.
 Education is also one of the research contexts.

STEREOTYPES related to
EXPERTISE

Gender
Age Talent Expertise is more than general
Education Skills intelligence: ”Capasity to perform consistently
Objective Specialist at a superior level” (Weisberg, 2006)
truth
Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993

DEFINITIONS IN DICTIONARIES
FROM 1968-2011

1968: One who is very skillful and well-
informed in some special field (Webster)

2005: Characteristics , skills and
knowledge that distinguishes experts
from novices and less experienced people
(Wikipedia)

2011: person, who in certain domain can
recognise problems and solve them
efficiently. Expertise includes knowledge,
experiences and skills for expressing.
(Wikipedia)

DOMAIN-SPECIFIC EXPERTISE
- Informal and formal domains

Salomon (1997). Wine expertise
Norman et al. (2006). Medicine and
surgery
Durco & Dattel (2006). Transportation
Sonentag et al. (2006). Software design
Kellogg (2006). Professional writing
Ross et al. (2006). Decision making
Lehman & Gruber (2006). Music
Hodges et al. (2006). Sports
Butterworth (2006). Mathematics
Cobet & Charness (2006). Chess
Voss & Wiley (2006). History
Brennenkmeyer & Spillane (2008).
Problem-solving

TYPES OF EXPERTISE
Bransford, 2001; Bransford et al., 2000; Brophy, Hodge, & Bransford, 2004; Crawford, 2007; Hatano & Inagagi, 1986

Which kind of expertise is valued and aimed; and how to design learning
processes, evaluations, learning outcomes and instructions.
EXPERTS and experienced non-experts (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993)
Career may conform merely to the routines, not advancing expertise
and problem-solving
EXPERTS and novices
ROUTINE EXPERTS
Everyday skills, routines, are developed in familiar environments and
in familiar tasks. Routine experts can develop their accuracy and
fluency.
ADAPTIVE EXPERTS
Set of cognitive, meta-cognitive, social, and emotional strategies,
where individuals abandon ‘routine’ problem-solving strategies
Adaptive experts are more flexible, inventive, spontaneous,
encouraging and creative. They deal with novel, unexpected
situations and problems, and build knowledge at the same time. They
increase their core competencies plus and go beyond their comfort
zone!

Acting and ROUTINE EXPERTS ADAPTIVE EXPERTS
dealing with Holoyok: truly expert,
problems Bransford: competencies plus

COMPETENT TO SOLVE PROBLEMS THAT ARE COMPETENT TO SOLVE PROBLEMS THAT ARE NOVEL
FAMILIAR AND EXPECTED AND UNEXPECTED

Surface level perceptions, Make perceptions of problem and its context;
Do not see hidden messages, does not see dissect various different perspectives
problems See a problem as an opportunity to learn,
Weak skills to solve new problems, but can learn in problem-solving and produce new
solve familiar problems knowledge
See one suitable way to solve problems Classify, label, analyse problems
Want to solve the problem quickly, and move Perceive patterns and differencies
to next tasks Start to organise problem around central
Sparce knowledge base -> may think quicly concepts or idea
Mainly procedural knowledge Ponder forward, theoretical reasoning
When situation unexpectably changes, Dence knowledge base  thinking may take
efficiency decreases, because they triy to solve time
problem by imitating familiar solutions that are Think and identify novel solutions and
not suitable for the situation possibilities
Do not learn in problem-solving Strong conceptual understanding
Flexible in using knowledge
Evidence-based argumentation

EXPERTS EXCELL AND FALL SHORT (Chi, 2006)

DOMAIN-LIMITED
GENERATING THE BEST
- Have not necessarily knowledge about
- Find the best solution
other domains
DETECTION and RECOGNITION
OVERTLY CONFIDENT
- Detect and perceive features that
- eg. in music and physics
novices cannot
GLOSSING OVER
QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS
- Sometimes they overlook details
-Analyse problems, develope problem
CONTEXT-DEPENDENT WITHIN A
representations
DOMAIN
MONITORING
- Sometimes rely too much for
- Have good self-monitoring and
contextual cues
predicting skills
INFLEXIBLE
STRATEGIES
INACCURATE PREDICTION, JUDGMENT
- Use the best and effective strategies in
AND ADVICE
a given situation
- Cannot always take the perspectives of
OPPORTUNISTIC
novices
- Can use whatever sources of
BIAS AND FUNCTIONAL FIXEDNESS
information that are available
- Analyse problems in other domain
COGNITIVE EFFORT
through the priciples of their own
Can retrieve relevant domain knowledge
domain

EXPERTISE IN WORK LIFE

Informants (N=13) are experts in different formal domains

On what ground they are considered experts?
 They are in a leading and demanding position
 Key persons in their field
 Considered as more competent than other people in the field
 Long career and high education
 They consider themselves as experts
 Each of them are experts at least on two domains

”Expertise is easiest to identify when it differs most dramatically from
what ordinary people can do” (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993)

(Hyvönen, Impiö & Järvelä, 2010)

let.oulu.fi / etunimi.sukunimi@oulu.fi

 How experts define expertise?

1) Expertise is future-oriented having
a developmental and advancing
perspective. They are expected to
innovate new or re-new existing
practice, processes and products.

2) Developmental perspective and
performance is conjugated with need
of constant learning and
understanding things and processes
(Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993).
- Factual, procedural and self-
regulative knowledge
- Multifaceted domains

let.oulu.fi / etunimi.sukunimi@oulu.fi 12

3) Expertise is increasingly a social and collaborative phenomenon,
which lay both opportunities and challenges for the path of expertise.

- Opportunity: social view, collaboration and even technologies in
collaboration can enhance construction of shared expertise
- Challenge: collaboration is effective way of learning, but does not
happen easily

- Social skills, communication, use of technologies
- Learning from and with other people
- Understanding other people: without it domain-specific
expertise cannot be exploited


4) Experts
 Have a strong self-confidence, and trust on their team to develop,
create and construct new solutions
 Knows how to act rationally in certain situations
 Have sensibility to perceive situations
 Are diligent, curious, flexible, self-initiative, and modest

 Expert’s work is not automatic nor easy.
(Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993; Hyvönen, Impiö & Järvelä, 2010; Tsui,
2009)


 What are the problems like?

Situations are always complex and difficult, and you can never be fully
prepared for them. Problems in working life involves more than running
through ‘routines’.

1) Understand people and interacting with them. Problems with people are
related to communication, social interaction, shared understanding and
emotional constrains, such as envy and hostile atmospheres, which tend to
prevent developing innovations and also expertise.
2) Inadequate technical tools. Although many ICT tools are in use, there are still
lack of tools and software that solve very compound problems.
3) Decision-making problems (Johnson, 1988; Jonassen, 2007): experts at times have
to make decisions without the necessary information.
4) Sharing tacit knowledge
5) Dealing with time, motivation, prioritization and overlapping tasks



 How do the experts perform ‘routine’ and ‘adaptive’ expertise in their
work?

“There is no such thing as routines in my work.”

1) Degree of routines declines, when complexity of work and experience of
individual increases: “The more I have experience in this work, the less there
are routine cases.”
Cycle: ability to make perceptions and decisions augments  environment can
provide complexity in relation to her abilities and edge of competence

2) Creativity, insight and playfulness (see, Brophy et al., 2004; Hyvönen, 2008;
Weisberg, 2006) seems to play a role in adaptive expertise.

3) To some extend adaptive experts can adjust the complexity


 How useful education has been for
their current position?

1) Overall, formal education has not
satisfactorily provided resources for their
current work; instead, it has provided
basic general knowledge. Education is
lacking of important areas that are
needed in work life, such as
communication, negotiation and
presentation, even writing and discussing
skills were not adequately provided.

2) Only exception was education in
engineering, that has provided skills in
problem-solving and foreign languages,
which are essential in expert work.


HOW TO LEARN TO BE AN
ADAPTIVE EXPERT?
Bransford, 2001; Brophy, Hodge, & Bransford, 2004; Crawford, 2007; Hatano & Inagagi, 1986

Help students to understand their own processes of knowing and
problem-solving!

Normal learning does not provide expertise, but can lead
to ”good enough” tai ”satisfying” level.

 Normal learning can reach satisfying basic level. Then it
is possible to free mental resources in order to use them
for higher level activities (in knowledge construction, skills
and self-regulation)

Formal education produces the users of experts, but not
experts! (Geisler, 1994)

Formal education does not nesessarily produce experts,
rather experienced non-experts (Bereiter & Scardamalia,
1993)

Learning expertise is a path or journey of competence
building, including also regressions (Alexander, 2003;
Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1986; Lajoie, 2003)
Learning expertise comprices of three overlapping
dimensions:
 knowledge construction (Bransford et al, 2000;
Sawyer, 2006)
 expert-like performance (eg., Bereiter &
Scardamalia, 1993; Tynjälä, 2007)
 self-regulation (Boekaerts, Pintrich & Zeidner,
2000; Lin, Schwarz & Hatano, 2005)

 It is a transitional learning process where goals are set,
monitored, reflected and scaffolded (Lajoie, 2003)

How to learn to be an adaptive expert?

Structured collaborative problem-solving method (Hyvönen &
Impiö)

1. To establish the basis for collaborative problem solving process:
to get to know each others, to acknowledge mental resourses and to
construct common understanding of the task and underlying theories
(activating prior knowledge)
To design virtual and face-to-face phases and technological tools to be
used.
2. To understand the context of the problem, and the problem and to
define learning goals
 Problems are authentic cases from work life; they are new and ill-
structured, where multiple solutions are possible
 The core of a problem should be analysed and defined
 Reseach-based approach
3. To find possible solutions by constructing new knowledge based on the
learning sciences, but adapted to authentic work life.
4. To choose the solution and work (play) with it until the problem will be
solved


FEATURES OF THE COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM-
SOLVING METHOD
1. Problems are not as in work life, but real assignment from work
life..
2. Collaboration is enhanced all way long.
3. Working takes place as expert teams by students, work life persons
and other invited experts.
4. Evaluation, monitoring, reflection and planning are central in the
process.
5. Playfulness and creativity are encouraged to free cognitive
resources
6. Autonomy in designing blended model to work and use technologies
meaningfully (AC, Skype, GoogleDocs, mind maps etc.)
 For rich interaction
 For making thinking visible and audible
 For knowledge construction
7. Academic, research-based approach and understanding
8. The outcomes as social innovations, such as novel models to carry
on


Examples of open problems by Elektrobit (EB) 2010

1. Open Source & Developer Communities
Various developer communities are now important in
software designing. Many software adaptations are based
on open source platform (eg. Linux, Symbian, Qt, Android,
MeeGo), while various informal communities work as
developers. One temporal question is how open source
culture and joining in developer communities can be
promoted?

2. Motivation and managers
Managers face questions and situations that are linked to
Heiss, Janice J. (2007)
motivation and flow of work. In order to help managers to
coach team members they need to understand, what
motivation means and what affect to motivation. How to
increase understanding among coaching managers? How
manager could help experts to maintain their motivation
through work career?


Examples of results for problems by Elektrobit (EB) 2010
Posters and booklets

References
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Bransford, J. (2001). Thought on adaptive expertise. Retrieved June 15, 2008, from
http://www.vanth.org/docs/AdaptiveExpertise.pdf.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L. & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.) (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, and
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