Expertise in work life and education

EXPERTISE IN WORK LIFE AND EDUCATION

Pirkko Hyvönen Post doc research fellow

University of OuluEducational Sciences and Teacher Education

LET (learning and Educational Technology Research Team)[email protected]

CONTENT

• Two types of expertise: routine and adaptive

• Expertise in work life: what is it like in different fields?

• Expertise in higher education: How to learn adaptive expertise?

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12.04.2023 [email protected] 3

YOUR TASK

In the end of the lecture, draw conclusions. At least three main points.

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

EXPERTS and EXPERIENCED NON-EXPERTS (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993)

Career may conform merely to the routines, not advancing expertise and problem-solving.

EXPERTS and novices

Which kind of expertise is valued and aimed; and how to design learning processes, evaluations, learning outcomes and instructions.

ROUTINE EXPERTS Everyday skills, routines, are developed in familiar environments and in familiar tasks. Routine experts can develop their accuracy and fluency.

ADAPTIVE EXPERTSSet 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!

ROUTINE EXPERTS:Acting and dealing with problems

Surface level perceptions Do not see hidden messages, do not see

problems Weak skills to solve new problems, but can

solve familiar problems. See one suitable way to solve problems Want to solve the problem quickly, and move

to next tasks. Sparce knowledge base -> may think quickly Mainly procedural knowledge When situation unexpectably changes,

efficiency decreases, because they try to solve problem by imitating familiar solutions that are not suitable for the situation.

Do not learn in problem-solving

Routine experts are competent to solve problems that are

familiar and expected.

Name some concrete situations or problem-solving processes in work

life (choose domain), where

routine expertise is useful.

ADAPTIVE EXPERTSHoloyok: truly expert, Bransford: competencies plus

Make perceptions of problem and its context; dissect various different perspectives

See a problem as an opportunity to learn, learn in problem-solving and produce new knowledge same time

Classify, label, analyse problems Perceive patterns and differencies Start to organise problem around central concepts

or idea Ponder forward, theoretical reasoning Dence knowledge base thinking may take time Think and identify novel solutions and possibilities Strong conceptual understanding Flexible in using knowledge Evidence-based argumentation

Name some concrete situations or problem-solving processes in work

life (choose domain), where

adaptive expertise is useful.

Adaptive experts are competent to

solve problems that are novel and unexpected

EXPERTISE IN WORK LIFE(Hyvönen, Impiö & Järvelä, submitted)

Expertise is commonly valued phenomena; it is also recognised as an essential competence in contemporary work life.

Individuals need more and more tackle with problems and tasks that require adaptive expertise.

let.oulu.fi / [email protected]

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. They are key persons in their field. They are considered as more competent than other people in

the field. They have a long career and high education. They are skillful and successful learners. 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, submitted)



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

- Tacit knowledge- Multifaceted domains

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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

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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, sub; Tsui, 2009)

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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 knowledge5) Dealing with time, motivation, prioritization and overlapping tasks

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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

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Problematize unproblematic (Glaser & Chi, 1988; Tsui, 2009)



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.

(Hyvönen, Impiö & Järvelä, 2010) 15

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

1. Help students to understand their own processes of knowing and problem-solving! (Collaborative problems-solving method and expert profiles)

2. Help novices to expand knowledge and understanding in the areas of their interests (Islands of expertise)

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

1. EXPERT PROFILES Monitoring, documenting and reflecting learning

experiences, and writing expert profile along studies.(Bransford, 2001; Brophy, Hodge, & Bransford,

2004; Crawford, 2007; Hatano & Inagagi, 1986)

2. COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING METHOD Theoretical basis is in expert studies, collaborative learning and

self-regulated learning. Learning of adaptive expertise requires several cycles of

problem-solving processes Problem-solving processes are long-lasting Problem-solving includes knowledge construction, self-regulation

and expert performance

COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING METHOD

Problems

are authentic cases from work life; they are not as in work life, but real assignments are new for the individualsare open: ill-structured and messy, where multiple solutions are possible.

Examples of open problems

Elektrobit (EB) 2010 (Six different open problems)

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? Heiss, Janice J. (2007)

2. Motivation and managers Managers face questions and situations that are linked to 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?

http://java.sun.com/features/authors.html

Business Kitchen (2012)Environment for creative collaboration was needed.

Pudasjärvi (2009)Pudasjärvi is sparcely populated municipal, where politicians decided to close many of the schools. That caused even 2-hours bus trip for school children to get from home to the nearest school.

http://www.businesskitchen.fi/blog/

COLLABORATIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING METHOD

Approaching the problem①What is the core of the problem? Explore, learn about the

problem; analyse and define it. ②What is the context of the problem? You need to understand

the context of the problem. Find information adequately.③What do you need to know about the problem? Learn more

about the problem – core concepts, reseach-based approach.

Useful questions: What do you know about the problem and what more you need to know/define in order to solve the challenge? (Brophy et al., 2004)

How do you know what you know? (Explaining) (Calin, Jagerman, & Ratner, 2005)

Is some previous situation similar to this? What is common? Explain why it works.What are the next steps: goals and strategies?


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3

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1. GROUP FORMATION

Common grounding- Knowing each others- Strengths of the

groups- Norms and policies

Expert- Socio-emotional

challenges- Commitment,

participation- Recognise expertise

Creative collaboration:Athmosphere: egual, thrustworthyPower-relations: not disturbing by causing anxiety or fear


2. NEED / PROBLEM - Explore widely problem space:

discuss and analyse various needs/challenges/problems, where new solutions, change, or processes are needed

- Use various brainstorming methods: shared drawing, maps etc.

- Allow playfulness and creativity: atypical thinking, funny ideas, weird associations

- Creative collaboration: creativity/playfulness integrated to analytical and practical thinking

Expert- Perceptions of

context and problem- Various perspective- Hypotheses- Organisation of

elements of problem around central concepts

- Categorisation of knowledge

- Decisions and groundings for them


3. DEFINING THE PROBLEM / GOAL SETTING

- After analysing and understanding the problem space, group defines exactly the problem, for which they start to look for solutions. Various hypotheses will be discussed. - Transfer: what we already know from previous experiences?- Group states aims and actions on how to proceed in order to find solutions.

Expert- What we already

know about the problem?

- What perspectives are important to explore?

- What resources we need, what kind of expertise we need to work with us?

- How this problem-solving case resembles previous experiences of problem-solving cases?

- How do we proceed from now?


4. UNDERSTANDING and DESCRIBING THE CONTEXT

- Group looks for information about the context using different recourses, eg., scientific articles, other documents and communities.

- They deal and construct knowledge together.

Expert- Distinguishes

relevant knowledge from non-relevant.

- Monitor and reflect constantly: actions, goals, socio-emotional climate, understanding


5. BUILDING NEW SOLUTION and DEFINING NEW OPERATIONS MODEL

- Group keeps on looking for relevant knowledge in order to find the best solution to the problem at hand.

Earlier studies, discussions with other experts (transferable knowledge about similar problems).Ponder causative relations, test various alternatives, use different methods.

Expert- Uses research-based methods:

adopts newest knowledge about how people learn.

- Takes risks, be creative and innovative.

- Combines theory with practice.

- Adapts to changing situations.- Uses various strategies,

methods and approaches- Uses various recourses- Constructs new

knowledge.


6. DISPLAYING RESULTS

Expert- “Answers” for the

problem- Groundings

Photo: N. Impiö

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


CONCLUSIONSDrawn by the students

Adaptive and routine expertise are two types of expertise.They approach and define problems differentetly, adaptive

experts more in detail.Adaptive experts look forward and backwards in their

learning. Adaptive experts see problems as challenges.

In work life, tools for collaborative learning are needed.Combining playfulness with analytical and critical thinking is

important.Creativity is important in problem-solving.

The only ’routine’ for adaptive experts is a continuous change of situations.

Being experienced does not necessasarily mean being an expertise.


THANK YOU!

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Expertise in work life and education

Education

adaptive expertise

routine expertise

path of expertise

adaptive experts holoyok

types of expertise bransford

domainspecific expertise

familiar problems

noviceswhich kind of