Teaching For Expertise

There has been a lot of attention paid to the way in which experts differ from novices. This attention is not limited to the academic arena. Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller Blink chronicles the way in which experts can often make important decisions quickly and instinctively. There do seem to be, by all accounts, fundamental differences between the ways experts and novices approach problems. Furthermore, we seem to be able to identify many of the strategies an expert uses to solve such a problem. The question then becomes, how can we use what we know about experts to better education.  

Currently, most would agree, American schools do not teach with the goal of expertise in mind. This would seem reasonable, no one expects every member of a Physical Education class to be an expert volleyball player, or every high school graduate to be an expert at writing prose. However, I wonder if we as educators should begin to teach the skills of expertise during high school or even earlier.  

Not to overuse some common symbolism, but much the curriculum in America’s public schools is “a mile wide and an inch deep.” We now know that this is the exact opposite of the way in which experts construct their knowledge. Experts tend to organize their knowledge around “big ideas” within their domain. This conceptual top down thinking is the opposite of many classrooms’ focus on seemingly isolated facts and figures.  

While there are many curriculum and instructional strategies built around concept mastery, such methods are becoming less popular due to state and federal regulations. Of course what I speak of is the increased use of standardized testing throughout the year. With the mandatory use of more and more tests, schools naturally are gravitating towards methods of instruction that best ensure positive test scores. The tests seldom measure conceptual knowledge.  

So while no one expects American school’s to graduate experts out of high school, it would seem a laudable goal to produce graduates ready to pursue expertise. Of course, the top down conceptualized thinking I described earlier is only one tenant of expertise. Many of the other characteristics described in the reading seem to mirror good pedagogy.  

Pattern recognition has long been a staple of instruction. Experts notice meaningful patterns not identified by novices. Perhaps more emphasis could be placed on recognizing patterns in fields such as biology. Experts also tend to “chunk” data in order to organize it. This is also a basic tool of good teaching. However, students should also be trained to organize and chunk data on their own.  

There are many more lessons we can take from the study of experts. However, as educators we should not forget to apply these lessons when reflecting on our own practice. What is our goal as an educator? How can we best meet those goals? Those are big questions, and they will take some big ideas to answer.