HOW PROFESSIONALS LEARN AND ACQUIRE EXPERTISE

1. HOW PROFESSIONALS LEARN AND ACQUIRE EXPERTISE • Model of professionals as learners: • How professionals know • How professionals incorporate knowledge into practice • Under what conditions professionals learn best • What role prior experience plays in learning

2. Important for CPE educators • Planning CPE objectives • Learning experiences (activities) • Evaluation of CPE • A model of professionals as learners consistent with the critical viewpoint • Learning based on reflection on practice

3. COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY • Study of mind and how it functions • Based on children and with computers (AI) • Focus on acquisition of knowledge and knowledge structures • Model of learner • Learning is active, constructive, and goal-oriented process depending upon the mental activities

4. Schema theory • How acquired knowledge is organized in the mind • How cognitive structures facilitate the use of knowledge • Schemata • knowledge that we experience (interrelationships between situations and events) • Prototypes in memory of frequently experienced situations • Internal models that professionals use

5. Type of schemata • Declarative knowledge • Procedural knowledge

6. Declarative Knowledge • Knowledge that • Such as 2 + 2 = 4 • Knowledge about things • Represented in memory as an interrelated network of facts • Academic knowledge, technical rational knowledge

7. Procedural Knowledge • Knowledge know-how • Such as producing the correct sum when given an addition problem • Practical knowledge; repertoire of examples, metaphors, images, practical principles, scenarios, or rules of thumb • Developed primarily through prior experience

8. Debate about which knowledge learned first • Given or by doing? • The way a problem is posed determines the way in which it is solved

9. Learning is an active process • Educator must take into account professionals’ prior knowledge • Understanding and interpretation of the information depend on the availability of appropriate schemata • Discussion will formed new schemata • What the learner does is important

10. SCHON’S MODEL OF PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE • Based on studies of architecture, town planning, management, and organizational consulting • Can be used to analyze other professionals practices to suggest new ways of educating professionals

11. Professional knowledge • Technical Rationality (TR) • Dominant concept of professional knowledge • Knowledge as results form basic and applied research within the university setting • Each profession has a body of knowledge with four properties: specialized, firmly bounded, scientific, and standardized

12. Professionals select the appropriate information to apply in practice • No different between excellent practitioner and merely adequate one • TR can’t explains the process of professional artistry • According to Schon professional practice is characterized by turning complex situations to situations that the practitioner knows how to solve

13. Schon suggests to examine professional artistry (how practitioners actually successful in solving indeterminate zones of practice) rather than just application of research-based knowledge. • Schon suggests two form of knowing that are central to professional artistry: • Knowing-in-action (KIA) • Reflection-in-action (RIA)

14. Knowing-in-action • Knowing is in the actions of professionals • Actions are spontaneous no prior systematic thinking • Judgments and decisions made were not based on any rules or theories • This is the normal mode of practical knowledge

15. This form of knowing has three properties • 1. actions and judgments made without prior thinking about them • 2. not aware having learned to do these things • 3. cannot describe the knowledge that the action reveals

16. Professional practice are characterized by: uniqueness, uncertainty, and value conflict • KIA will not solve a particular problem • Rather, one needs to construct the situation to make it solvable • RIA is the core of professional artistry

17. Reflection-in-action • Professionals reflect in the midst of action • Their thinking reshapes what they are doing while they are doing it • The goal is to change indeterminate situations into determinate ones • The key is to bring past experience to bear on current action

18. Past experience built up a repertoire of examples, images, understandings, and actions • New situation is seeing as something already present in the repertoire • Past experience can make sense of the current situation • The problem will be looked in a new way

19. The entire process is achieved in the midst of action: • Rethink some part of KIA • Conduct an on-the-spot experiment to test its utility • Corporate this new understanding into immediate action

20. Acquisition of Professional Knowledge • RIA can generate new practical knowledge which add to the repertoire of knowledge • How RIA is acquired still open for research • RIA can occur spontaneously also but need to be reflected in order to add to the repertoire

21. RIA and Implication to CPE • CPE should combine the teaching of applied science (knowledge generated by research) with coaching in the artistry of RIA • The teaching of applied science should be based on a model of the learner • There is a need to focus directly on the acquisition of RIA

22. Formal CPE should be a place where practitioners learn to reflect on their own tacit theories • This is a repertoire-building process • Using the case method and case histories will connect university-based research and theories into practical ways of knowing • Improving professionals’ ability to RIA is the basis for professional artistry • RIA also as source of knowledge

23. RIA must be part of CPE • Professionals would reflect on the frameworks they intuitively bring to their performance • CPE facilitators would teach like coaches; explaining, demonstrating, simulation and reflecting with learners on the frameworks that underlie their work

24. Theories of Expertise in Three Professions • The nature and acquisition of expertise are consistent with the critical viewpoint • Nurses, business executives, and teachers • Studies on practical knowledge: beliefs, insights, and habits • Practical knowledge – through experience

25. Practical knowledge; time-bound and situation-specific, personally compelling, and directed toward action and it base on technical knowledge • CPE must build on what professionals already believe about their works; uncover their rule of practice, practical principles, and images that guide their practices.

26. A Model of the Learner • Value choice depends on the ends one wish to achieve • Critical viewpoint aims to improve professional artistry or the professionals’ ability to operate in the indeterminate zones of practice • Functionalist viewpoint stresses the importance of acquiring as much technical knowledge (knowledge that) to be applied to practice

27. The choice of which model of the learner must be situation-specific • Model of learner based on the critical viewpoint: • also recognize the need to learn technical knowledge • Not to be used in all situations • Should be the dominant model • To improve professional artistry

28. Two forms of knowing should be fostered through CPE: • Practical knowledge/procedural knowledge/know-how • Reflection-in-action/thinking in action/intuition/problem finding

29. Practical knowledge • Repertoire of examples, metaphors, images, practical principles, scenarios, or rules of thumb • Unique to own practice • Developed primarily through prior experience • Most professionals are not fully aware of the knowledge in their repertoires • CPE should helps them to make this knowledge explicit in order to develop new knowledge

30. Reflection-in-action • Professionals use similar skills to construct an understanding of situations both within and outside their practice • CPE strategy to foster these forms of knowing: they can be learned but cannot be taught • Cognitive psychologists: what the learner does is more important in determining what is learned that what the teacher does

31. In order to develop either kind of knowing CPE should provide experientially based methods such as case studies, coaching, discovery method, etc. • This knowledge also can be acquire through daily practice by doing research in practice • Everyday practice not necessary right • Practical knowledge must be justified on the basis of public criteria rather than private ones