This material is really challenging for me to respond to, because, when prompted to consider my own expertise, I’m faced with a sense that I have no expertise. Perhaps this is just some effect of imposter syndrome. Regardless, I’ve always thought of myself as a jack of all trades, master of none. And it’s kind of triggering to me to consider the argument that one must become an expert to achieve personal development goals and career success. While that’s not necessarily an argument supported by the “How People Learn…” summary, I think this belief is implicit when evaluating a learner in relation to a novice-expert spectrum. However, the summary did distinguish between two kinds of expert, the routine expert and adaptive expert. Adaptive experts are able to transfer their skills/knowledge across different settings while routine experts would struggle outside of their familiar settings.
Ultimately, this reading made me contemplate the difference between breadth and depth as educational or professional goals. An expert has both breadth and depth of knowledge regarding a particular topic, but the term “expert” is still constrained to one topic or discipline. Maybe I’m missing the point, but I’m not a fan of the novice-expert continuum metaphor because it makes learning out to be a linear process, while my personal attitudes towards learning would lead me to favor a much more dimensional depiction. (Then again, maybe this is just because I’ve never reached an expert status, at least not yet, and if I had, I’d be in full agreement.) Maybe an analogy comparing knowledge to spheres rather than a continuum would be more appropriate. Perhaps an adaptive expert is an individual who performs well in new contexts because they found opportunities in which several knowledge spheres interact, even if each sphere on its own is not substantially voluminous.
The part of the summary that was the most valuable for me as a learner is the explanation of how knowledge is organized. Experts are those with a large volume of organized and conditionalized knowledge. You can attempt to organize what you are learning by making connections to preexisting knowledge. I love organizational tasks, so maybe, while I’m studying, I will imagine my brain as a filing cabinet and sort new information into files so it interacts with the other, older information in the file.
I can understand what it’s like to have an “idiosyncratic organizational scheme” which the text explains is a hallmark of the novice learner. After taking the Applied Statistics course this semester, I am familiar with the novice learning experience and the implications of working with an idiosyncratic organizational scheme. To survive this course, I learned how to look for key words in the word problems that would signal which formula to plug the numbers into. Meanwhile, my comprehension of the theory behind the formulas was close to zero. I would argue that it’s okay to take these kinds of shortcuts if it is not necessarily important for you to transfer that knowledge in the future. I predict statistics problems will not come up too often in my desired career in digital media design.
The usefulness of reflection is evident to me when I examine my studies for my electronic media tech degree. The courses are structured around completing weekly projects for which you routinely receive feedback. Because my choices were examined and questioned by my professors and peers, I would be more and mindful of my methods as I advanced. For example, one week I made an illustration of a raccoon. My professor noted that the reflections (literal reflections!) I drew in the animal’s eyes were not consistent with one another. Basically, one has to consider the “light source” in order to determine where highlights and shadows go, and the reflections in the eyes suggested two different directions of light. This is a very important part of illustration that I wasn’t giving much attention to prior. Moving forward, asking myself where the image’s light source is positioned motivates and guides my decisions while designing. This improved awareness of my processes helped me to become a better designer and is a testament to the importance of reflection as a component in learning and gaining expertise. I am not an illustration/graphic design expert, but it’s an area in which I’m developing. (By the way, the reference to literal reflections in my drawings in a discussion about reflection in learning was ironic but completely unintentional on my part.)
As always, thanks for reading!
Sources
Bransford, John D, et al. “How People Learn.” Center for Learning, Vanderbilt University, 15 Sept. 2000. Accessed 9 March 2022. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/how-people-learn/#introductory