Resources
Lessons From and For Experts
by Kelly Tait, M.A.

Experts are examples of what successful learning looks like.  Yet, as students and as educators, we know that experts are not necessarily good teachers.  “Expertise can sometimes hurt teaching because many experts forget what is easy and what is difficult for students” (Bransford, et al, p. 44).  While expert performance often depends on a depth of knowledge that gets people to the place where information and experience coalesce into “gut instinct,” the people who have gotten there may not be able to communicate what is actually happening at that intuitive level in a way that others can learn to do it, too. 

In his book Blink: the Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), Malcolm Gladwell discusses when it’s a positive attribute to follow your intuition -- with the caveat that “intuition” is actually a deep understanding based on prior experience.  Most of the experts he describes had difficulty verbalizing how they knew something at this level.  And even if they can describe it (perhaps more likely in our field than in others), that doesn’t necessarily make them good teachers.  So what does?

Research about expert performers can be used to improve judicial branch education sessions both by providing specific targets for successful learning from experts and by suggesting strategies to help experts become better teachers.  I’ll align some principles of experts’ knowledge with practical tips on design of curriculum and training of faculty to take advantage of the window into learning and the brain that this research provides.

Key Principles of Experts’ Knowledge (Bransford et al, p. 31) 

1. Meaningful patterns:  Experts notice features and meaningful patterns that are not noticed by novices.
2. Organization of knowledge:  Experts have acquired a great deal of content knowledge that is organized in ways that reflect a deep understanding of the subject matter.
3. Context and access to knowledge:  Experts’ knowledge cannot be reduced to sets of isolated facts or propositions but, instead, reflects contexts of applicability; in other words, the knowledge is connected to when, where, and why they would use it.
4. Fluent retrieval:  Experts are able to flexibly retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with little attentional effort.
5. Experts and teaching:  Though experts know their disciplines thoroughly, this does not guarantee that they are able to teach others.
6. Adaptive expertise:  Experts have varying levels of flexibility in their approach to new situations and their approach to continued learning.

Meaningful Patterns
Experts and novices approach the same content differently.  Experts’ extensive knowledge and experience affect what they notice and how they organize, represent, and interpret information.  By “chunking” information into meaningful patterns, experts enhance their short term memories.  All of this then positively affects their abilities to remember information, analyze situations, and solve problems.

Novices’ short term memories fill rapidly, and novices tip easily into information overload.  This is partly because they don’t have a highly organized structure for the information or the sensitivity to meaningful patterns, so they can’t “chunk” it the same way experts do.  Also, the size of a chunk is smaller for novices, who are likely to treat each detail as an individual chunk as opposed to combining related details into one chunk, for instance. 

Since meaningful patterns are readily apparent to experts, and since people often assume that something that’s obvious to them also will be obvious to others, experts as teachers might not:

— understand that novices likely don’t see the pattern(s)
— realize that novices probably will have to work hard to find a pattern (if they are able to at all)
— be able to explain the pattern and/or how to find the pattern to novices

These are important points for improving instruction. Educators need to provide students with learning experiences that specifically target their abilities to recognize meaningful patterns of information.

• TIP: Teach the categorization frameworks to novices and test for recognition of problem types that involve applying the frameworks.

• TIP: Include some rationale for the patterns and assess the students’ understanding of the rationale as well as the patterns.   

• TIP: Start with what the learners bring to the learning task.  Design training that builds on previous learning -- start new platforms from existing frameworks.

Organization of Knowledge
While experts’ abilities to think clearly and solve problems quickly depend on a rich body of knowledge about the subject matter, a key element is that it needs to be usable knowledge.  What makes it usable is that it’s connected and organized around important concepts.  These organized conceptual structures (or schemas) guide how problems are understood, represented, and responded to.  Usable knowledge is not the same as a list of facts, but much teaching overemphasizes facts.  Superficial coverage of a large amount of facts is a poor way to develop competencies in learners.

“Knowing more” means much more than having a large amount of knowledge about a subject.  It means having more conceptual chunks in memory, more features defining each chunk, more interrelationships between chunks, and efficient methods for recalling related chunks as well as processes for applying them to problems in particular contexts (Bransford et al, p. 38).

Often there is an optimum “time for telling” – a point at which learners get much more from an organizing lecture, perhaps after they’ve had a chance to process some specific topic-related information.  Because this might be at different times for different learners, it increases teaching effectiveness to return to organizing concepts throughout training to ensure a deeper understanding of those ideas and how individual ideas or pieces of information relate to them.

• TIP: Consider providing models of how experts approach problem solving.  This can be particularly effective if the learners also get coaching in how to use similar strategies. 

• TIP: Have instructors teach the core concepts or “big ideas” that guide the thinking in their field, revisiting them periodically during training and making the connections to them clear. 

Context and Access to Knowledge
Teachers need to teach not just the information but WHEN it’s appropriate to use it — in other words, the conditions under which something is useful.  Don’t let instructors forget that retrieval of knowledge can be as important as acquiring knowledge.  Being able to access the information/strategy/principle at the relevant time in the appropriate context is vital, otherwise the knowledge is considered “inert.”  Highly knowledgeable learners are more likely than novices to make connections with prior knowledge and adapt that knowledge to new circumstances without prompting.

It’s well established that people remember more when they have the opportunity to process what they’ve learned.  “The advantage of spread out learning is large and reliable.  Two study sessions with time between them can result in twice as much learning as a single study session of the same total length.  Spaced training works with students of all ages and ability levels, across a variety of topics and teaching procedures” (Aamodt and Wang, p. 81).  This is even more important for novices who usually do not have a systematic way to make sense of large amounts of information.

Training should connect to what the novices already know, an important element in the discussion of some of the earlier principles of experts’ knowledge, as well.  According to Dr. James Zull in his book The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning, “The best way for teachers to help learners gain knowledge and understand is to find out what the learners already know ... and link the new information to the old, in essence wiring it to an existing neural network” (2002). 

Experts as teachers often don’t focus on the processing and application of the information and ideas in training because they focus overly on “covering” the content – and they know a lot of content.  They need to know that covering too much actually buries it and makes it difficult to access.  They also need to see transfer as a goal of teaching -- enabling learners to extend what has been learned in one context to other contexts.

• TIP: Encourage teachers to include contextual elements – the when, where, and why of using information and ideas.  Also have them build in assessment techniques that test for these contextual elements.  For instance, contrasting cases could be used to help learners notice features and to determine which features are relevant in different contexts.    

• TIP: Caution instructors that it’s easy to overwhelm learners with information, and encourage them to use teaching strategies that allow more processing.  Use spaced training (training distributed over time) when possible.

• TIP: Use “prompting” – teachers should explicitly point out the connections between sets of information then move to graduated prompting and encouraging the learners to find and state the connections.  For example, asking learners, “What does this make you think of?”  “Does some part of this (new) information resonate with you?”

• TIP: Encourage “what if” thinking: What if this element changed? What if that part of the situation were changed?  (etc.)

• TIP: If application of the information/ideas will be required after the program, require some application to be built in to the training.   

Fluent Retrieval
“Knowing” at a deep level allows achieving tasks with less conscious effort partly because of fluent (relatively effortless) retrieval of information, which frees space in experts’ working memories.  Novices have to expend significantly more attentional effort, and their focus is frequently on remembering rather than on understanding.  Consider learning to drive a car.  At first it takes full attention – novice drivers often can’t drive and carry on a conversation at the same time.  With experience, it’s easy.

However, experience itself is not sufficient for expert performance, and sometimes it can actually hurt.  When a person is on “auto pilot,” some errors are more likely to occur, including reacting on the basis of implicit biases, where a person might respond to categories rather than individuals and leap to “most likely” – but not necessarily correct – conclusions. 

“Most doctors actually perform worse the longer they are out of medical school.  Surgeons, however, are an exception.  That’s because they are constantly exposed to two key elements of deliberate practice: immediate feedback and deliberate goal setting” (Ericsson et al, 2005).  The lowered need to consciously focus can allow distractions and encourage over-reliance on habitual thinking patterns. 

To take advantage of the powers of fluent retrieval while balancing the potential down side, add in monitoring of performance as well as motivation to do something better, not just more efficiently.  Design programs that build toward fluency and competency in appropriate stages.

• TIP: Include instruction about some of the practices from the field of social cognition that help guard against over-reliance on habitual thinking—paying active attention, thinking about your thinking, looking for patterns of responses, etc.  (In How Doctors Think, Dr. Jerome Groopman discusses challenges like these that have clear parallels in the judicial field.)

• TIP: Be realistic about how much time it will take to learn complex subject matter and achieve fluent retrieval.  (World class chess masters practice for 50,000-100,000 hours to reach that level.) 

• TIP: Build programs for novices in steps – have “stretch goals” that challenge the learners at a level that requires effort but is achievable.  Encourage instructors to test out the level of challenge in their sessions ahead of time (with novices).

Experts and Teaching
While people often defer to experts even in areas that aren’t their specialty (such as teaching, perhaps), experts’ abilities do not necessarily cross domains.  For instance, master chess players have a consistently higher recall of the set-up on a chess board than novices (about four times higher) if the board is set up in patterns meaningful to chess.  When the board is set up in a random pattern, chess experts have no better recall of it than novices do (Cloud; Branson et al).  So, we return to meaningful patterns and accessible knowledge as keys to expert performance. 

Often much of experts’ expertise comes from having learned how to do something mostly by doing it (procedural knowledge).  But almost always those experts are asked to teach what they know by talking about it (declarative knowledge).  Then the learners have to convert the things they were told about in the training (declarative knowledge) back into the doing of it (procedural knowledge).  “Research on learning tells us that what we learn declaratively cannot readily be transformed into procedural knowledge unless we already possess similar procedural knowledge” (Stolovitch and Keeps, p. 34).  Here’s where the saying “easier said than done” comes into play … for novices.  For experts, though, it’s often “easier done than said.”

• TIP: Have experts ask themselves, “How do I do things now compared to how I did them when I was first learning this area?”

• TIP: Consider pairing an expert with an “accomplished novice” – a good learner who doesn’t have content area expertise.  The accomplished novice’s job is to continually question the expert – giving the expert some insight into the learning process and teaching techniques for novices to his or her area.

• TIP: During faculty development, emphasize the need for active learning techniques to encourage higher retention of information, deeper understanding, and a greater likelihood of application after the class.

Adaptive Expertise
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (2006) concludes that great performance comes mostly from deliberate practice.  Deliberate practice involves more than just repeating a task.  It includes setting specific goals and getting quick, regular, accurate feedback on performance.  It focuses on learners actively monitoring their learning experiences, both seeking and using feedback to improve.  This drive to continue to improve is fundamental to maintaining expertise. 

In a chapter called “The Uncertainty of Experts” in his book How Doctors Think (2007), Dr. Jerome Groopman talks to one of the most respected experts in children’s cardiology, Dr. James Lock, Chief of Cardiology at Boston’s Children’s Hospital.  Asked how he continually improves upon practices and develops innovative techniques in his field, Dr. Lock said, “I keep an ongoing tap on how I know what I know.  What we know is based on only a modest level of understanding.  If you carry that truth with you, you are instantaneously ready to challenge what you think you know the minute you see anything that suggests it might not be right” (p. 134). 

Many people define an expert as “someone who knows all the answers.”  This static approach constrains new learning by the expert – who should have a willingness to seek new information and draw on others as resources rather than being overly concerned with looking knowledgeable all the time.  It can be empowering to let experts know that continual improvement is fundamental to expert performance.  Resources such as The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance and others listed at the end of this article provide in-depth information in this area.

• TIP: Emphasize that one of a teacher’s tasks is to draw out the resources in the class.  This takes some of the pressure off of teachers to be The Expert and to have all of the answers.

• TIP: Encourage experts to keep adding to their repertoire and to evaluate their schemas and their responses.  Build in opportunities for them to get feedback on decisions/performance.  (Example: recording performance and reviewing it with constructive feedback)
• TIP: Encourage a more dynamic view by both faculty and students – that “experts” are accomplished life-long learners.

CONCLUSION

As judicial branch educators we would love to have and/or to be instructors who are both experts and expert teachers.  By drawing on research about learning and how the brain works, we can provide training that increase all learners’ competencies and moves us closer to that goal.

Expert Teachers:

• Anticipate, acknowledge, and address the difficulties students are likely to face;
• Know how to tap into learners’ existing knowledge and perspectives to make new information more meaningful;
• Are aware of and build into the typical paths that learners follow to achieve understanding;
• Know how to assess students’ progress and can provide feedback to learners in a constructive, non-threatening way; and
• Consider themselves learners, as well.

“A well-educated person is someone who is well-informed, acts wisely, and continues to learn.  But being well-educated also means going beyond facts.  It means placing knowledge in its larger context and discovering the connectedness of things.”
— Roberta S. Lacefield.

RESOURCES AND RECOMMENDED READING

Aamodt, Sandra and Wang, Sam. Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life.  New York: Bloomsbury, 2008.

Bransford, John D., et al, editors How People Learn.  National Research Council, Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000.

Cloud, John. “The Science of Experience.” Time Magazine, March 10, 2008, 30-33.

Ericsson, K. Anders, Ed. The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Gladwell, Malcolm. Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking.  New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2005.

Groopman, Jerome. How Doctors Think.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007.

Stolovitch, Harold and Keeps, Erica J. Telling Ain’t Training.  U.S.A.: American Society for Training and Development, 2002.

Zull, James. The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning.  Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2002.   

Kelly Tait is a speech communication instructor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and a communication consultant who has designed and conducted a variety of communication skills-based workshops and seminars for organizations such as the National Judicial College, the New York State Judicial Institute, the Supreme Court of Virginia, and the Nevada State Bar Association. Her specialties include faculty development, courtroom communication skills, and diversity issues.

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