Investigators on knowledge transfer have almost unanimously concluded that students seldom effectively apply short-term training at school to problem-solving situations outside school. Experts, who have had years of problem-solving experience in a given domain, may not be different - they can solve familiar types of problems quickly and accurately but fail to go beyond procedural efficiency. Even in knowledge-rich domains, experts may be characterized by their possession of problem schemas by which they classify problems and apply one of the solution routines accordingly.
The notion of adaptive experts as against routine experts was proposed by Giyoo Hatano as an ideal of educational researchers looking to find ways to teach students so they can apply learned procedures flexibly or adaptively. Keith Holyoak aptly describes the distinction: "Whereas routine experts are able to solve familiar types of problems quickly and accurately, they have only modest capabilities in dealing with novel types of problems. Adaptive experts, on the other hand, may be able to invent new procedures derived from their expert knowledge"(p. 310). Giyoo Hatano and Kayoko Inagaki, in their 1986 paper, slightly expand the above characterization of adaptive experts: They are able to (1) comprehend why those procedures they know work; (2) modify those procedures flexibly when needed; and (3) invent new procedures when none of the known procedures are effective.
Sources of Adaptiveness
Where does the adaptiveness of adaptive experts come from? Adaptive experts are assumed to possess as the source of their flexibility and inventiveness, conceptual knowledge of the objects of the procedures (that is, what each of these objects is like). "Flexibility and adaptability seem to be possible only when there is some corresponding conceptual knowledge to give meaning to each step of the skill and provide criteria for selection among possible alternatives for each step within the procedure" (Hatano 1982, p. 15). Such conceptual knowledge enables experts to construct mental models of the major entities of the domain, which can be used in mental simulation. Using Holyoak's expression, the key to adaptive expertise is the development of deeper conceptual understanding of the target domain. Needless to say, such conceptual understanding must be connected to procedural competencies and meta-cognitive awareness and monitoring of one's own understanding.
It is hypothesized that if people ask themselves why a skill works or why each step is needed during its application, this question will tend to lead them to form some conceptual knowledge about the object. This was similar to what Donald Schoen in 1983 called "reflection-in-action" as against technical problem-solving in his attempt to characterize professionals. Although experts are seldom taught conceptual knowledge in the verbalized form, they may construct it in the process of solving problems or performing tasks in the domain.
Motivational and Contextual Conditions
When are people likely to gain adaptive expertise? Identifying particular kinds of learning experiences that develop adaptive expertise is a serious challenge for educational researchers. In 1992 Hatano and Inagaki proposed four conditions that would promote sustained comprehension activity that is likely to lead to adaptive expertise. Their proposal is based on the assumption that cognitive incongruity (a state of feeling that current comprehension is inadequate; for example, wondering why a given procedure works) induces enduring comprehension activity, including seeking further information from the outside, retrieving another piece of prior knowledge, generating new inferences, examining the compatibility of inferences more closely, and so forth. The first two of the proposed conditions are concerned with the arousal of cognitive incongruity and the last two with the elicitation of committed and persistent comprehension activity in response to induced incongruity. The four conditions are: (1) encountering fairly often a novel problem to which prior knowledge is not readily applicable or a phenomenon that disconfirms a prediction based on prior knowledge;(2) engaging in frequent dialogical interaction, such as discussion, controversy, and reciprocal teaching;(3) being free from urgent external need (e.g., material rewards or positive evaluations), and thus able to pursue comprehension even when it is time consuming; and (4) being surrounded by reference group members who value understanding.
These conditions can be rephrased in terms of the nature of the practice in which people participate. For example, when a practice is oriented toward skillfully solving a fixed class of problems (e.g., making the same products for years), participants tend not to encounter novel problems, and thus they are likely to become experts distinguished in terms of speed, accuracy, and automaticity (i.e., routine experts). In contrast, when successful participation in a practice requires meeting varied and changing demands (e.g., making new, fashionable products), participants' prior knowledge must be applied flexibly, and they are likely to acquire adaptive skills. From sociocultural perspectives, adaptive experts may not be characterized only by their domain-specific knowledge; in order to invent new procedures, for example, in addition to deeper conceptual understanding, people have to be able to participate in discourse, offer valuable suggestions, evaluate others' suggestions, and so on.
Educational Implications
At school students are seldom expected to become experts in a particular domain. Rather they are expected to learn in many subject-matter domains. Thus the extent to which school instruction and vocational expertise share similar goals and processes of learning is debatable. Trying to build a classroom as a community of adaptive experts is challenging, but practically it may be too ambitious or require too much effort on the part of educators.
Whatever the ultimate goal for instruction should be, the concept of adaptive expertise "provides an important model of successful learning" (Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, p. 36). It is thus encouraging to see attempts to apply this notion to teaching and learning in mathematics, science, history, and other subjects.
Bibliography
Bransford, John D.; Brown, Ann L.; and Cocking, Rodney R. 1999. How People Learn. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Hatano, Giyoo. 1982. "Cognitive Consequences of Practice in Culture Specific Procedural Skills." Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition 4:15 - 18.
Hatano, Giyoo, and Inagaki, Kayoko. 1986. "Two Courses of Expertise." In Child Development and Education in Japan, ed. Harold Stevenson, Hiroshi Azuma, and Kenji Hakuta. New York: Freeman.
Hatano, Giyoo, and Inagaki, Kayoko 1992. "Desituating Cognition through the Construction of Conceptual Knowledge." In Context and Cognition, ED. PAUL LIGHT AND GEORGE BUTTERWORTH. HEMEL HEMPSTEAD, ENG.: HARVESTER WHEATSHEAF.
Holyoak, Keith. 1991. "Symbolic Connectionism: Toward Third-Generation Theories of Expertise." In Toward a General Theory of Expertise: Prospects and Limits, ed. K. Anders Erricsson and Jacqui Smith. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press.
Schoen, Donald A. 1983. The Reflective Practitioner. New York: Basic Books.
— K. ANDERS ERICSSON, ROBERT R. HOFFMAN
