VKP Glossary

	Click on the links below to explore the concepts:
	Active Learning Authentic Assessment Authentic Learning Cognitive Apprenticeship Constructivism Distributed Intelligence Inquiry-Based Learning Intermediate Cognitive Processes Learner Centered Novice and Expert Learners Peer Review Prior Knowledge Problem-Based Learning Scholarship of Teaching Uncoverage Understanding

Novice and Expert Learners

From: M. Suzanne Donovan, John D. Bransford, and James W. Pellegrino (eds.), How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice, xiii.

Experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that are not noticed by novices.

Experts have acquired a great deal of content knowledge that is organized, and their organization of information reflects a deep understanding of the subject matter.

Experts' knowledge cannot be reduced to sets of isolated facts or propositions but, instead reflects contexts of applicability, i.e., it is "conditionalized."

Experts are able to retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with little additional effort.

Though experts know their disciplines thoroughly, this does not guarantee that they are able to instruct others about the topic.

Experts have varying levels of flexibility in their approaches to new situations.

From: John D. Bransford, Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking (eds.), How people learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. http://books.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/ch2.html.

People who have developed expertise in particular areas are, by definition, able to think effectively about problems in those areas. Understanding expertise is important because it provides insights into the nature of thinking and problem solving. Research shows that it is not simply general abilities, such as memory or intelligence, nor the use of general strategies that differentiate experts from novices. Instead, experts have acquired extensive knowledge that affects what they notice and how they organize, represent, and interpret information in their environment. This, in turn, affects their abilities to remember, reason, and solve problems.

From: John Seely Brown, "Growing Up Digital." Change, March/April 2000.

Deep expertise….Acquiring this expertise requires learning the explicit knowledge of a field, the practices of its community, and the interplay between the two. And learning all this requires immersion in a community of practice, enculturation in its way of seeing, interpreting, and acting. (15)