The rise of Expertise in Education
Tag : wfe2 - The Future of Education Mooc, week 2
Nowadays, the new trend in Education is to talk about expert learning. ‘Expert Learner’, ‘Deliberate Practice’ the researches and publications of Anders Erikson and more popularly Malcom Gladwell and Tom Farris, have made these new terms well known by anyone who is interested in learning. Now instead of saying : she is gifted or she has high abilities — we might say he is an expert learner or he or she is mastering deliberate practice.
So it is only a question of time before we see ‘Deliberate Practice’ coming into our classrooms.
Expert Learning, could be a way to reconnect with the Apprenticeship system where experience is valued over status. You start by being an apprentice, then experienced, and finally an expert. Instead of Passed or Failed — Well, Better, Best becomes a the new standard. This way of assessing emphasise the learning process — acknowledging the fact that it takes many years to become an expert — sometimes a whole life.
Experts nowadays can be trained in many different ways, not just by schools or institutions but over the internet. This is what Coursera does so well and precisely what I am doing right now in this MOOC about ‘The Future of Education’, training myself to acquire knowledge, expertise on Education.
“By divorcing the concept of expertise from elite social institutions and creating tools to enable neutral identification of talent and ability — whether of those inside or outside of government, with credentials or craft knowledge — technology is democratizing expertise.”
Technology is democratizing Expertise. We can no longer teach in the 21st century like in the 20th century, when teachers were the unquestioned authority on everything. Today students can potentially check on their smartphone if what their teachers are saying is correct. This is challenging the notion of the Teacher as an expert.
To teach the Learner (the expert ?) of the future, we need to reflect on how technology has changed — or will change — our classroom practices.
