Hatano, G., & Inagaki, K. (1986). Two courses of expertise. In H.W. Stevenson, H. Azuma, & K. Hakuta (Eds.), Child development and education in Japan: A series of books in psychology (pp. 262-272). New York NY: W.H. Freeman.
Hatano and Inagaki’s chapter unpacks the processes of achieving two kinds of expertise: adaptive and routine. Both require the accumulation of experience and consist of using prior knowledge to assimilate/accommodate domain-specific problems under the supervision of more capable experts. Whereas routine experts demonstrate exceptional speed, accuracy, and automation of skills in particular contexts but lack the flexibility to extend their skills to new domains, adaptive experts use conceptual knowledge to invest procedures with meaning, make predictions about unfamiliar situations, and invent new strategies.
The authors begin by contrasting procedural knowledge with conceptual knowledge to understand how novices become adaptive experts. Procedural knowledge involves the rules, executive strategies, and skills that people learn through daily life; indeed, procedural knowledge can lead to effective behavior even without depth of understanding. In considering the development of expertise, Hatano and Inagaki here accept two Piagetian assumptions: that humans have an intrinsic motivation for understanding, and that knowledge is acquired through reflexive abstraction (reorganizing prior knowledge). Hatano and Inagaki argue that the dissatisfaction with procedural competence drives people’s desire to find meaning, explain why things work, judge the appropriateness of various options, and modify skills according to changes in the environment. [It is noteworthy that this drive to understand is not age-dependent: according to the authors, what distinguishes adults and children as learners is the depth of domain knowledge they have.] Although inquiry can precipitate the development of conceptual knowledge, individuals also need data (empirical knowledge) and models (preconceptual knowledge) to build a more complete picture.
In teasing out the distinction between adaptive and routine expertise, the authors acknowledge that routine expertise can lead to some “generalized consequences” like the development of related procedural skills (in the same domain), increased efficiency, and the production of new mental models which support the completion of tasks (physical abacus → mental abacus). They then identify three key factors that encourage individuals to engage in the kinds of experimentation that lead to adaptive expertise. First, randomness inherent to specific problem-spaces requires people to modify their approaches after observing variable outcomes. Second, stakes matter: people are more willing to engage in active and playful experimentation when the results are not rewarded or evaluated. Third, group-cultures that value experimentation over efficiency demonstrate increased levels of adaptive expertise. Hatano and Inagaki end here with an implicit critique of assessment culture in schools (inhibiting playful experimentation) and an explicit call to compare children from efficiency-oriented cultures (Japan) to understanding-oriented cultures regarding flexibility and adaptability.
mindful museums 