Expertise, pedagogy and practice

The articles in this special issue¹¹ continue the development of what might be called the ‘anti-cognitivist’ movement in philosophy, cognitive science, psychology and philosophy of education. The issue provides several innovative analyses which advance a more experientially holistic approach to the characterization and growth of human expertise, through practices which, in this issue, are exemplified in sport, the arts, workplaces and other sites where humans strive to do well.

Until recently, in the various cognitive sciences and associated fields, cognitivism has been an attractive model for research. Arguably it remains the dominant conceptual and research framework, and it is not hard to see why. In the aftermath of behaviourism, and in light of the perceived anti-scientific nihilism of a psychoanalytic framework, cognitivism seemed to promise a rigorous and productive research paradigm, backed by Chomskian linguistics, Fodor’s modularization of the mind, and the mainstream of psychological research and practice. Furthermore, the intellectualist and individualist presuppositions that lie at its core sit comfortably with liberal ideology, and in the area of education it has meshed well with dominant approaches to the treatment of formal education, and with popular conceptions of the development of the self.

For example, in education research, the prevalence of developmental psychology, as a disciplinary basis for learning (especially children’s learning), has been most alluring to the general public when it has claimed that ‘good parenting’ results from children’s attachment and bonding from birth (Ramaekers & Suissa, 2012). This pursuit of an ideal relationship—as it ‘develops’ over time—assumes an atomistic view of the world, where individuals can become what they most want to be. And so we have the ideologies of self-direction, personal growth and affective well-being, where these are constructed in market-driven cultures and consumer preferences: the Project of the Self driven by endless choice-making; the ideal worker, first and foremost, the subject of cognitivism—capable of choosing her or his destiny, even amidst the sociality that almost all workplaces generate (Beckett, 2010, 2012b, 2012c). It can be argued (though not in this issue) that positive psychology, a rapidly emergent phenomenon in education, needs to divest itself of its individualistic ‘happiness’ agenda, in favour of collective virtues, embedded in a common wealth of social goods, perhaps coupled with practical intelligence (Russell, 2009; Annas, 2011; Beckett, 2012a).

Yet, even at the apogee of cognitivism there was a countervailing line of thought, often associated with Wittgenstein, and with phenomenology (especially Merleau-Ponty), that cast doubt on the central pillars of cognitivism. Over the past two decades, this anti-cognitivism has developed not just more sophisticated critiques of cognitivism, but also a more and more refined articulation of its own positive position.

Anti-cognitivism has highlighted the need to consider cognition as it is lived—as situated and embodied—and so we see the influence of studies of workplace learning and the operations of groups. In the articles here, for example, we find discussions of orchestras, navigational teams, sports teams, yoga classes and teams of builders. These studies support the claim that once we consider cognition situated and embodied, we weaken the instinct to see it as something that essentially takes place in the mind of individuals. We see groups engaged in coordinated cognitive activity that no individual can (or needs to) grasp; we see individuals coordinating their activities in accord with the normative and semantic structures provided by temporally and spatially extended practices; we see sophisticated cognitive practice that exhibits know-how, and cannot be reduced to propositional knowledge-that; and we see new and challenging accounts of agency.

However, this work has, in turn, generated a number of important questions about the shape of a model that emphasizes learning and interaction as situated and embodied. In response to this, while the articles collected here are in part articulations of aspects of the anti-cognitivist movement, they are equally an interrogation of various conceptual tools adopted by anti-cognitivism, and of the pedagogically innovative consequences of a more holistic approach to expertise through practices if anti-cognitivism is plausible.

Thus, the articles by McIlwain and Sutton, and by Geeves and colleagues, seek to qualify a purely ‘Dreyfusian’ account of learning and coordinated activity; Winch directs thinking about know-how away from a narrow conception of individual skills, and towards a broad concept of agency; McGivern questions a too-easy invocation by anti-cognitivists of the concept of emergence; Simpson tests the potential conservatism of an anti-cognitivist approach; Gallagher suggests how we might avoid narrowness in the training of a phronimos; and three contributions advocate the collective as the appropriate (that is, non-reductive) unit of analysis for expertise, and for diverse practices: Williamson and Cox (sports teams), Menary and Kirchhoff (a ‘suite of practices’) and Hager (group learning). These interrogations and modifications do not amount to a weakening of anti-cognitivism; rather, we see them as a mark of holism’s growing theoretical sophistication. We turn now to a summary of each contribution.

Winch’s article is an intervention in the ‘know-how’/‘knowing that’ debate, but focuses on agency. Most thinking about know-how has been directed towards skills relating to discrete actions, and involves the conceptual reduction of agency to bundles of associated skills, but Winch redirects the focus towards the agency that is involved in the ability to carry through projects: what he calls ‘project management’. Drawing on his own and others’ empirical research, Winch makes four claims about the agency involved in projects here: that planning and execution are internally related (they are not just steps that are contingently related); that a description of the agency associated with project management needs to invoke both social and moral factors; that while such activities involve ratiocination, this occurs as much on paper, and in conversation, and in the actual work carried out, as it does ‘in the head’; and, finally, that the attributes of the agents involved in such processes must include the ability to form a plan (including in concert with others), put it into effect, and take responsibility for the outcome. So these agents do not just possess individual skills; they are also and necessarily social agents.

On this basis, Winch argues that the traditional conception of vocational and professional education solely in terms of the development of skill is badly mistaken. He claims that vocational and professional education ought use a broad concept of agency, that it ought to incorporate the traditional liberal aim of self-understanding, and that it ought be treated as a precondition for the development of autonomy.

Hager highlights the lack of discussion of group learning in philosophy of education. He associates this with the way formal education systems have come to adopt a ‘near universal single-minded focus on sorting, teaching, assessing and accrediting of individuals’, and suggests that had philosophers of education turned their attention to workplace learning they may have been more sensitive to the way learning and practice are closely entwined. Hager proceeds to draw four key lessons regarding the importance for learning of considerations about the operation of groups from case studies by Hager (on orchestral performance) and others (Hutchins on marine navigation, and Bereiter and Scardamalia on driving in Rome). First, that aspects of what a group does can only be understood by treating the group as a unit; secondly, that much of the know-how involved is tacit (and necessarily so, because the ‘job knowledge’ is socially distributed); thirdly, that group performance must often be readily adaptable to changing contexts and circumstances; and fourthly, that group learning often has a temporal and historical dimension, highlighting the importance of the local and particular, rather than the general and universal characteristics valued in formal education systems.

Contemporary discussions of know-how, skill and expertise have their origin in Aristotle’s notion of phronesis, or practical wisdom. Phronesis is something that we develop by being with virtuous people (people who are able to judge that act which is appropriate to each situation), and by imitating them. Gallagher notes that a familiar problem with this model is that it may lead to a narrow, conservative, rigid ethics. He then notes that narrowness and lack of diversity is also a problem for the simulation theory of social cognition familiar in cognitivist approaches. According to simulation theory, we understand each other by imagining our self in the other’s situation. It is hard to see how we might even begin this process without prior understanding (the starting problem), and it is hard to see how we could ever understand diversity in others. This second problem (the diversity problem) is theoretical, but also has a practical dimension. If simulation theory is right, we seem condemned to an insular and narrow regard for others. Gallagher suggests that the starting problem, and the theoretical and practical diversity problems, can be overcome by way of interaction theory (Gallagher, 2005). Here, narrative practices help to bring about phronesis, while developing empathy and a recognition of diversity.

Menary and Kirchhoff challenge the assumption that expertise is an individual achievement, developing a model of expertise as culturally extended. Considering expertise in the light of the ‘extended cognition’ model, which sees cognition as extended across neuronal, bodily and environmental processes and mechanisms, they emphasize the fact that agents are situated, and acquire their expertise, in a domain encompassing cultural practices. For Menary and Kirchhoff expertise is intrinsically social or cultural. It is identified in relation to the practices of others, and it is developed within a suite of practices. Those practices constitute cognitive ‘niches’, which provide the normative gauge and the semantic structure of human actions.

Simpson introduces a Wittgensteinian account of how we learn to use concepts and simultaneously learn to engage in practices. A major interest of this approach, in the context of pedagogy, apart from Wittgenstein’s constant reference to teaching, training and learning, is the challenge that such an approach poses to cognitivist accounts of pedagogy. But Wittgenstein’s approach also poses a challenge to those who seek a critical pedagogy, because of the apparent conservatism of the process of being introduced into, and disciplined in, an ungrounded practice. Simpson argues that concern here in part reflects attachment to an unsuccessful concept of freedom, and argues that Wittgenstein, like Kant and Nietzsche, is trying to show how freedom and critique can arise without resort to a metaphysical standpoint. He argues that pedagogical practice will always, necessarily, be in tension between conformity and critique.

Williamson and Cox regard sports teams as exemplars of distributed cognition. Redrawing an old distinction, they compare a team of individual experts (an ‘aggregate system’) and an expert team (an ‘emergent system’), and they show how an expert team depends on shared knowledge, and how shared declarative and embodied knowledge, and shared skill, enable successful coordination. They suggest that the expert performance of sports teams provides a valuable model of distributed cognition in general, and opens suggestive avenues for further research.

Yoga is a fascinating site for examination in the context of this issue, because of the way it requires mindful embodied practice, developed over a years-long pedagogical engagement. McIlwain and Sutton argue that in yoga, even and especially in expert practice, there is mental access to embodied movement; as they put it, an ‘interpenetration of thought and movement’. McIlwain and Sutton examine the role of words on bodies in two yogic traditions, and, out of this, develop an account of signature patterns of tension that yoga teachers need to be able to address in their teaching practice, adapted to the body, the personality of the student, and the particular relationship between teacher and student. Here we have a rich confluence of embodiment, words and interpersonality.

Geeves and colleagues examine a paradox of expertise: that an expert needs to have embodied a skill to the extent that it is seemingly automatic, able to be performed accurately in often distracting and varying environments, yet he or she must also be able to adapt flexibly in response to the performance environment and to fellow participants. This is a puzzle regarding expert skills in general, but is especially acute regarding musical performance. The authors consider various models for explaining this: the top–down approach of Chaffin, according to which an expert follows a declarative mental roadmap; and Dreyfus’s picture in which practice and experience lead to (and depend on) less explicit declarative knowledge, and more embodied, flexible ‘coping’. Reflecting on empirical studies of musicians, especially Geeves’ own work with a group of musicians while they rehearse and then tour as a new group, the authors opt for an account that sees top–down and bottom–up processing at work in an expert. They associate this with the work of Tony and Helga Noice, but it also reflects the Applying Intelligence to the Reflexes (AIR) model that the authors have been developing in relation to a range of expert practices. That is, an expert must embody her skill (cf. Dreyfus), but she must also be able to make explicit cognitive interventions in this embodied practice. The authors assert, moreover, that such intervention does not undermine expertise, as Dreyfus, for example, has claimed, but is in fact integral to it.

When expertise is considered outside an individualist framework, it is attractive to say that groups (classes, teams, work units) exhibit ‘emergent expertise’; that is, expertise that is not merely summative of the members of the group. McGivern considers the use of ‘emergent expertise’ in the light of recent discussions of emergence in philosophy of science, and is concerned that in the literature on expertise, ‘emergence’ is left unexplained. He suggests that we ought not regard emergent phenomena as unpredictable or inexplicable. Rather, it is possible to give an account of the specific ways in which complex phenomena emerge from underlying properties and behaviour, and hence it may be possible to specify the conditions under which expertise can arise (especially at the collective level, such as in groups or teams).

We, the joint Editors, wish to thank our various contributors to this special issue, which arises from an ‘embodied’ event at the University of Wollongong in late 2011. The expertise on expertise was impressive there, and is apparent in this issue. We commend it to your critical scrutiny.

Notes

1. The articles in this issue have been developed from papers presented at a workshop on Expertise, Pedagogy and Practice, held at the University of Wollongong in late 2011. The workshop was made possible by Australian Research Council funding for the ‘Embodied Virtues and Expertise’ project (DP1095109).