Technical knowledge and experiential learning: what people know and can do

Abstract

This article explores knowledge, skills and competencies as related to technological practice, drawing on a wide variety of examples. Examining the contents of practitioners’ toolkits in both explicit and tacit realms, aided by analogies with artificial intelligence, highlights the importance of supplementing public policies in support of education with policies that would foster experiential learning.

Keywords:

• knowledge
• learning
• education
• training
• competitiveness

Acknowledgements

Rob Atkinson, Margaret Hilton, Lucien Hughes and Frank Levy provided valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Notes

1. A number of the papers in Ericsson (1996) note the frequency with which 8–10-year learning periods are required for attaining something approaching expertise.

2. Continuous learning resulting in continuous performance improvement is easiest to observe for strictly manual tasks. One of the classic examples is cigar-rolling, for which performance has been found to continue improving, albeit at a slow rate, after 10 or more years and millions of repetitions. Norman (1982, 69–72), summarises this classic set of studies.

3. Technical knowledge has been categorised elsewhere in terms of extent of codification and mobility characteristics (Alic et al. 1992, 29–43; Alic 1993b).

4. E.C. Albee, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Lancaster (Pennsylvania) General Hospital, interviewed by S.A. Herzenberg, 23 December 2004.

5. Albee interview. Lancaster General's training staff numbers two dozen people (the hospital has 560 beds).

6. Strauss et al. (1997, 86, 158–59), a study based on extensive field observations which provided much of the framework for the preceding discussion of hospitals.

7. This usage follows Jones (1970, 45–58).

8. Some AI specialists, believing that black-box knowledge and skills reflect learning based on analogies, avoid the language of rules, preferring terms such as scripts, schemas, or case-based reasoning (see Schank and Slade 1991).

9. Over 70% of the six million or so degree-seeking students attending US sub-baccalaureate institutions (most of these are 2-year community colleges) pursue a ‘career’ programme, as do more than 60% of the ten million students enrolled in 4-year colleges and universities. One-fifth of students at US 2-year colleges and one-third of students at 4-year colleges choose ‘academic’ courses of study. (Most of the remainder are undecided.) Career fields include engineering and computer science but not the natural and social sciences, which the Education Department classifies as academic (even though students may decide to major in sociology, say, as preparation for a career in social work), along with the liberal and performing arts (National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) 2004).

10. Careful studies of the effects of continuing education and training in non-medical occupations seem almost non-existent.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John A. Alic

Email: [email protected]