You're wrong (I'm the expert).

The implications of novice-expert thinking.

Ah, but I was so much older then. I’m younger than that now. - Bob Dylan

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

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Listen to the podcast segment of Ideology in Education (at 10:23) based on this blog post for the Teacher’s Education Review below 👇.

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It may just be me (or my X algorithm), but I seem to be hearing more teachers and educational commentators discussing the work of teaching as a transaction between “novices” and “experts”. This way of thinking has moved beyond discussions of teacher expertise, to define the very relationships between teachers and their students.

As usual, I am not about to suggest that we do away with this distinction. If considered as a loose signifier upon a continuum, I believe that such a framework can support teachers to think beyond themselves and respond more appropriately in their contexts.

However, from what I have seen, there do seem to be a number of unexamined issues within this framework, namely that:

• It is unclear just who defines the “novice” or “expert”.

• The framework seems to value efficiency as the end goal above other valuable educational outcomes.

I will make it clear at this point that I do not wish to challenge these specific issues in this post.

What I do wish to illustrate here is that perceiving of education as interactions between “novices” and “experts” has some concerning socialising effects in relation to how we perceive of, and relate to, others in current educational discourse.

Let’s get into it.

Novice-expert thinking.

When it comes to the notion of “novices” and “experts” in education, I wouldn’t call myself an “expert” (cringe-worthy, I know).

I was directed by a helpful connection on X to a few authors as a starting point in discerning what is meant by the terms “novice” and “expert” in educational discourse. The literature hovers around the core idea of expertise, and as such, crosses many differing disciplines, not simply education and teaching.

A seminal text by David C. Berliner describes the process of achieving expertise in teaching as progression along a continuum of 5 stages: novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient and expert (Berliner, 1988). Berliner (ibid, p. 2) describes a “novice” teacher as one whose behaviour is:

‘rational, relatively inflexible, and tends to conform to whatever rules and procedures they were told to follow’.

In contrast, “expert” teachers, Berliner (ibid., p. 5) states:

‘have an intuitive grasp of a situation and seem to sense in nonanalytic, nondeliverative ways the appropriate response to make’.

An expert is seen to ‘know more, their knowledge is better organized and integrated, they have better strategies for accessing knowledge and using it, and they are self-regulated’ (Persky & Robinson, 2017, p. 72). Long before the publication of Visible Learning, John Hattie defined “expert” teachers as those who can:

• identify essential representations of their subject,

• guide learning through classroom interactions,

• monitor learning and provide feedback,

• attend to affective attributes, and

• influence student outcomes

(Hattie, 2003, p. 5).

A lot of talk around this particular field of expertise has specifically related to the differentiation of teacher quality within the workforce. However, this differentiation between “novice” and “expert” teachers has seemingly become transferred to define the interactions between students (the “novices”) and their teachers (the “experts”), used in such a flippant way that it seems to hint at a kind of “common sense” (something I have warned about in an earlier post for The Interruption).

I do not wish to pretend as though students are actually “experts” or that there is no such thing as a “novice”. I do believe that there is a lot of utility in this differentiation.

However, I believe that novice-expert thinking has some powerful socialisation effects in the field of education. If left unexamined, it is my argument that such thinking has the potential to further isolate and silence the important voices of teachers in making valuable educational change.

Ideological and social implications.

Let’s consider for a moment the potential ideological beliefs behind novice-expert thinking (for a brief exploration of what we mean by “ideology” here, check out this earlier post).

Here are some I can think of:

• There are those who know and those who don’t.

• Experts must lead novices on the path to expertise.

• Experts ought to be trusted to make better decisions than novices.

• Experts should hold more power than novices.

Are there any I’ve missed?

I will not deny the possible benefit of such beliefs, depending on the circumstances, within education. After all, in Stephen Brookfield’s Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, considering the perspectives of our students, including what they do and don’t know, is an important practice in becoming a more critical, thoughtful and responsive teacher. Sometimes it is right to engage with others as “novices”.

However, the above-mentioned beliefs have profound social implications for how we might come to view various actors within education, including fellow teachers. Depending on who is deemed the “expert” and by whom, we may find that certain voices are valued above others. This has the potential to draw our thinking away from the strength of certain ideas and instead towards the status of the individual (or research methodology) as a basis for judging the legitimacy of claims about education. As we are seeing in Australian educational discourse, new mandates to teaching that favour a particular construction of so-called “best-practice” evidence has taken things so far to elevate ‘a small canon of researchers to the status of supreme knowers and truth-tellers’ (Wescott, 2022, p. 15). For some, to call these researchers to question is to enter into heresy.

This kind of thinking favours a “top-down” approach to educational issues, where the “experts” define how teachers are to enact their practice. It can also lead to a passive reception of “evidence” in favour of one’s opinions and beliefs, without considering alternative or conflicting perspectives. A brick wall of sorts.

Sadly, this can result in lack of rigorous dialogue and exchange of ideas, as those who perceive themselves as “experts” (and therefore better than you) do not need to engage with perspectives outside of their own (including evidence outside of their preference).

After all, it is always others that need to be enlightened.

A call for humility.

If we are to challenge decades of the erosion of teacher agency, we must acknowledge the implications and limitations of novice-expert thinking in education. “Experts”, self-defined or otherwise, should exercise a disposition of humility that hears and values teacher-voice in a way that is meaningful.

As of late in Australia, it seems as though expertise has mainly been used as a legitimation tool for government-forced agenda setting in educational policy and discourse. Recently, a Parliamentary inquiry into the state education system in Victoria was established (and apparently initiated by The Nationals Party?), which was receiving submissions from the public from the 13th of July this year. It recently became closed to public submissions on the 13th of October. There were no news articles, no media presence and no communication to teachers about this inquiry. A total of 78 submissions were received, with minimal teacher representation.

The kind of teacher bypassing describe above needs to be challenged if we are to see meaningful change occur in our schools and education more broadly. Teachers are the ones on the ground, doing the work. As such, they have a clearer picture of how education is played out in their contexts. Valuing teacher voice holds the potential to not only empower and value teachers for their contextual knowledge and skills but influence the educational outcomes of more students for the better.

Don’t take my word for it though, make up your own mind.

Taking a nuanced and thoughtful approach to novice-expert thinking can help keep perceived expertise in check. In reading the conclusion of The Development of Expertise in Pedagogy, I was struck by some of Berliner’s (1988, p. 33, emphasis added) final words:

‘Too many educators, upon reading Piaget, thought that we should not bother with asking children sophisticated questions because they did not have the requisite experience to handle them. Fortunately, others recognised that a developmental theory does not mean that certain experiences should be avoided completely or that individuals should be exposed to problems only at the appropriate level of their development. Thus, I am not advocating a narrow form of job training as the curriculum for preservice teacher preparation’.

I might just leave it there.

Till next time,

References

Berliner, D.C. (1988). The Development of Expertise in Pedagogy.

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. John Wiley & Sons.

Hattie, J. (2003, October). Teachers make a difference: What is the research evidence? Paper presented at the Australian Council for Educational Research Annual Conference on Building Teacher Quality, Melbourne.

Persky, A. M., & Robinson, J. D. (2017). Moving from Novice to Expertise and Its Implications for Instruction. American journal of pharmaceutical education, 81(9), 6065. https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe6065.

Wescott, S. (2022). The Post-Truth Tyrannies of an Evidence-Based Hegemony. Education policy analysis archives, 30(95).