Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Implications of Expertise [Paperback]

Carl Bereiter (Author), Marlene Scardamalia (Author)

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Product Details

Paperback: 296 pages
Publisher: Open Court Publishing Company (Oct 1 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0812692055
ISBN-13: 978-0812692051
Product Dimensions: 2.4 x 1.5 x 0.2 cm
Shipping Weight: 526 g
Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #353,829 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Expertise has been around since the dawn of civilisation, but until recently the creation of experts was able to go on without anyone having to understand it, or pay any attention to its social impact. Today, as societies compete to produce more and better experts, the need grows to understand expertise - what lies behind expert performance, how it is acquired, and what keeps people functioning like experts. The authors examine the nature of expert knowledge, both the part that shows and the much larger part that is hidden, and offer an explanation of how it comes about. Hard work, practice, and experience are not enough to make an expert. The expert is recognised by an ability to solve nonroutine problems in a given domain. The expert's secret is their willingness to work at the edge of their competence and to keep reconstructing their skills at higher levels. Expertlike tendencies have been found in some university students, and even some schoolchildren function more like experts than like the other students in their classes. Yet schooling often undermines the development of expertise. Bereiter and Scardamalia describe a kind of classroom culture, the "knowledge-building community" which supports expertlike learning, and extend these ideas to the picture of an "expert society", in which expertise is normal rather than exceptional. Expertise is an expression of the uniquely human potential to go beyond the competencies given us by nature.

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Amazon.com: 5.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The best popular (but science based) book on expertism, Mar 20 1998

By A Customer - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Implications of Expertise (Paperback)

An excellent book by two excellent expert & learning researchers on nature and implications of expertise in human behaviour. Has various implications in the fields of schooling, life-long learning, apprenticeship and just plain old teaching. Does not contain psychological jargon, is easily understood, but contains profound material any educator should be willing to tackle. Excellent work (no wonder it's "hard to find").

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read for Educators Designing a New Approach to Authentic Learning, Sep 1 2008

By Paul A. Reynolds "fablevision" - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Implications of Expertise (Paperback)

Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Implications of Expertise, by by Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia, provides a very accessible, but scholarly look at the nature of expertise - and why we need to fundamentally rethink how we understand and nurture "adaptive expertise." This is critical as we prepare students to face a future where memorizing what we already know (and spitting it back on standardized tests) isn't the kind of 'expertise' we need (if indeed, it even qualifies as authentic expertise.)

As Bereiter and Scardamalia explain, we need to move beyond the idea that expertise is a commodity one "gets" with a degree and then is able to rest on that expert label for one's career. Real expertise moves beyond what is known - into the dark area of the unknown - where one grasps in darkness at completely new insights, innovation, invention.

Until we create an educational system that gives students permission to play in this field of the unknown - where failure is an acceptable and organic part of the landscape, they will never know the liberating power of unfettered romps in the realm of messy, inventive expertise. This is a must-read for any school reformer - or life-long learner needing encouragement to push themselves to discover their full potential.

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful analysis of the processes leading to expertise, Feb 26 2012

By L. Robertson - Published on Amazon.com

This review is from: Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Implications of Expertise (Paperback)

Great work on expertise, much deeper and more thoughtful than Gladwell's stuff or anything about 10,000 hours. For me the best part was the comparison between experts and experienced non-experts. Why do some people go on to become experts while others stop at just competency? What is it about the way that experts approach problems in their domain that makes them experts? There is also an interesting look at what a student pre-expert would look like in various fields, before they are operating at the level of expert, and it is fascinating that their thinking about problems is already very different than their peers. Excellent anecdotes as well.

This book does have important ramifications for education, especially the concept of 'idea improvement' through a recursive process, but those ramifications are best spelled out in Bereiter's Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age. This is a great popular science work and provides good background for thinking about education, but it would not be specifically helpful for most educators in designing instruction.

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