Novices and Experts
Crossing the Divide
One of the things that I often think about, as I look back on the many years that I’ve spent in the classroom, is an intriguing study conducted by Elizabeth Newton for her 1990 Stanford University thesis, The Rocky Road From Actions to Intentions.
Participants were seated back-to-back in a laboratory setting, tasked with an intriguing challenge. One person was given a list of well-known songs, including "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star." Their mission was to tap out the rhythms of these tunes on the desk in front of them, using their index finger. Meanwhile, the other person's role was to identify the songs based on the tapping sounds they heard.
While the tappers expected the listeners to correctly identify the song about half the time, the listeners only managed to identify the correct song 2.5% of the time.
The reason behind this stark discrepancy lies in the disparity between what the tappers experienced and what the listeners perceived. While the tappers heard the entire song in their minds—complete with lyrics, melody, and even instrumental accompaniments —the listeners were only exposed to the simple rhythmic pattern of "tap tap tap tap." As a result, the complex musical composition that the tappers intended to convey was lost in communication.
Cognitive science researchers posit that within a specific domain, there are at least two types of people: novices and experts. These two groups differ not only quantitatively—in the amount of knowledge they possess—but qualitatively. They approach problems and think in fundamentally different ways. As an educator, I recognise the importance of mindfulness to ensure that any expertise difference doesn't create an educative gap. As a student, some of my most profound learning moments were when experts intentionally and respectfully joined us in our beginners’ mind and then nudged us into our zones of proximal development. Perhaps that's why empathy is often regarded as the meta-mindset.
One crucial differentiator between novices and experts lies in their memory usage. Novices heavily rely on their working memory, which has limited capacity and is susceptible to overload when inundated with new information. In contrast, experts are less prone to cognitive overload due to their well-structured knowledge, stored as memorised chunks, facilitating more streamlined information processing.
Moreover, novices and experts differ in their mental representations of successful performance within their domains. Novices often struggle to form effective mental models of successful execution, hindering their grasp of the intricacies required for mastery. In contrast, experts possess a clearer mental representation of excellence, allowing them to navigate complex challenges with relative ease.
The gap extends further into procedural knowledge, where novices often grapple with the absence of automatised skills, requiring them to consciously think through each step of a process. Conversely, experts have internalised their procedural knowledge through years of practice, enabling them to execute tasks with familiarity, almost on autopilot.
Explicit knowledge versus tacit knowledge is another crucial distinction separating novices and experts. Novices typically possess only explicit knowledge, which can be easily articulated and conveyed. In contrast, experts have accumulated vast reserves of tacit knowledge, acquired through experience and observation, shaping their understanding and decision-making in profound but often unspoken ways.
Furthermore, problem-solving approaches diverge significantly between novices and experts. Novices tend to rely on methodical step-by-step processes to arrive at solutions, while experts adopt an intuitive problem-solving style, drawing on their extensive knowledge and experience to navigate the intricacies of complex challenges.
When novices encounter new information, the learning curve can be steep, and they may struggle to absorb and apply this fresh knowledge. Conversely, experts assimilate new information, building upon their well-established foundation of existing knowledge. Where novices often focus on superficial detail, experts are more likely to see underlying structures.
The most effective educational methods for novices versus experts also diverge. Novices thrive under explicit instruction and exposure to worked examples, which provide structure and guidance. Conversely, experts flourish through discovery-based approaches, where they can explore and connect new concepts with their pre-existing knowledge, fostering a deeper understanding.
Finally, novices may encounter challenges when transferring principles and knowledge to new contexts, whereas experts excel at overcoming such hurdles. The expertise they have cultivated enables them to transfer principles between related domains, facilitating their ability to apply knowledge across a broader spectrum.
At the domain boundaries, these individuals bring an abstracted, integrated body of knowledge from one domain and apply it to questions in another, discovering connections that were not evident before and collaborating in unorthodox, challenging, and potentially game-changing ways.
So, what does this all mean for learning and teaching? Well, one thing that it means is that we need to be more aware of the gap between novices and experts, and how it affects our communication and collaboration. We need to be more mindful of the different ways that we perceive, process, and perform within our domains, and how they can lead to misunderstandings, frustrations, and failures in learning and teaching.
As educators, we need to be aware of our own blind spots and help our students build their knowledge structures from the ground up. We need to help them connect new information to their prior knowledge in a functional way, and guide them through the stages of learning from novice to expert.
And that’s what I try to do as a learner and as a teacher. I try to see things from different perspectives, and understand them in different ways. I try to think things through logically, and feel them emotionally. I try to do things with competence, and with compassion. And I hope that by doing so, I can grow as a learner and as a teacher.
And maybe, just maybe, I can also recognise the song when someone taps it out for me.