>
>P.S. One of the strengths of the apprenticeship that I have seen is that the
>expert is involved with professional problem solving in total view of the
>novice. The novice, therefore, benefits from observing both the final
>product and all the steps necessary to reach it.
>
>Richard Kennell
>(now a former lurker!)
The popular view says that the "expert" has experinces and he/she has
skills and knowldge already.
People tend to treat the "expert" and the "novice" just as natural
categories.
I think, actually, the "expert" is always, in somse sense, the novice.
In the lathe machine factory I am doing field work, in the case of
machine trouble, the novices ordinarily report and explain
the situation of trouble. So, the expert's diagnosis of machine is done
with the novice and machine itself. Depending on novice, a way of
reporting and accounting is different. And what a machine itself talk
is very little. So, anyway, at first, the expert has to rely on the report
and tha account of the novice and the novice's account will make the
context for searching the machine. Then, the novice's account is
elaborated through further interaction and diagnosis procee.
And this time, the novice's first account or report is located in the
context of following searching and elaborated.
In this way, the "novice" and "the expert" are coweaving diagnosis
context and the "expert" always confronts the new situation.
Further, if the expert has the new novice, the work situation becomes
much more different from before.
The new computerized machines or models constantly come to the
factory and the "expert" has to reorganize and recontextualize
his "old" knowledge and resources again and again with the "novices"
and the new machines. The new models carry the new kinds of
troubles exactly as the new Macintosh computer and its OS 8.
Diagnosis of machines is embedded in social interaction and there is
no fixed steps for diagnosis.
It may be appropriate to quote the following phrase of Lave and
Wenger here.
"To take a decentered view of master-apprenticeship relation leads
to an understanding the mastery resides not in the master but in
the organization od the community of practice which the master
is part." (Situated Learning, p.94)
In additions, the "steps" of task in "routine work" are not previously
structured. Rather, they are locally organized and accomplised.
For example, an unit of task is not previously given.
When one should go to the "next" step is depending on the situation
and one has to make observable of the boundary of "steps" by using and
organizing various resources.
Further, these "steps" are socially and colloboratively organized.
So, what participants including novices have to do is coweaving steps
and their boundaries with various resources and making
socially observable of these steps and their boundaries.
Post hoc description of task as well-organized structure is possible.
However, it is only one of resources.
So, I think a way of coweaving steps or contexts is one of the points
in order to analyse learning situation.
The concepts such as observation, imitation and guiding are relatively
poor in order to describe this coweaving or co-organizing.
The traditional novice-expert paradigm prevents ones from
closer looking at this coweaving sequence exactly as "a teaching
curriculum".
Picking up "the expert" and "the novice" , organizing an experimetal
session and comparing them are an orthdox way to analyse
the difference between the noice and the expert. However,
the organized setting under this kind of paradigm should be regarded
as very specific situations where "an individual" 's skill and knowledge
are socially, artificially organized with an experimenter or
an interviewer even though it tries to simulate the actual work situation.
Further, this paradigm can never see interaction and coweaving
among "novices" and "experts" occurring at workplaces.
In the paper of 1988 "cognitive apprenticeship" paper of Brown and
others, apprenticeship is describe as the process from periphral to
"CENTER". It is worth while rethinking the popular formulation of
learning as the steps from novice to expert, peripheral to center
and as such.
Naoki Ueno
NIER, Tokyo