The Nature of Expertise

Proceduralization
Proceduralization refers to the process by which people switch from explicit use of declarative knowledge to direct application of proce- dural knowledge, which enables them to perform the task without thinking about it.

Tactical Learning
Tactical learning refers to a process by which people learn specific procedures for solving specific problems.

Strategic Learning
Strategic learning refers to a process by which people learn to organize their problem solving.

Pattern learning
Experts can recognize patterns of elements that repeat in many problems, and know what to do in the presence of such patterns with- out having to think them through.

Problem Perception
As they acquire expertise, problem solvers learn to perceive problems in ways that enable more effective problem-solving procedures to apply. This dimension can be nicely demonstrated in the domain of physics. Physics, being an intel- lectually deep subject, has problems where the principles for solution are not explicitly represented in the statement of the physics problem. Experts learn to see these implicit principles and represent problems in terms of them.
Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser (1981) asked participants to classify a large set of problems into similar categories. pairs of problems that novices thought were similar and the novices’ explanations for the similarity groupings. As can be seen, the novices chose surface features, such as rota- tions or inclined planes, as their bases for classification. Being a physics novice myself, I have to admit that these seem very intuitive bases for similarity.

■ An important dimension of growing expertise is the ability to learn to perceive problems in ways that enable more effective problem- solving procedures to apply.