Expertise Development in the Workplace Through Deliberate Practice and Progressive Problem Solving: Insights from Business-to-Business Sales Departments
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Expertise is featured by continued high performance in a particular domain. Expertise research has primarily focused on absolute expertise in structured domains such as chess and emphasized the significance of deliberate practice for expertise development. We investigated the development of relative expertise in commercial domains as part of ill-structured domains. Due to the ill-structuredness and acknowledging the use of the term expert in organizational practice, we developed a taxonomy to distinguish between four types of experts in the broader sense (relative expert, managerial relative expert, evolved specialist, and native specialist). Eighteen peer-nominated individuals from business-to-business sales departments from four German organizations participated in our interview study. A content analysis was applied using both deductive and inductive categorizations. The interview data clearly corresponds to the concept of progressive problem solving rather than to the concept of deliberate practice. Almost all our respondents referred to either “being thrown in at the deep end” by others (assigned complex tasks) or “jumping in at the deep end” of one’s own accord (self- selected complex tasks). However, the interview partners described features of deliberate practice for novices. In this very early stage of expertise development, more experienced colleagues structure parts of the ill-structured domain and enable deliberate practice while for advanced beginners and later stages expert development rather resembles progressive problem solving. Our results provide implications on how to foster expertise development in ill-structured domains. Possible limitations arise from the small sample, the peer-nomination process, and the retrospective nature of interview data.
期刊介绍：
Vocations and Learning: Studies in Vocational and Professional Education is an international peer-reviewed journal that provides a forum for strongly conceptual and carefully prepared manuscripts that inform the broad field of vocational learning. The scope of the journal and its focus on vocational learning is inclusive of vocational and professional learning albeit through the very diverse range of settings (e.g. vocational colleges, schools, universities, workplaces, domestic environments, voluntary bodies etc) in which it occurs. It stands to be the only truly international journal that focuses on vocational learning, as encompassing the activities that comprise vocational education and professional education in their diverse forms internationally. Vocations and Learning aims to: enhance the contribution of research and scholarship to vocational and professional education policy; support the development of conceptualisation(s) of vocational and professional learning and education; improve the quality of practice within vocational and professional learning and education; and enhance and support the standing of these fields as a sectors with its own significant purposes, pedagogies and curriculums. Vocations and Learning: Studies in Vocational and Professional Education encourages the submission of high-quality contributions from a broad range of disciplines, as well as those that cross disciplinary boundaries, in addressing issues associated with vocational and professional education. It is intended that contributions will represent those from major disciplines (i.e. psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, labour studies, industrial relations and economics) as cross overs within and hybrids with and amongst these disciplinary traditions. These contributions can comprise papers that provide either empirically-based accounts, discussions of theoretical perspectives or reviews of literature about vocational learning. In addition, books, reports and policies associated with vocational learning will also be reviewed. Topics addressed through contributions within the proposed journal might include, but will not be restricted to: curriculum and pedagogy practices for vocational learning the role and nature of knowledge in vocational learning the nature of vocations, professional practice and learning the relationship between context and learning in vocational settings the nature and role of vocational education the nature of goals for vocational learning different manifestations and comparative analyses of vocational education, their purposes and formation organisational pedagogics transformations in vocational learning and education over time and space analyses of instructional practice within vocational learning and education analyses of vocational learning and education policies international comparisons of vocational learning and education critical appraisal of contemporary policies, practices and initiatives studies of teaching and learning in vocational education approaches to vocational learning in non-work settings and in unpaid work learning throughout working lives relationships between vocational learning and economic imperatives and conceptions and national and trans-national agencies and their policies.
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