The Invention of Amateurs and the
Uncertainty of Expertise
Brown University
CLIR Symposium
April 18, 2008
Randy Bass, Georgetown University
bassr@georgetown.edu
Sir Ken Robinson
http://www.ted.com/talks
What’s on the Horizon?
• Horizon Report
New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning
Initiative
1 year or less
• Grassroots video
• Collaboration Webs
2-3 years
• Mobile Broadband
• Data Mashups
3-5 years
• Collective Intelligence
• Social Operating Systems
What’s on the Horizon?
Horizon Report
New Media Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative
1 year or less
• Grassroots video
• Collaboration Webs
2-3 years
• Mobile Broadband
• Data Mashups
3-5 years
• Collective Intelligence
• Social Operating Systems
Consumers
and
Producers
Be Kind, Rewind
Wikipedia
Introduction to Biology of Global Health
(Public Service Announcements)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GRzIqgwrr1Q&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7yF6TztNNXw&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yVeSYd1ojdU&feature=related
Introduction to Biology of Global Health
(Public Service Announcements)
“Overall, I believe the project was excellent in helping us
learn how to communicate an issue. As a science student, I
often feel that I have plenty of time in lab, but I do not
know how to explain why I love science. Projects like the
public service announcement encourage creativity and
foster an understanding of how to talk to people. ... I want
to be an undergraduate who knows about the problems and
can efficiently communicate with my colleagues.
“Through making this film, I learned a lot about film editing
and how one repackages a (potentially) very academic
message into something that arouses both interest and
emotion.”
Introduction to Biology of Global Health
(Public Service Announcements)
“The project was very frustrating at times, but I think it was
actually a very valuable experience. I think scientists and
health practitioners need to be able to better communicate
with the public, as I think many of the problems of our day,
from global warming to the spread of infectious disease, are
the result of the scientific community not communicating a
suitable message to the public. The project made me realize
the difficulties in creating such a message.”
“Being a science major, it is often hard to distinguish between what
is common knowledge and what is only well known to those within
the field of biology. I truly gained a first hand look into the
challenges that the public health officials must face in attempting to
relay information to the general public.”
In Plain English (Commoncraft)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU
Learning and Social Practice
“Legitimate Peripheral Participation”
(Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger)
“To begin with, newcomers’ legitimate peripherality provides
them with more than an ‘observational’ lookout post: It
crucially involves participation as a way of learning—of
both absorbing and being absorbed in –the ‘culture of
practice.’ An extended period of legitimate peripherality
provides learners with opportunities to make the culture of
practice theirs” (95).
Threshold Concepts
“A threshold concept can be considered as akin
to a portal, opening up a new and previously
inaccessible way of thinking about something. It
represents a transformed way of understanding,
or interpreting, or viewing something without
which the learner cannot progress….
Jan Meyer and Ray Land, “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome
Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the
Disciplines.” Occasional Report 4, May 2003. Enhancing TeachingLearning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project. University of
Edinburgh.
“Threshold Concepts”
“As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept
there may thus be a transformed internal view of subject
matter, subject landscape, or even world view. This
transformation may be sudden or it may be protracted
over a considerable period of time, with the transition to
understanding proving troublesome. Such a transformed
view or landscape may represent how people ‘think’ in a
particular discipline, or how they perceive, apprehend, or
experience particular phenomena within that discipline
(or more generally).”
Jan Meyer and Ray Land, “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge:
Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines.”
Occasional Report 4, May 2003. Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments
in Undergraduate Courses Project. University of Edinburgh.
Threshold Concepts
Examples (acc to Meyer and Land)
– Economics: Concept of Opportunity cost
– Mathematics: Concept of a Limit
– Literary and Cultural Studies: Concept of signification
– Biology: Concept of Evolution
Threshold Concepts
• Transformative: may occasion a significant
shift in perception of a subject (or even
personal identity)
• Irreversible: unlikely to be forgotten or
unlearned
• Integrative: exposes previously hidden
interrelatedness of something
Threshold Concepts
• Troublesome Knowledge (Perkins, 1999):
– “A threshold concept may on its own
constitute, or in its application lead to…
troublesome knowledge.” (Meyer and Land,
1003)
-troublesomeness protracts or blocks crossing
the threshold: liminality and stuck places
Threshold Concepts
+
Electracy?
“The history of literacy shows that we may expect
profound changes to result from the changes in the
language apparatus of our civilization that have been
underway at least since the invention of photography in
the early nineteenth century…we should consider this
moment as a time for invention.”
Gregory Ulmer, Internet Invention: From
Literacy to Electracy
Threshold Concept: “Cultural Construction of Authenticity”
Theresa Schlafly, from ENGL723 The Problem of
Learning and the Digital Humanities
Threshold Concept: “Cultural Construction of Authenticity”
“My encounter with the Geothe House replica fits
Bruner’s conception of a tellable narrative, which
“must run counter to expectancy, must breach a
canonical script or deviate from what Hayden
White calls ‘legitimacy’. As a tourist to Goethe’s
garden house I was following an implict, culturally
normalized script of how to visit a historic site, and
the last thing I expected was to be confronted with
an exact copy of the site I was visiting…I felt not
only disconcerted but also cheated by the replica,
which led me to ask myself a series of questions
about the site’s authenticity, ownership and value.”
Theresa Schlafly, from ENGL723 The Problem of
Learning and the Digital Humanities
Threshold Concept: “Cultural Construction of Authenticity”
“As with the Goethe House replica, the lack of
explanation of the Belchite ruins sets up…a
dialogue with the visitor. Similarly, with the images
I presented, I was hoping to lead the viewer to ask
a series of questions about the origins and
implications of the Belchite ruins.
The presentation of the series of Belchite images
creates an overall emotional effect rather than a
clear narrative--the viewer is left to construct the
narrative for him or herself.”
Theresa Schlafly, from ENGL723 The Problem of
Learning and the Digital Humanities
Charea Batiste, CSUMB, Cultural History
QuickTime™ and a
QuickTime™
and a
Animation
decompressor
Animation
decompressor
are
needed to
see this picture.
are needed to see this picture.
another response (faculty collaborator)
“I was watching the digital story, which
I’d seen before, and I wrote in my
notes ‘digital book report’. I mean,
there isn’t anything there that you
wouldn’t have learned from a couple
of hours in the Civil Rights Museum in
Birmingham.”
From the
Charea Batiste
interview
“On the relationship
of the images to her
voice”
[19:41] Because I was never involved in the civil
rights movement, as I said that was a long
time ago for me. I feel that I don’t have…
can’t in my own words describe what
happened. I was never there, I didn’t
experience any of those things, so my words
are just from an outside point of view.
But the pictures are first hand. These are people
who actually went through the pain, who
went through the torture, and their stories are
told through these still images.
My voice was used I guess to give life to those
pictures, but the pictures itself they told the
story.
And my voice, I remember listening, I would get
very angry telling the story. And I think that’s
what added to the images. Because the
anger in my voice--although still in tune with
the digital story--without being irate was
enough to make the images real, relevant, so
you could feel the anger that was, you know,
produced from those acts of violence. [20:52]
Greg Ulmer: “From Literacy to Electracy”
“For example, general education writing
courses…serve at least the following consensus
needs, listed in order of current priority—
methods for using the language to learn
specialized knowledge;
practices of rhetoric and logic required for
citizenship in a democratic society;
models of self-knowledge for living the
examined life.
[Writing
competency]
[Critical
thinking]
[Capacity for
reflection]
We may assume that these needs continue in electracy, but
that they will be articulated differently. There will be an
inversion of the literate hierarchy; the first communication
of an electrate person is reflexive, self-directed” (5).
Rethinking…
• relation of learning to social practice
• how knowledge becomes embodied
• role and value of creativity,
invention, innovation
• role of affect and self-knowledge
“Primal Fear”
Defense attorney:
“Objection. The man is a
police officer, not an English
professor. His interpretation
would be speculative and
irrelevant.”
Judge: “I didn’t hear her ask for
an expert opinion. The witness
may answer.”
Expertise
(differences between experts and specialists/non-experts)
• Yes, experts have more knowledge, but many
different kinds of knowledge
– Formal, informal, procedural, self-regulating
• Experts are comfortable working at the edge of
their competency
• Regularly master routines in order to have
resources available for progressive problem-solving
• Experts reinvest in their own expertise
Carl Bereiter and Marlena Scardamalia, Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry into the
Nature of Expertise
The Three Apprenticeships
Across all the professions:
• Habits of Mind
• Habits of Practice (Hand)
• Habits of the Heart
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching (Lee Shulman, President)
Professional Learning as
Apprenticeship
• Apprenticeships of Thought: Learning to think and
“profess” like a …..
• Apprenticeships of Practice: Learning to perform
and practice like a ……..
• Apprenticeships of Formation: Learning to
become a professional who acts with the integrity
and moral/ethical commitments of a …..
• Apprenticeships of Critical Reflection: becoming
a critical scholar of one’s own work…
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching (Lee Shulman, President)
Signature Pedagogies:
What do students do?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Routines, Habits, Practices
Public performance (visibility)
Accountable talk (active listening)
Make judgments under uncertainty
Critically analyze own performance
Experience risk, anxiety, at stakeness
Develop values, identity, commitment
Internalize new habits, practices, identity
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Lee
Shulman, President)
Signature Pedagogies:
What do students do?
• Routines, Habits, Practices
• Public performance (visibility)
• Accountable talk (active listening)
• Make judgments under uncertainty
•
•
•
•
Critically analyze own performance
Experience risk, anxiety, at stakeness
Develop values, identity, commitment
Internalize new habits, practices, identity
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Lee
Shulman, President)
In Memory of James Slevin, 1945-2006
English, Georgetown University
Frances March Award, MLA
December 2005
The Right to Literacy, with Andrea Lunsford (MLA, 1990).
Introducing English: Essays in the Intellectual Work of
Composition (Pittsburgh, 2001).
digitalcommons.georgetown.edu/
blogs/bassr