Customer Reviews

Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Implications of Expertise

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An excellent book by two excellent expert & learning researchers on nature and implications of expertise in human behaviour. Has various implications in the fields of schooling, life-long learning, apprenticeship and just plain old teaching. Does not contain psychological jargon, is easily understood, but contains profound material any educator should be willing to tackle. Excellent work (no wonder it's "hard to find").

Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Implications of Expertise, by by Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia, provides a very accessible, but scholarly look at the nature of expertise - and why we need to fundamentally rethink how we understand and nurture "adaptive expertise." This is critical as we prepare students to face a future where memorizing what we already know (and spitting it back on standardized tests) isn't the kind of 'expertise' we need (if indeed, it even qualifies as authentic expertise.)

As Bereiter and Scardamalia explain, we need to move beyond the idea that expertise is a commodity one "gets" with a degree and then is able to rest on that expert label for one's career. Real expertise moves beyond what is known - into the dark area of the unknown - where one grasps in darkness at completely new insights, innovation, invention.

Until we create an educational system that gives students permission to play in this field of the unknown - where failure is an acceptable and organic part of the landscape, they will never know the liberating power of unfettered romps in the realm of messy, inventive expertise. This is a must-read for any school reformer - or life-long learner needing encouragement to push themselves to discover their full potential.

This book is the best I've read so far of the what and how of expertise. What it is and how to do it. It is very well written, and although it recognizes the defects of other theories it doesn't "put down" it mostly just promotes a constructive and well thought out discription of the processes and environment conducive to expertise.