From Expertise and Mental Structures to Behavior and Back Again: A Multistudy Critical Review

• In Event: New International Developments and Cross-Validation in Constructive Knowledge Assessment and Rerepresentation

Abstract

In the last decades a multitude of technologies have been developed and improved that help to track a persons understanding in many different ways (Cañas, et al., 2004; Ifenthaler, 2008, 2010; Johnson, Ifenthaler, Pirnay-Dummer, & Spector, 2009; Jonassen, Beissner, & Yacci, 1993; Jonassen, Reeves, Hong, Harvey, & Peters, 1997; Landauer, Foltz, & Laham, 1998; Pirnay-Dummer & Ifenthaler, 2010; Pirnay-Dummer, Ifenthaler, & Spector, 2010; Pirnay-Dummer & Walter, 2009; Schnotz & Preuss, 1997; Schvaneveldt, 1990; Schvaneveldt & Cohen, 2010; Schvaneveldt, et al., 1985; Spector, 2006; Wolfe & Goldman, 2003). The need for different instruments and tools arises from the problem that we cannot look into a learners mind. At least two unknown function chains are involved in representing the outside-world to the mind (Bach, 1989; Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981; Piaget, 1976; Putnam, 1988; Schnotz, 1994; Schnotz & Preuss, 1997; Seel, 1991; Spiro, Feltovich, Jacobson, & Coulson, 1991; Strasser, 2010) – from knowledge to basic schema and from schema to flexible and re-arrangeable mental structures, and at least the same number of different functions needs to be assumed during the processes of externalization (re-representation). Externalizations like graphs and knowledge maps have an impact on the internal representation again (Hanke, 2008; Ifenthaler, 2009). But also, the external artifacts give a solid insight as to if and to some extent also to what is going on in the learner over time. Experienced practitioners can very well considered to be experts as can classical experts from academia and comparable vocations (Gruber, 1994). Their knowledge and skill has different purposes and thus their expertise is composed differently as regards semantics and structure across different domains (Pirnay-Dummer, 2006). And this is not only a matter of “how much” knowledge there is. As some of the technologies can now be automated, new applications emerged that were inaccessible beforehand simply due to economic reasons. Thus the review within this paper also contains practical applications ranging from facilitating understanding in ongoing company projects (e.g., Lachner & Pirnay-Dummer, 2010; Pirnay-Dummer & Lachner, 2008) to the support of academic writing all showing, that a redirection of the assessed structures to communication processes and performance is already feasible at many points. The presentation will connect already reported and new studies to a framework on how behavior and internal structure is inseparably interconnected.

Authors

• Pablo Nicolai Pirnay-Dummer, University of Freiburg

• Dirk Ifenthaler, Open Universities Australia