Developing Student Expertise and Promoting the Sharing of Teachers' Expertise

• In Event: Fostering Students' 21st Century Skills Through Education: Perspectives on National and Cross-National Obstacles and Advances From the International Academy of Education

Abstract

Students and teachers who possess expertise in a field have deep knowledge, specific unusual insights, and often great passion about what they know and understand so well. When they com-municate their knowledge, they often enthrall their listeners. Thus, we should promote the building of expertise in various fields among students, and find ways to have teachers share their expertise with their students.
The philosopher Kieran Egan (2005) proposed an approach to develop expertise among students: Every student, from first grade on, becomes an expert in some field or about some subject—birds or bees, water supply or waste disposal, local history or weather. Further, each student must learn to publicly communicate their expertise to others at the end of each school year. Every student is afforded the opportunity to learn at least one domain deeply, and to stay with it long enough that expanding ones knowledge in an area comes under self-regulation. Knowing something better and deeper than anyone else in a community provides a unique and wonderful learning experience for students, and an ego builder for them, as well. Furthermore, in the era of increasing curriculum homogeneity, with all schools trying to do well on national tests, and all nations trying to do well on international tests (e.g. PISA), having students know “stuff” that is not in the official curriculum standards may turn out to be a real advantage. Heterogeneity in the expertise possessed by a society may promote the survival of nations later in the 21st century.

Author

• David C. Berliner, Arizona State University