Reframing what is taught to explicitly develop
adaptive expertise

Bransford and Brophy (November, 2003) note that when you ask business leaders what they need in the workforce, the ability to solve problems is central. Teamwork, leadership, design skill and integrative thinking are valued even above technical skill (National Society of Professional Engineers). Embracing adaptive expertise as a goal for students in information technology fields requires new ways of educating those students. The use of real-time business problems for providing the context and focus of the learning environment affords the opportunities to move students’ development along a continuum of realizing adaptive expertise. Experts vary along a continuum from “merely skilled” to “highly competent” and can be characterized as approaching a problem in a routine like way or in a more flexible, adaptive way. It is the recognition that the new problem represents a “point of departure” (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 1999) and not just an opportunity to do a familiar task more efficiently that distinguishes adaptive expertise.

Elaborating on the concept discussed by Hatano and Inagaki (1986), Bransford and Brophy (November 2003) presented to the workshop attendees a conceptual framework for defining adaptive expertise. Applying what we know from previous experiences and knowledge in some area to a new problem can be more or less successful depending on how we view the current problem. While some will try to apply a recipe like solution, others will stand back from the problem and consider how they might need to adapt previous methods for solving the new problem and not simply follow a prescribed set of steps, or recipe, that has been previously learned. Expertise implies a set of cognitive and metacognitive skills; an organized body of knowledge that is deep and contextualized, an ability to notice patterns of information in a new situation, and flexibility in retrieving and applying that knowledge to a new problem (Bransford, et al., 1999). In providing IT students with business problems to solve, development of these cognitive habits of mind is a required by product of the process after solutions.

Schwartz and Bransford (personal communication, 2004) have graphically illustrated how developing adaptive expertise moves through an “Optimal Adaptability Corridor”(OAC). While expertise involves fluency with routines, what they label “Routine Expert” it becomes increasingly important in fields characterized by change more than routine solutions to have innovative thinking as part of problem solution, or what they call adaptive expertise (see Figure 1). Expertise can be conceived as routine efficiency but it will take this kind of efficiency along with adaptive innovation to address real-time problems. Real-time business problems put IT students in the OAC and with support, move them along to skillful adaptation in problem solving.