How People Learn

• Students come to the classroom with preconceptions about how the world works. If their initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts and information that are taught, or they may learn them for purposes of a test but revert to their preconceptions outside the classroom.
• To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must: a) have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, b) understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and c) organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application.
• A “metacognitive” approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them.

A key finding in learning and transfer literature is that organizing information into a conceptual framework allows for greater “transfer”; that is, it allows the student to apply what was learned in new situations and to learn related information more quickly (National Research Council, 2002). When you ask business leaders what they need in the workforce (Bransford and Brophy., November, 2003), they will say that the ability to solve problems is essential. 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.

excerpt from “How People Learn”
(National Research Council, 2002)

Schwartz and Bransford 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 to have innovative thinking as part of problem solution (what they call adaptive expertise) in fields characterized by change rather than routine solutions. 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.

Elaborating on the concept discussed by Hatano and Inagaki (1986), Bransford and Brophy (November 2003) present 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 that has been previously learned. Expertise implies a set of cognitive and meta-cognitive 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.

Including the development of adaptive expertise as a goal for IT students requires restructuring the teaching and learning environment. Additionally, if students, faculty, and business are to be successful in reaching this goal, new supports and scaffolding will need to be developed