The Development of Expertise in Literacy
It is easy to think of a field of endeavor and list at least one expert. You might consider Bobby Fischer to have been the world’s best chess player, Joshua Bell the best violinist and Isaac Asimov the most prolific author. A more difficult question to answer is how did each of these individuals develop expertise in his field? Research suggests that a novice develops into an expert through an intricate process that includes the following components (Glaser, 1996; Kellogg, 2006, Shea & Paull, 1996; Wagner & Stanovich, 1996):
(1) targeted practice in which each person is engaged in developmentally appropriate activities;
(2) real-time corrective feedback that is based on each person’s performance;
(3) intensive practice on a daily basis that provides results that monitor current ability;
(4) distributed practice that provides appropriate activities over a long period of time (i.e., 5-10 years, 10,000 hours), which allows for monitoring growth towards expert performance;
(5) self-directed practicein an activity for times when a coach, mentor or teacher is not available; and,
(6) progress monitored on a developmental scale that allows educators to monitor growth from novice to expert.
References
Glaser, R. (1996). Changing the agency for learning: Acquiring expert performance. In K. A. Ericsson (Ed.), The road to excellence: The acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports, and games (pp. 303-311). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Kellogg, R. T. (2007). Professional writing expertise. In K.A. Ericsson, N. Charness, P. J. Feltovich, & R. R. Hoffman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance (pp. 389-402). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
Shea, J. B., & Paull1, G. (1996). Capturing expertise in Sports. In K. A. Ericsson (Ed.), The road to excellence: The acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports, and games (pp. 321-335). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Wagner, R K., & Stanovich, K. E. (1996). Expertise in reading. In K. A. Ericsson (Ed.), The road to excellence: The acquisition of expert performance in the arts and sciences, sports, and games (pp. 189-325). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.