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Mark Addis, Christopher Winch, Introduction, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 51, Issue 3, August 2017, Pages 557–573, https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12250
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Extract
This volume brings together a number of related contributions on the topic of expertise and education. Expertise is a topic that is beginning to receive more attention in the Philosophy of Education and discussions are closely related to the epistemological debate concerning the nature of know-how which has also burgeoned in recent years within ‘mainstream’ epistemology. More specifically, this volume focuses on the relevance of expertise to professional education and practice, with the aim of shedding light on what is involved in professional expertise and the implications of a sound understanding of professional expertise for professional education.1 Although all contributions have roots in philosophical discussion, there is an element of cross-disciplinarity among them, reflecting the advances that have been made to our understanding of expertise from psychology in particular.
Two Senses of Expertise
It cannot be stressed too much that any philosophical engagement with expertise and professional education will need to take account of the seminal work of Gilbert Ryle in two important respects (see the extended discussion of Ryle by Lum in this volume). The first is his characterisation of ‘intelligence epithets’ (Ryle, 1946, 1949) as applicable to know-how in a way that they are not applicable to singular attributions of propositional knowledge. Ryle's discussion of intelligence epithets has not received the attention that it deserves, but is important in understanding how expertise is related to know-how. Second, Ryle's discussion of ‘adverbial verbs’ (Ryle, 1979) alerts us to the difficulties of characterising all know-how, and by implication professional expertise, in terms of skills. Ryle's account of adverbial verbs is particularly important for a range of professional activities which cannot be adequately characterised as skills: planning, co-ordination, communication, control and evaluation, which are all characteristics of occupations whose practice requires a degree of independence, teamwork and professional discretion. The vocational education and training (VET) systems of some countries such as Germany place a particular emphasis on such attributes calling them (Fähigkeiten) as opposed to skills (Fertigkeiten) (see Hanf, 2011). Although Ryle is referred to intermittently in this volume, the relevance of his contributions in this area looms large. These contributions touch on a number of themes which are important in understanding expertise and, perhaps even more important, in avoiding confusions about it.
