The quality of expertise: implications of expert-novice differences for knowledge acquisition

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Abstract
Recognizing that the knowledge of experts is qualitatively and not just quantitatively different from the knowledge of novices is an important pre-requisite to conducting effective knowledge acquisition. This article reviews the current cognitive research on expertise and proposes seven ways in which the knowledge of experts is different from the knowledge of novices, including such aspects as underlying schema, goal-orientation, practical focus, categorical chunking, cognitive complexity, automaticity of expert problem solving, and finally, the episodic nature of expert memory. The paper concludes with an outline of several implications that follow from this research including showing why knowledge acquisition will remain problematic without knowledge of experts' knowledge, as well as making a number of specific suggestions for those who need to elicit expert knowledge for knowledge-based systems.

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