Moving from Novice to Expertise and Its Implications for Instruction

Objective: To address the stages of expertise development, what differentiates a novice from an expert, and how the development and differences impact how we teach our classes or design the curriculum. This paper will also address the downside of expertise and discuss the importance of teaching expertise relative to domain expertise. Summary: Experts develop through years of experience and by progressing from novice, advance beginner, proficient, competent, and finally expert. These stages are contingent on progressive problem solving, which means individuals must engage in increasingly complex problems, strategically aligned with the learner's stage of development. Thus, several characteristics differentiate experts from novices. Experts know more, their knowledge is better organized and integrated, they have better strategies for accessing knowledge and using it, and they are self-regulated and have different motivations.