Introducing Specific Knowledge Domains into Basic Skills Instruction: From Generalized Powers to Specified Knowledge

摘要

This paper explores a knowledge-based approach to basic skills instruction that embodies recent advances in understanding expert human performance in complex subject-manner domains. The skills of interest are those required for apprenticeship proficiency by Air Force enlisted personnel in complex, technology-laden workplaces. Toward that end, basic job skills are being tested in this effort as the core knowledge and thinking processes that enable the first-enlistment airmen to maximize on-the-job learning and proficiency and to begin progressing to skilled levels of expertise. With this conceptualization of basic skills, the role of knowledge in skilled performance is viewed as an important companion to the more traditional 'powers' of reading and computing. In tandem, knowledge and powers provide a rich basis for an explication of the learning processes that enable the progression from novice to expert. Empirical support is presented which describes ways in which novices differ from experts in their knowledge structures and approaches to problem solving in complex domains, such as physics and electronics. In addition, this paper briefly the application of the expert-novice model in the initial months of a research and development program, where early results suggest the importance of core knowledge in the two specialties being studied. Finally, theoretical as well as empirical support for instruction of basic skills based on cognitive theory is presented. (Author)