The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance

K. Anders Ericsson · Neil Charness · Paul J. Feltovich · Robert R. Hoffman

Jun 2006 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

This book was the first handbook where the world's foremost 'experts on expertise' reviewed our scientific knowledge on expertise and expert performance and how experts may differ from non-experts in terms of their development, training, reasoning, knowledge, social support, and innate talent. Methods are described for the study of experts' knowledge and their performance of representative tasks from their domain of expertise. The development of expertise is also studied by retrospective interviews and the daily lives of experts are studied with diaries. In 15 major domains of expertise, the leading researchers summarize our knowledge on the structure and acquisition of expert skill and knowledge and discuss future prospects. General issues that cut across most domains are reviewed in chapters on various aspects of expertise such as general and practical intelligence, differences in brain activity, self-regulated learning, deliberate practice, aging, knowledge management, and creativity.

Ratings and reviews

This is a book every educator should own. Too often educators are misled down the road of gurus, fads and theories that are not based in science. This book helps to change that.

About the author

K. Anders Ericsson is Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. In 1976 he received his PhD in Psychology from University of Stockholm, Sweden, followed by post-doctoral fellowship at Carnegie-Mellon University. His current research concerns the structure and acquisition of expert performance and in particular how expert performers acquire and maintain their superior performance by extended deliberate practice. He has published many books including Toward a General Theory of Expertise: Prospects and Limits and The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports, and Games.

Neil Charness is Professor of Psychology at Florida State University and Research Associate at the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy. He is also the Director of the Cognitive and Behavioral Sciences area in the department of Psychology at FSU. He has written many articles and chapters on the topics of age, human factors, and expert performance. He is on the editorial board of Gerontechnology, Psychology and Aging and the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.