ARTICLE 2 : Novice to expert: an exploration of how professional learn

AUTHOR

: Daley, Barbara J. Source: Adult Education Quaterly v.49 no 4

SUMMARY

Continuing Professional Education discuss on connection between learning and

development of practise. Over time in the professional career, they gradually change
how their think, act and communicate based on experience they gain. Most of
researchers believe novice professional will develop expertise through experience of
problem solving they experience in workplace. Some study related to professional and
its development is (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1980, 1985) label five stages of professional
career development in sequent which are novice, advance beginner, competent,
proficient, and expert. Novice professional with little experience in work tend to govern
their practise with rule-oriented behaviour. As they move to advance beginner
professional start be able to differentiate situation but still experience difficulty to
distinguishing the important from the unimportant. Professional that be in three to five
years in practise, usually be in competent stage and they be able to plan and organise
activity even though unpredictable situation arise. Next enter the proficient stage,
professional start to have holistic sense of work. Finally when professional become
expert, they are able to recognise pattern of situation because they have intuitive skill in
their career. Experts also develop the most noticeable things in all task, observation and
intervention in order to make it differentiate its impotency. From the first stage to the last
stage, three professional shift which is first working paradigm shift from reliance on
abstract principle to concentrate past experiences. Then professional seeing situation

as discreet and unrelated part to seeing situations as part of a whole. Third, the
professionals position shifts from detached observer to involved performer. This article
focuses on exploring the learning process for professional by drawing comparisons
between expert and novice. Novice describe their learning process as a process of
concept formation and assimilation where novice professional try to acquire and absorb
as many information in real practise as they can. They were trying hard to remember it
in performing the job. The novice needs procedure and validation for procedure to be
informed by the other staff. It is because novice professional have feeling of fear and
terrified of making mistake. Novice learning strategies is asking the expert. The novice
rather than deciding what to learn they waited to be told.

Novice identified formal

learning activities such as having educators, textbooks on their unit and care
conference supportive their learning process. Expert on the other hand tended to be
more constructive and self-directed. They grounded their learning and make sure they
had the information required to meet the needs of client. Learning strategies for Expect
also described active integration concept include ability to improvise between other
professional experience and on professional experience. Expert learns through dialogue
and sharing which used to assimilating new information with their past experiences.
Expert professional feel great responsibility to learn so they could share information with
other staff, client and profession. In fact expert identified systematic issues such as
politics, resources and organisational structure is supportive factor in their learning
process. Based on the research indicate that different learning processes, feeling,
learning strategies and relationship to the context of practise underlie novice and expert
stages of professional development.

CONCLUSION

Novice professional acquire body of knowledge from courses in universities. As a novice

in the profession, many things about the job is consider zero especially on how to do the
job in the right way. See things in real practise and situation is differ from the theory.
Because of the limit of experience novice have, they tend to feel stress in the real
working environment and easily feel unmotivated. Most of novice in nowadays
organisation demand for job training and blame the organisation for their mistake if the
organisation do not provide them with enough training. Novice willing to learn but they
need direction from the senior or management in performing job or deciding on what
they should learn. The ability to understand the organisation need and meet it with client
need is still at lower phase. Formal training will help them to improve their way of
thinking, behave and interaction. Novice professional usually did not think on the
learning strategy but them just following the existing procedure and remember it. As
highlight in Cervero (1998) book, learning is an active, constructive and goal-oriented
process that is dependent upon the mental activities of the learner. Expert professional
is smart and have high ability to use schema theory in order to acquired knowledge
compared to novice professional. Through schemata, expert professional can keep the
knowledge that expert experience in interrelationship between situation and event. The
theory works on expert where they able to prototype in mind and memory of the
experience situation in order to have better problem solving. For the expert, every
challenging arises in organisation is only learning opportunity. As expert professional,
they should change the complexity of problem to be as simply matter to the practitioner.