Exploring Adaptive Expertise as a Target for Engineering Design Education

In this paper we present the concept of adaptive expertise and relate this concept to the design curriculum offered by the Institute for Design Engineering and Applications (IDEA) at Northwestern University. The model of adaptive expertise suggests that instruction and assessment include a balance of “efficiency” and “innovation”. These two dimensions are first described from a theoretical perspective, then are discussed in more concrete terms in the context of the design experiences provided in IDEA. The model of adaptive expertise suggests that by providing learning experiences that balance these two dimensions we better prepare students to flexibly apply their knowledge in innovative ways. Since these aims are so closely aligned with the goals of design, we offer adaptive expertise as the target for engineering design education. INTRODUCTION Several education researchers have recently proposed a model for characterizing the attributes associated with “adaptive expertise” [1-5]. The concept of adaptive expertise suggests that the educational experience should have a balance of gaining technical proficiency with opportunities for applying one’s knowledge in innovative ways. Ultimately the adaptive expert is someone who can flexibly apply deep content knowledge to invent innovative solutions to real needs. The concept of adaptive expertise holds promise for engineering education, in particular as it relates to design education. Design courses emphasize learning-by-doing and applying knowledge and skills to develop feasible solutions to society’s needs. Students are expected to apply rigorous design process principles as well as utilize domain specific knowledge to generate, analyze, and evaluate potential solutions. In addition, design requires a level of discipline, perseverance, and astute judgment. Design thinking, therefore, entails deep disciplinary and process knowledge as well as affective factors that impact one’s motivation and persistence for working through the details of a complex problem. In this way, design education appears to align nicely with the concept of adaptive expertise. In this paper we present the concept of adaptive expertise and describe how the design curriculum offered by the Institute for Design Engineering and Applications (IDEA) at Northwestern University aims to foster the development of adaptive expertise. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF ADAPTIVE EXPERTISE The concept of adaptive expertise grew out of research focused on how individuals transfer knowledge among different learning activities. Schwartz, Bransford, and Sears present several novel perspectives for thinking about how one might successfully transfer knowledge learned in one situation to directly apply in new settings [1]. Transfer studies often produce disappointing results because, as Bransford et al. argue, they occur in settings that do not allow for testing new ideas and revising as necessary and, transfer studies too narrowly focus on measuring “replicative” (or procedural) knowledge. Schwartz et al. state; “for many new situations, people do not have sufficient memories, schemas, or procedures to solve a problem, but they do have interpretations that shape how they begin to make sense of the situation” [1, p. 9]. That is, how one interprets new situations and how one frames a problem “has major effects on subsequent thinking and cognitive processing” [1, p. 9]. The focus on transfer and more specifically on the type of knowledge that gets transferred into and out of situations sets the stage for the concept of adaptive expertise. In order to frame the concept of adaptive expertise Hatano and Inagaki contrast two types of expertise: routine and adaptive [2]. They claim that “routine experts are outstanding in speed, accuracy, and automaticity of performance but lack flexibility and adaptability to new problems” [2, p. 266]. Furthermore,