Dimensions of Expertise, A Conceptual Exploration of Vocational Knowledge

Citation

Crowther, N. (2011), "Dimensions of Expertise, A Conceptual Exploration of Vocational Knowledge", Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, Vol. 1 No. 3, pp. 289-295. https://doi.org/10.1108/heswbl.2011.1.3.289.1

English pragmatism at its best: review of Christopher Winch's Dimensions of Expertise

This is an astute and superb text on the nature of vocational knowledge. It will be of real interest to all those interested in developing vocational educational training and to policy makers in general who are interested in aspects of professionalism, that a notion of expertise will be clearly relevant to. While the work is philosophically based it is clear and precise in regards its focus and never loses sight of the applicability of the points raised. In other words, the analysis contains directly relevant and pertinent questions that need to be asked now and answered, that is, if the UK is to develop a coherent notion of expertise that is applicable to vocational knowledge, vocational practice, and to vocational practitioners. Most particularly, the argument contains salutary comparisons with other cultural variations on vocational knowledge and expertise, while not attempting to simply trump the UK model.

The argument in a nutshell is that if we are to develop a robust and rich notion of expertise, and to have a system of teaching and learning based on that notion, we need to unpack our own cultural assumptions. We have to decide, in other words, how we might form a vocational education system that does not limit itself to what an employer wants currently in the workplace, an individual needs to get the next job, or what an awarding body thinks it can deliver. We have to expand our thinking and remind ourselves why we need to reform vocational education.

Winch begins innocently enough, “One of my aims has been to chart the various dimensions of expertise that might need to be taken into account of in trying to provide a description of expertise in any particular area” (Preface).

Winch’s hunch is that developing a clearer concept of practical knowledge or “know how”, derived from and modifying, Gilbert Ryle’s seminal distinction of knowing how and knowing that, will enable a corrective to current debates around vocational expertise (read high quality apprenticeships; labour mobility issues; and professionalism). As we progress through the text, though, we soon find that what seemed abstract, philosophical and linguistic battles, engaging and interesting though they might be in themselves, entail a fundamental appraisal of what goes on in the whole vocational educational and training enterprise. We do indeed uncover a paradigm war underpinned on one side by an English view of skill and a European concept of competence.

Others have argued that the recurrent changes, and failures, in the vocational system is evidence that we suffer from policy amnesia (Spours and Hodgson) and, therefore until we unpack the lessons of the past, the way that post 16 education hangs together in terms of governance, curricula, and professional expertise could not deliver the appropriate skills in a sustainable and fair way (expressed by the Nuffield Review Group). And then others suggest that our error is in assuming that there is a formula for developing skills and qualifications and wider economic benefits. It is an assumption that policy makers continue to make, and yet find themselves, once more, washed up on the rocks of VET initiatives with the sirens of the CBI and IOD for company (Ewart Keep and the SKOPE).

Winch’s innovative tack is to look not at the symptoms or outcomes of VET, but at the philosophical assumptions it makes. He then compares them to other philosophical and cultural variations, thus suggesting that while one cannot eradicate one’s own cultural heritage one can learn from others as to how VET is placed, not only in society but in the broader educational system.

To the point, have we really got a clear understanding of what skill is in the UK? Do we know how skill relates to knowledge, understanding, competence, and expertise? This is where Winch provides some analytically precise answers and explorations. And, on that basis of his inquiry, supplies some recommendations that government and stakeholders would be wise to consider deeply. Winch thinks the major problem holding back skills development in England is not only a failure to understand the ambiguities of skill in the first place and its superfluous use in most cases – stretching from conflation (task/skill) to ambiguity (skill/ability) and even meaninglessness (personal and social skills), but an over emphasis on outcomes and performance as the measure of “skill” development itself. Winch’s arguments conclude that we lack a full and proper articulation of expertise in the areas of general education and vocational education. Not only the potential system of vocational education, but that of general education as well, has failed to understand “expertise”. Shudders around not just colleges, but universities can almost be audibly be heard.

While Winch’s general conclusions confirm what many who work in a more European context think, that the English system is more flexible but shallow in skills development, his work, here, adds substantially to those debates by showing up the misnomer that is “skill”. The view that the European model is looking to the “outcome” approach of the UK is not something to be proud of when, in fact, this adds flexibility to robust systems. Ours is all flexibility: qualifications, awarding bodies, institutions, even the agencies whose aegis they supposedly work under.

He is also brave enough to aim for that most difficult of intuitions, that the answers will not be consistent in every case and that a general theory of expertise is not really an option. This is perhaps because of his point of departure, pragmatism, and the philosophy of Gilbert Ryle, who supplies Winch with the philosophical terminology to unpack the key concepts in debates about vocational knowledge: most particularly in the well‐known dichotomy of “knowing that” and “knowing how”.

The author’s approach to these debates is a pragmatic one, that is, he assumes that the solutions will be found in “what works” and what can be implemented, or can have meaning in an informed public realm.

“Knowing that” refers to propositional knowledge and is found in verbal and written statements or any sign system, of course, that carries symbolic meaning. “Knowing how” refers to the performance of an intention and an understanding that one “knew” how to do it. Ryle’s distinction was made to show that the traditional orthodoxy of the time (Ryle was writing in the mid twentieth century) was in fact based on Descartes. A seventeenth century philosopher whose basic position on mind and body informed the view that “knowing that” was a mental act that one might state, and “knowing how” was a physical act, and, for the latter, could only be stated (i.e. if it needed to be stated) if one was cognitive of, or conscious of, one’s intent. The emphasis that Descartes gave to our mental life over the physical was something Ryle wanted to overcome. He derided it as the “official doctrine” and set about undermining it.

Winch agrees with Ryle and discounts the subsumption of knowing how to knowing that, for knowing how has its own distinct descriptive concepts, Winch (following Ryle) calls them “intelligence concepts”, and argues that there are sets of terms in everyday language use that are not seen in knowing that descriptors. Intelligence concepts refer to the case that, when it comes to practical knowledge or “doing knowledge” (we could interject), it is correct to say things like Jenny does better than John, which is not something that one can say of propositions or knowing that. One cannot say that Jenny knows “the date of the French Revolution is 1789” better than John who also knows it. And we can also say that Jenny rides a bike better than John. So practical knowledge enables a comparison that is not found in singular propositions. This is known as the “degree problem”.

But Winch goes on to point out that “knowledge that” can also have notions of “degree”, which also assumes intelligence concepts. This can occur where we are looking at a range of factors in regard to what Jenny knows about the French Revolution; for example, she may elaborate upon the context of the enlightenment, and, offer possible causal explanations, that the French Revolution resulted from the dynamic between class relations.

Expanding the horizon of knowing that from singular propositions to other related propositions, underpinned by logical relations, means that intelligence concepts such as “better than” can be applied. In this case Winch inserts the more helpful wider concept of “knowledge”, that derives from the German use of Wissen (systematic knowledge), rather than Kenntnis, which refers to singular, discrete, forms of propositional knowledge.

Winch is doing us a great service by expanding our view of how knowledge itself should be articulated in teaching and learning. He gives us a notion of “knowledge” which, contrary to the British tradition of empiricism, means that it covers, and works within, wider “intelligence concepts” than we previously thought, but which are actually seemingly obvious. In other words, the fact that one is dealing with physical tasks, rather than mental tasks, does not necessarily render an absolute break in terms of epistemology according to Winch.

While this might appear to be interesting, if not radical, it does not suffice for us to conclude that knowing that and knowing how therefore share intelligence concepts, for it is arguable that notions of knowing how are not articulable. Winch gives the example of ice skaters who can perform particular techniques but cannot explain them. This is very different from the conscious and explicit articulation of propositional knowledge.

What do we do in such cases where expertise is met with performance rather than articulation? How do we know Jenny really does know how to ice skate and perform such techniques if she cannot articulate them?

Winch’s argument is that Ryle’s distinction is crucial as it enables us to accept our everyday understanding of “knowing how”. That is, “it allows for the adverbial application of intelligence concepts” (p. 25). Therefore, we can say that distinct elements of performance, consistently completed, demonstrate a knowledge of how to do something. Sounds a little like a set of exams? So, why there may be differences in articulation, epistemologically, we are dealing with the range of human dispositions.

Why “intelligence concepts” disturb the binary opposition of knowing how and knowing that is because they also introduce intentionality and normativity into the discussion. These concepts were not developed by Ryle, but Winch employs them to widen the discussion further and provides a fruitful line of thought into the notion of expertise. It is here the debate becomes much more expansive and full of rich implications for policy makers, practitioners, and teacher trainers. Winch now maintains “that the exercise of skill in its core use presupposes action and hence the exercise of skill involves intentionality within a normative context” (p. 39).

This view is at odds with the view that skill is competence (English usage) based, that it is behaviour based or outcome based, that one can assess “skill” by the mere observance of a set of tasks or actions. On Winch’s account the range of concerns about “skill” are much more holistic, more value orientated, more based on agent intention. In fact, are better suited to the German concept of Kompetenz. We need to articulate our tasks in regard to intentions and purpose rather than “demonstrate an observable outcome according to set criteria” (Winch 2011), according to the National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) as they were established in 1986. The date is not without ideological significance.

The narrow definition of competence and skill, as contextualised in such NVQ assessed units, suited employers, at least, conformed to their short‐term interest of wanting someone to perform a task competently in the workplace as soon as possible. Such assessment is quick, skills are dedicated to particular processes in the workplace and there is no wastage in terms of the novice’s time on more general education or on other more elaborate tasks or practices (Unwin’s and Huddlestone’s distinction between a restrictive and expanded apprenticeship comes to mind).

There are also benefits to the learner with such a speedy process, such as achieving a standard around tasks quickly and of progressing in their areas of “competence”. Such outcomes enable individuals to, fairly quickly, seek employment in particular occupational tasks. But, as in the example used of British bricklayers, these restricted competencies in bricklaying place them in an inferior market position to European models of VET that provide greater and more expanded form of expertise. The error we make is that we refer to different models of practice (the Rolls Royce or BT apprenticeship) to shore up a general qualification and occupational framework that is not comparable to other models precisely because the framework incorporates variation.

The disadvantages in a narrow range of competencies are that the individual has no wider transferable skills, can become trapped in the particular tasks and job they have been trained in, and are easily replaced in the job market with others who can quickly learn such tasks. And the debate becomes much more political and cultural as the English have a particular obsession with “freedom” and an antipathetic rhetoric around bureaucracy and regulation.

For Winch, other European models have a much more extensive notion of competence which covers not only general education, but also incorporates normative traditions of occupational practice that one may be engaged in, and the senses of “bourgeois” and “civic” virtues that are also entailed. In other words, the goods one produces are “worth” something, they have extrinsic worth, and one is also considered a person of worth, by having a certain occupational standing. This is something that has been more restricted in the English tradition, particularly with the decline in apprenticeships and of the “skilled worker” or “craftsperson”. No amount of rhetoric can bridge this gap, only detailed work around licences to practice and the occupational standing that would ensue from it.

Winch does an excellent job of pointing out the fundamental flaws in the English apprenticeship framework. It fails to endorse a universal template for all apprenticeships that ensures knowledge is prior to performative competence and so enables applicability of skills to be measured; provides consistent occupational standing (Germany has 350 occupational standards or licences to practice); and is within a normative and virtue bound tradition.

While this could sound too radical in its diagnosis, because it brings in cultural and social considerations of occupational status, and the impact that a change to such a conception could have on industrial relations and wages, it does have a simple point of leverage and it is directly related to notions of expertise and vocational knowledge. Why doesn’t the technical certificate come before the competences in the framework? Why don’t we think that systematic knowledge (the dreaded English aversion to “theory”) is crucial to skill development? Why don’t we encompass virtues and values in our apprenticeship framework?

But, there are some omissions in Winch’s arguments. The general reader may assume that Ryle’s analysis is solely related to the conceptual coherence of knowing that and knowing how and has no other bite. The brief mention of Ryle’s anti‐Cartesianism would not be sufficient to ensure that those in the English tradition would take Ryle’s aims as having any wider significance, for this is something that Anglo‐analytic philosophy just has not taken seriously. After all, what English philosopher followed Descartes’s philosophy? None. Ryle could be put, only slightly unfairly, as just another version of the English anti‐rationalist philosophic tradition (not irrationalist).

Why would this matter? It matters because what Ryle is proposing may be tying us to another English mast, that of analytical behaviourism or logical behaviourism, which is what his philosophy is referred to as. This argued that our dispositions to act were the instantiations of our intentions and meanings. Whether in propositions (knowing that) or behaviour (knowing how), our intentions were transparent and meaningful, ultimately, observable. “If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck then it must be a duck” is the popular expression of such a philosophy. In other words, ourselves, our meanings, our world, is bound up in forms of public verifiability. Hence, Winch’s own assumption that there will be no general theory of expertise, because on such a notion of verifiability, no concept could be universal. It will always be subject to further observations and instantiations.

This introduces some further tensions in the approach taken and these tensions are right and proper for the debate. No thinker in the English tradition could get away with wanting to move our notion of skills, competence, and expertise to a more European model without suffering some conceptual strain. This is why Winch is to be highly praised for his attempt to move the debate on in the right way.

However, relying on Ryle, means that there is a cost of admission. The methodology of public verifiability, via linguistic analysis, cuts away any deeper conceptual roots which we may need to explore, indeed, I think we should, if we are to inquire into notions of expertise that do not subscribe, ultimately, to linguistic analysis alone.

“Knowing that” and “knowing how” are linguistic distinctions that are meant to offer a “non‐mentalistic” (non‐Cartesian) level of analysis. But, for this very reason they are tied to two fundamental assumptions.

The first is that the assumed classifications (knowledge and practice) still hold in terms of their binary articulation. “Knowledge that” is propositional; “knowledge how” is performative. Even though propositions are “performed” in essays or exams, and performances evidenced in intentions (raising my arm means I want to ask a question in the context of a classroom). The binary opposition still holds in terms of their popular significance. And the philosophical debates tend to be restricted to linguistic and conceptual definitions alone (as in Ryle), hence the wringing of hands around the primacy given to academic over “practical” (sic) education.

On the other hand, Hubert and Stewart Dreyfus offer a broadly Heideggerian approach which is, perhaps, most fitting to mention, because it is an approach that has some relation to Ryle. Ryle reviewed Heidegger’s seminal work, Being and Time (1927), and thought it had much to offer, but he failed to see the true import of it in relation to his own work.

From a Heideggerian approach, the view that notions of expertise, of agency, be limited to an epistemological (or linguistic) analysis would be deemed to be inadequate to a holistic notion of reality and social practice, which is, clearly, where Winch wants to head. But he is, arguably, restricted by the epistemological methodology he has employed.

There are other approaches, then, that deserve attention and that need to be considered, particularly, if we want to understand expertise in the way that Winch suggests. Winch wants to argue that expertise requires an epistemology that has a cognitive dimension, yet does not rest on Cartesian orthodoxy (hence the employment of “intelligence concepts”). Second, that expertise has a normative aspect that needs explicating and which is arguably, though not so obviously, non‐Cartesian (Descartes’ The Passions of the Soul would be a test bed for this). Third, that expertise is implicated in social practice (again, even Descartes understood that action would be carried out in the world of intentions and things).

This is not to highlight any lack in Winch’s exploration. He has taken us far enough. But it would be significant if he turned his attention to those approaches, which could claim to have superseded the Rylian premises he starts from. And, further, do not have the cost of admission that Ryle’s fairly dated point of departure detains us with. This is not to say it is not relevant, it is, but the context of Ryle’s views places us in a sort of epistemological cul‐de‐sac. Yes, we need a non‐Cartesian notion of vocational knowledge, but let us not forget, one that would implicate academic knowledge too! The target for other approaches is how we articulate “knowledge” itself, “truth”, “reality”, not just vocational knowledge.

It seems that Winch wants to articulate a form of vocational knowledge, which, while distinct from academic knowledge, is actually given warranty by it. The use of “intelligence concepts” shows the applicability of cognitive judgements to any tasks we might try our hand at, or head at. While such a plateau of judgement neatly fits Ryle’s own plateau of dispositions, it does not differentiate “doing” from “knowing” in ways that would disturb what we think of as “academic” and “practical” expertise. It merely shows how we might measure vocational expertise in ways that measure up to the standards of academic work, that is, via intelligence concepts that are, arguably, already suited to the task.

In other words, the emphasis is on the cognitive judge, the language that of the rationalist as in “intelligence concepts”, but the practice is placed in a social and occupational context. More pertinently today, framed by the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) that attempts some correspondence between such different understandings of qualification levels and their components.

So, while one can understand and appreciate Winch’s starting point, one could argue that it is logocentric. That is, it assumes that the concepts of reason (intelligence concepts) it has inherited will be more than enough to articulate what is not reason (i.e. “doing”). It could be admitted that this point of view could be seen as “non‐pragmatic” and could even be construed as anti‐rationalist. But, if one is to overcome the Cartesian heritage, a more fundamental turn in our thinking may need to be accomplished.

I think Winch is caught between a rock and a hard place and the tension derives from his use of what would, at first, seem like a good starting point, “knowing that” and “knowing how”. But rather than deconstruct them in a way that offers radical insight, he continually reconstructs them so that they do not disturb those wider notions of academic knowledge and rationalist discourse or, indeed, of how they may be embedded in the workplace and of practical action in general. For example, the addition of normative guidelines and values into the debate is welcome, but they are seen as elements of a general system of VET, rather than suggesting a more radical conclusion. It may be that such conceptual inflation actually dethrones any pretender to the throne: there is no sovereign, just contesting princes (the principle of subsidiarity). Whatever else might be the case, the values and norms pertaining to the EQF may be just as much about politics as about epistemology. This debate returns us to a more holistic appreciation of how reason has a place “in‐the‐world” rather than being an adjudicator of it.

There is also the outstanding issue of the teachers of vocational practitioners, whom Winch does not deal with specifically. This is, perhaps, a lost opportunity in the current context of the implementation of professionalism in post 16 education, particularly in the area of vocational teaching. But it would be a real stimulation to current debate to see how Winch would address this. The implications of his points around IVET and CVET point us in this direction.

Finally, it would also be interesting to see if Ryle’s philosophy could win the day over more contemporary points of departure. It is to Winch’s great credit that he has opened up a debate that has remained dormant for too long at the policy level. It is also salutary that this debate is opened today, when so much is asked of vocational education and skills without an adequate theoretical and philosophical basis, and one that would be needed if we are to ensure a sustainable and conceptually coherent vocational system of education. This is a must read for anybody interested in, or involved with, vocational education at any level. Let the debates begin.