Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Implications of Expertise by Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia

In the spirit of this year’s theme, I would like to introduce you to a wonderful book titled Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry into the Nature and Implications of Expertise by Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia. Here, the authors take you on a journey through the research on expertise and learning. They supply many examples from the classroom that make this a relevant book for all teachers. From the back cover:

Expertise is a process of progressive problem-solving in which people continuously rethink and redefine their tasks. A future “expert society” will not be a heaven in which all problems have disappeared, but a realistic utopia in which endless problem-solving will be a highly-valued part of life.

Progressive problem solvers stay healthier, live longer, and experience the intense mental pleasure known as “flow”. They repeatedly go beyond their well-learned procedures, avoid getting into ruts, and surpass themselves by reformulating problems at new and more complex levels. They are able to transform insoluble predicaments into soluble problems, to the benefit of everyone. Yet many of our present institutions, especially the schools, penalize expertise instead of cultivating it.

Preface http://ikit.org/fulltext/1993surpassing/preface.pdf

The book is broken down into the following chapters:

1. The need to understand expertise
2. Experts are different from us: they have more knowledge
3. Expert knowledge and how it comes about
4. Expertise as a process
5. Creative expertise
6. Expertlike learners
7. Schools as nonexpert societies
8. Toward an expert society

The first three who can e-mail me the answer to the following question (answer found in the preface) will get a copy of this book for their personal library. Question: What do the authors say can be observed in expert writers that is rarely observable in typical expert-novice comparisons? E-mail me your answer for a copy of this book (first three only). Good luck!