I agree with both of you. I can't see anything approaching this level of application in most workplace learning scenarios, but I think there is value in the approach and specifically the Cognitive Task Analysis (What did you notice?, What did you expect to happen?). This is a potentially useful tool to help model how experts (like me my 60s ;-)) approach tasks. It provides a way to explore potentially useful tacit knowledge. Think Action Mapping for Experts or the Shadow Action Map.
While I recognize this expertise is desirable, and even necessary, it's not practical in many instances. Really, unless the consequences *and* urgency are high, it's likely too costly to do the training you suggest. In most cases, these people progressed from models of decisions, over many instances, to develop the pattern recognition cited. Pilots, doctors, military and emergency responders are people that if they screw up, people die. Not many others have such consequences. You can take time to decide whether the concrete on a building is sufficient quality. You can stop a meeting and reconvene. I'm not saying this isn't valuable, but most of what we do makes sense. There are other ways we can, and should of course, be developing people over time, via coaching & mentoring, extended learning, and more. We typically get people up to a minimum standard, and then let them develop more. I love your research, and this *is* interesting, but I think it's rarer than your article suggests. Happy to be wrong!
Hi Clark, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think you're right on the core point. I needed to be a little clearer on this one, but I had to cut quite a lot as it was becoming a bit of a monster. Implementing this exact approach in, as you say, most situations would be unnecessary and inefficient. That said, I think, looking forward, there may be an increasing number of situations where these kinds of approaches, or more likely approaches inspired by this, may prove useful.
We're increasingly seeing people stay in work longer; I was recently challenged to think about what meaningful development looks like for a 60-year-old employee with potentially 20 more years in the workforce. These are often the people who have exactly the kind of expertise Klein describes, the pattern recognition, the cue detection, the tacit knowledge they can't easily articulate. I'm thinking that we'll need to offer them development that respects what they already know. But we'll also need to find ways to harvest that expertise and make it available to others, which is where Cognitive Task Analysis come in. The "what did you notice?" question then becomes a way of making expert perception visible and transferable to others.
The other area that makes me think this is going to be more useful moving ahead is the impact of AI in the workplace, or rather the current poor use of AI in the workplace. As the procedural components of work continue to be more automated, it seems natural that the perceptual and diagnostic capabilities of employees will be more and more important. While yes the speed may not be necessary in many organisations, the ability to quickly identify and assess situations against existing patterns and cues seems like one potential hedge against people being taken in by AI-generated misinformation or misdirection. Or if I'm feeling slightly more generous, just inaccuracies.
As a counter to this, one benefit of generative AI tools, assuming they develop a little from where they are today, is that scaling the harvested expertise of people around pattern recognition should be much more efficient at scale. Many standard generative AI provisos should be read into this statement because, of course, we could continue down the road of general nonsense and never see this kind of value from the technology. But it's still early in the week, so let's be positive.
I think, based on your question, I may add a bit of an addendum to the article around my thinking here.
I agree with both of you. I can't see anything approaching this level of application in most workplace learning scenarios, but I think there is value in the approach and specifically the Cognitive Task Analysis (What did you notice?, What did you expect to happen?). This is a potentially useful tool to help model how experts (like me my 60s ;-)) approach tasks. It provides a way to explore potentially useful tacit knowledge. Think Action Mapping for Experts or the Shadow Action Map.
While I recognize this expertise is desirable, and even necessary, it's not practical in many instances. Really, unless the consequences *and* urgency are high, it's likely too costly to do the training you suggest. In most cases, these people progressed from models of decisions, over many instances, to develop the pattern recognition cited. Pilots, doctors, military and emergency responders are people that if they screw up, people die. Not many others have such consequences. You can take time to decide whether the concrete on a building is sufficient quality. You can stop a meeting and reconvene. I'm not saying this isn't valuable, but most of what we do makes sense. There are other ways we can, and should of course, be developing people over time, via coaching & mentoring, extended learning, and more. We typically get people up to a minimum standard, and then let them develop more. I love your research, and this *is* interesting, but I think it's rarer than your article suggests. Happy to be wrong!
Hi Clark, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think you're right on the core point. I needed to be a little clearer on this one, but I had to cut quite a lot as it was becoming a bit of a monster. Implementing this exact approach in, as you say, most situations would be unnecessary and inefficient. That said, I think, looking forward, there may be an increasing number of situations where these kinds of approaches, or more likely approaches inspired by this, may prove useful.
We're increasingly seeing people stay in work longer; I was recently challenged to think about what meaningful development looks like for a 60-year-old employee with potentially 20 more years in the workforce. These are often the people who have exactly the kind of expertise Klein describes, the pattern recognition, the cue detection, the tacit knowledge they can't easily articulate. I'm thinking that we'll need to offer them development that respects what they already know. But we'll also need to find ways to harvest that expertise and make it available to others, which is where Cognitive Task Analysis come in. The "what did you notice?" question then becomes a way of making expert perception visible and transferable to others.
The other area that makes me think this is going to be more useful moving ahead is the impact of AI in the workplace, or rather the current poor use of AI in the workplace. As the procedural components of work continue to be more automated, it seems natural that the perceptual and diagnostic capabilities of employees will be more and more important. While yes the speed may not be necessary in many organisations, the ability to quickly identify and assess situations against existing patterns and cues seems like one potential hedge against people being taken in by AI-generated misinformation or misdirection. Or if I'm feeling slightly more generous, just inaccuracies.
As a counter to this, one benefit of generative AI tools, assuming they develop a little from where they are today, is that scaling the harvested expertise of people around pattern recognition should be much more efficient at scale. Many standard generative AI provisos should be read into this statement because, of course, we could continue down the road of general nonsense and never see this kind of value from the technology. But it's still early in the week, so let's be positive.
I think, based on your question, I may add a bit of an addendum to the article around my thinking here.