Book Description

The book offers condensed summaries of twenty-three major skill acquisition and expertise development models presented by leading researchers during the last half a century of classic and new research. This book presents new researchers in learning, training, cognitive sciences, or education disciplines with a big picture starting point for their literature review journey. The book presents an easy-to-understand taxonomy of twenty-three models, giving new researchers a good bird’s eye view of existing models and theories. They can decide which direction to dig further. The reviews in this book are complemented with over 200 authentic sources, which a researcher read for a detailed and deeper dive and set the direction for further exploration. This book would also act as an essential reference for training & learning professionals and instructional designers to design research-based training curriculum to develop the skills of their staff. Chapter 1 of the book elaborates on how the processes of learning, skill acquisition, and expertise development are interwoven. Chapter 2 presents a classification system to categorize various models reviewed in the literature under five groups. Chapter 3 describes twelve models of skill and expertise acquisition which are represented in the form of stages used frequently in learning, training, and performance literature. The chapter also briefly discusses each model's implications toward developing the skills and expertise of a less proficient individual to a higher level of proficiency. Chapter 4 reviews practice-, time- or task-based models, which are theories or models suggesting that acquisition of knowledge & skills, development of expertise, and performance improvement is a function of nature of the practice, amount of time spent on the task and task type. Chapter 5 presents the factor-based models, suggesting the interplay of several factors that influence the acquisition of knowledge & skills, development of expertise, and performance improvement. Chapter 6 embarks on describing expert modeling-based models, suggesting modeling an expert through elicitation or guidance for the acquisition of knowledge & skills, development of expertise, and performance improvement. Chapter 7 covers some newer movements toward cognition-based models, which are theories or models focusing on mechanisms of cognitive learning for the acquisition of knowledge & skills, development of expertise, and performance improvement. Chapter 8 concludes the book by integrating views from various thought leaders to explain a famous staged skill acquisition model.