In schools, we use the words ‘Skill’ and ‘Skills’ frequently and the word ‘Expertise’ far less. This is partly because the Government, and the Department for Education in particular, have long referred to ‘skills’ rather than ‘expertise’, and partly because it’s easy – ‘skill’ is a word we feel comfortable using. But I sometimes wonder whether the term ‘expertise’ would be a better one for us to use.
There are two risks from using the word ‘skill’ and ‘skills’: first, the risk that we forget that a skill is basically knowledge practised over and over until it becomes automatic: being able to write these sentences I am writing; cycling and driving; playing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ on the piano; taking a corner-kick in football; drawing a face in Art. Skills are simply layer upon layer of knowledge welded together through practice – they aren’t entire of themselves, by which I mean we don’t learn them in one go (unless they are very simple ones); we learn them bit by bit, and we improve until the skill is embedded.
The second risk is the risk that our learners will tend to see the end product, the skill in action, and they may feel that acquiring the ‘skill’ is beyond them – ‘I could never play that tune like she can’, ‘I just can’t do division’, ‘I’m rubbish at writing’, ‘I’ve never been any good at reading maps’ etc…
Linked to both of these issues is the feeling that ‘skill’ is innate – we are born with it, or we are not. That is nonsense, of course, but I think some people believe it – hopefully, none of us who work in education, and no parents either.
If we used the term ‘expertise’ rather than ‘skills’, would we find it easier to see that all skill comes from learning information and practising how to use it? E.D. Hirsch thinks so. He asks us to imagine ‘how significantly our view of schooling might change if suddenly policy makers, instead of using the term ‘skill’, had to use the more accurate, knowledge-drenched term, expertise’. This is probably most true in physical performance subjects where, instead of believing that people are ‘naturally’ skilled at music, sport or artistic endeavours, everyone would see their accomplishments as they rightly are: the result of hard work, purposeful practice and the mastery of specialised knowledge.
With the term ‘expertise’ there is surely no sense, or less sense, of it being innate. We know that we develop expertise through hard work over time, through practice, practice, practice.
Just a thought.
