Expert learners

When I started working with craft practitioners, I started with ones I knew. They were all woodworkers because I’m a woodworker myself and by the end of my PhD studies I realised that, whilst what I was doing was successful, I was relying on my own skills to interpret the skills of others. To make my methods more generalisable I needed to work through someone else in an area unfamiliar to myself.

Inspired by some of the learners I had worked with, I realised the probable solution was working with an expert learner; that is one who is self confident, self motivated and already is possession of a useful set of skills relevant to those to be learned. I then gained AHRC funding to work with just such a person; contemporary knife maker and fellow researcher Dr Grace Horne.

We spent two years working with some of the last traditional knife makers in Sheffield, a city once famed for its knife making industries. During this time Grace worked alongside the master craftsmen whilst I video recorded, then we worked together to develop learning materials. Grace undertook experimental making, I designed experimental interpretation, and we worked with a group of enthusiastic amateur makers to develop on online learning resource.

The expert learner can learn with minimal instruction. They have the advantage that they have enough skill to learn through observation without needing 'bridges' as they are operating in the zone circled below:

Our research showed that, as the knowledge was recently acquired and the expert learner was consciously engaged with the elicitation process, she was able to rapidly adapt her understanding of it to improve transmission to the learners. Hence, she was able to develop the bridges needed by the novice learners to start developing their skills:

A key part of this process was the expert learner’s interaction with myself, the
designer and the developing learning resource. Through a process of video recording and summarising events using drawings and flow charts, I was able to assist with articulation of the knowledge and develop interpretation suitable for transmitting the knowledge.