Expert

**Group 1: Expertise Characteristics**

– An expert possesses broad and deep knowledge, skill, and experience.
– Experts are recognized as reliable sources in their field.
– They offer advice based on their knowledge and experience.
– Objective measures can differentiate experts from less experienced individuals.
– Expertise distinguishes experts from novices.
– Expertise can be individual or communal.
– Expertise often comes from long periods of deliberate practice.
– Expertise can be a result of communities of practice.
– Expertise often develops through deliberate practice over years.
– Factors like starting age and handedness can influence expertise.

**Group 2: Historical and Academic Views on Expertise**

– Expertise can be seen as a form of power.
– Fear of experts can stem from fear of intellectual elites.
– Plato’s Noble Lie concept relates to expertise.
– Doctors and scientists are considered experts in contemporary society.
– Expertise can be a result of communities of practice.
– It can also be a characteristic of individuals.
– Expertise often develops through deliberate practice over years.
– Factors like starting age and handedness can influence expertise.

**Group 3: Memory and Problem-Solving in Expertise**

– Experts retrieve complex information rapidly from long-term memory.
– Skilled memory enables rapid encoding, storage, and retrieval of domain-specific information.
– Experts recall large amounts of domain-specific material efficiently.
– Expertise studies focus on differences between experts and novices in problem-solving.
– Experts possess more procedural knowledge for problem-solving.
– Novices rely more on declarative knowledge, hindering problem-solving methods.

**Group 4: Dialogic and Networked Expertise**

– Projects like Wikipedia challenge traditional expert authority.
– Wikipedia exemplifies dialogic expertise through collaborative digital spaces.
– Expertise now lies in knowing how to find information rather than knowing the information.
– The internet erodes traditional subject matter expertise.
– Rhetorical authority shifts to those with procedural knowledge of finding information.
– Wikipedia’s dialogic construction of expertise challenges traditional encyclopedias.

**Group 5: Contrasts and Comparisons in Expertise**

– An expert differs from a specialist in problem-solving versus knowing solutions.
– The opposite of an expert is a layperson.
– Laypersons contrast with experts in lacking specialized knowledge.
– Technicians possess a moderate level of understanding.
– Specialists focus on solving problems, while experts know the solutions.

Expert (Wikipedia)

For other uses, see Expert (disambiguation).

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An expert is somebody who has a broad and deep understanding and competence in terms of knowledge, skill and experience through practice and education in a particular field or area of study. Informally, an expert is someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill whose faculty for judging or deciding rightly, justly, or wisely is accorded authority and status by peers or the public in a specific well-distinguished domain. An expert, more generally, is a person with extensive knowledge or ability based on research, experience, or occupation and in a particular area of study. Experts are called in for advice on their respective subject, but they do not always agree on the particulars of a field of study. An expert can be believed, by virtue of credentials, training, education, profession, publication or experience, to have special knowledge of a subject beyond that of the average person, sufficient that others may officially (and legally) rely upon the individual's opinion on that topic. Historically, an expert was referred to as a sage. The individual was usually a profound thinker distinguished for wisdom and sound judgment.

In specific fields, the definition of expert is well established by consensus and therefore it is not always necessary for individuals to have a professional or academic qualification for them to be accepted as an expert. In this respect, a shepherd with fifty years of experience tending flocks would be widely recognized as having complete expertise in the use and training of sheep dogs and the care of sheep. Another example from computer science is that an expert system may be taught by a human and thereafter considered an expert, often outperforming human beings at particular tasks. In law, an expert witness must be recognized by argument and authority.^{[original research?]}

Research in this area attempts to understand the relation between expert knowledge, skills and personal characteristics and exceptional performance. Some researchers have investigated the cognitive structures and processes of experts. The fundamental aim of this research is to describe what it is that experts know and how they use their knowledge to achieve performance that most people assume requires extreme or extraordinary ability. Studies have investigated the factors that enable experts to be fast and accurate.