Instructional design for advanced learners: training recognition skills to hasten expertise

Expertise in domains ranging from sports to surgery involves a process of recognition-primed decision-making (RPD) in which experts make rapid, intuitive decisions based on recognizing critical features of dynamic performance situations. While the development of expert RPD is assumed to require years of domain experience, the transition from competence to expertise may potentially be hastened by training that specifically targets the recognition aspect of RPD. This article describes a recognition training approach that is based on expertise theories, research findings, and laboratory measurement techniques. This approach repurposes laboratory research tasks as deliberate practice training tasks. Although pioneered in sports expertise research, this approach is appropriate for pre-service and in-service professionals in a wide range of domains that involve rapid, recognition-primed decision-making.

Peter Jae FaddeEmail:

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Peter Jae Fadde   is Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology and Instructional Design in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction within the College of Education and Human Services at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and co-coordinator of the Collaboratory for Interactive Learning Research at SIU-C.