Visualising knowledge structures in biology: discipline, curriculum and student understanding

This paper explores the developing concept of expertise, taking the Dreyfus and Dreyfus staged model as its starting point. It analyses criticism of the Dreyfus model and considers more recent attempts to resolve the tensions implicit within it. The authors go on to suggest ways some of the later modifications can be improved. The traditional notion of intuition is revisited and thereafter a new and novel way of visualising expertise is presented as a dual-processing relationship between chains of practice and the underlying networks of understanding. These chain and net knowledge structures have been revealed through the analysis of concept maps produced by numerous cohorts of students and teachers. It is argued that a visualisation of the dynamic relationship between the dimensions of expertise provides an emerging theoretical framework for a more general reappraisal of teaching in higher education. This reconsideration of expertise may be the catalyst for dialogue about educational practice within disciplines (between lecturers and between lecturers and students), and between lecturers and educational developers. This dialogue will strengthen disciplinary communities of practice and place the agenda for pedagogic change within the context of the academic disciplines.