Adaptive expertise is a broad construct that encompasses a range of cognitive, motivational, and personality-related components, as well as habits of mind and dispositions.
[1] This definition can be contrasted with more traditional ideas of expertise popularized by Chi[2] and others, which do not typically consider adaptation to completely novel situations.
They defined routine expertise as involving mastering procedures in such a way as to become highly efficient and accurate, whereas developing adaptive expertise requires an individual to develop conceptual understanding that allows the "expert" to invent new solutions to problems and even new procedures for solving problems.
[5] For example, adaptability enabled the Apollo 13 crew to successfully build an air filter from ill-fitting parts whilst in space, while the TV chef, Jamie Oliver, is able to flamboyantly and creatively produce good food using only simple ingredients.
A distinguishing feature of adaptive expertise is the ability to apply knowledge effectively to novel problems or atypical cases in a domain.
[6] Adaptability allows experts to recognize when highly practiced rules and principles do not apply in certain situations in which other solvers might typically attempt to use a previously learned procedure.
[8] John D. Bransford considers this flexible, innovative application of knowledge, in large part, underlies adaptive experts' greater tendency to enrich and refine their understanding on the basis of continuing experience to learn from problem-solving episodes.
As originally presented, this graph is intended as a starting point for understanding how educators should guide students' learning and trajectory to adaptive expertise.
First, the degree to which an individual's environment contains "randomness" requires one to modify skills based on careful observation of interacting factors.
In order to begin to cultivate adaptive expertise, Mercier and Higgins[12] found that students must be allowed to be innovative and exploratory with mathematical concepts.
[12] Researchers have also determined that adaptive expertise can be supported by creating an environment that encourages motivation to interact with the material.