This article presents an analysis of the Dutch field of education by drawing on interviews and observations from long-lasting relationships with experts in the field. Studying how these "key players" discuss the educational field, we explore how the lack of effective solutions may be related to the ways in which leading educational…

Any form of professional or occupational practice that requires independent agency has to rely heavily on the judgement of its practitioners. Yet the nature of professional judgement, like the nature of judgement more generally, is poorly understood. Almost as little understood is the nature of agential responsibility. The two are closely…

This study posits mathematics as a fundamental methodological framework for navigating the complexities of multidisciplinary research. It argues that the increasing prevalence of real-world problems demands the integration of knowledge from diverse scientific fields, where mathematics, particularly through the method of analysis and synthesis,…

Insight problems are difficult because the initially activated knowledge hinders successful solving. The crucial information needed for a solution is often so far removed that gaining access to it through restructuring leads to the subjective experience of "Aha!". Although this assumption is shared by most insight theories, there is…

Adaptive expertise represents the combination of both efficient problem-solving for clinical encounters with known solutions, as well as the ability to learn and innovate when faced with a novel challenge. Fostering adaptive expertise requires careful approaches to instructional design to emphasize deeper, more effortful learning. These teaching…

Problem solving followed by explicit instruction, as suggested by productive failure and several other instructional theories, indicates long-term learning benefits, whereas explicit instruction followed by problem solving has been consistently demonstrated as superior within the framework of cognitive load theory. However, the effectiveness of…

Should the topic of judgment have a place in the preparation and development of school leaders? This question serves as the focus for an examination of the nature of judgment and obstacles to good judgment. Judgment is defined as the ability to arrive at and make a choice when faced with incomplete information, uncertain conditions, and/or…

In this article, we forward a perspective on interdisciplinarity and diversity that reconsiders the notion of expertise in order to unstick discussions of graduate education reform that have been at an impasse for some forty-five years. As research problems have become increasingly complex so has demand for scholars who specialize narrowly within…

Vygotsky measured his 'zone of proximal development' in years. To do this, he needed a scheme of age periods, and a set of tasks that could diagnose the next age period without defining it. In this paper, we compare the age periods in his late lectures with Halliday's categories of logico-semantic expansion as used by three adolescent…

Robust knowledge serves as a common instructional target in academic settings. Past research identifying characteristics of experts' knowledge across many domains can help clarify the features of robust knowledge as well as ways of assessing it. We review the expertise literature and identify three key features of robust knowledge (deep,…

In this article, I reflect on how ways of reporting research as well as reviewing and commenting on submitted manuscripts could take new directions to promote progress in the discipline of developmental science. I argue for (a) attitudinal openness toward migratory impulses in relation to Stokes's quadrant model of science, (b) the…

Bioinformatics--the so-called shotgun marriage between biology and computer science--is an interdiscipline. Despite interdisciplinarity being seen as a virtue, for having the capacity to solve complex problems and foster innovation, it has the potential to place projects and people in anomalous categories. For example, valorised…

Today, much problem solving is performed by teams, rather than individuals. The complexity of these problems has exceeded the cognitive capacity of any individual and requires a team of members to solve them. The success of solving these complex problems not only relies on individual team members who possess different but complementary expertise,…

Mathematical creativity is rooted in the intellectual abilities and personality traits of each individual, in which the direct influence of education is only moderate. However, education could have more influence on three important components of creativity: expertise, original thinking, and intrinsic motivation, which underlie individual creative…

A seminal study by Chi "et al." firmly established the paradigm that novices categorize physics problems by "surface features" (e.g., "incline," "pendulum," "projectile motion," etc.), while experts use "deep structure" (e.g., "energy conservation," "Newton 2," etc.). Yet, efforts to replicate the study frequently fail, since the ability to…