Elena: Alister, you gave a plenary talk at the 2016 Symposium on Second Language Writing, which took place at Arizona State University this past October. The main theme of the symposium was related to the concept of expertise in second language (L2) writing. Your plenary talk was entitled “A Jack(al) of All Trades? Expertise in Studies of SLW.” For those who couldn’t attend the symposium, what was this talk about, generally speaking?

Alister: I tried to articulate ideas about expertise that are relevant to students, teachers, and researchers of L2 writing. I drew heavily from Bereiter’s and Scardamalia’s (1993) book, Surpassing Ourselves: An Inquiry Into the Nature and Implications of Expertise, which expressed ideas that they had been developing in research projects with elementary school kids using innovative computer programs organized as learning communities. I had worked with them on one of these projects as a research assistant while I was doing my PhD in Toronto in the mid-1980s. Readers of this interview are probably familiar with their previous research on writing, The Psychology of Written Composition (1987). The basic idea is that people enter educational programs or professional fields initially as novices and gradually develop—through teaching, other kinds of support, and practice—competence. Most programs of education or of professional development, however, aim simply to develop competence and seldom strive to develop expertise.

Elena: How do you distinguish these two terms: competence and expertise?

Alister: Consider an analogy of learning to drive a car. Most of us aspire simply to become competent drivers after some instruction and practice. Competence is all that driving tests try to assess in order to authorize people to obtain a licence to drive, focused on declarative knowledge (e.g., about traffic rules) as well as procedural knowledge (e.g., how to parallel park). However, race-car driving is a specialized domain for driving, which requires considerable expertise beyond simple competence. Ongoing competition among race car drivers fosters their continually striving to improve and enhance their abilities well beyond what most of us would try to achieve to drive a car in routine traffic.

Elena: This is very interesting. So what qualities or characteristics describe expertise?

Alister: Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) argued that expertise should be seen as an ongoing, desirable process of development based on certain states of knowledge and activities relevant to particular domains. In addition to basic declarative, procedural, and tacit knowledge relevant to a specialized domain (such as writing or driving), Bereiter and Scardamalia defined four kinds of process knowledge that characterize expertise: (a) self-regulation and flexibility (to control oneself to adapt to constraints); (b) intentionality (to maximize opportunities at the upper limits of complexity and ability—aiming constantly to learn and improve); (c) collaboration (through working with others); and (d) “promisingness” (to recognize patterns that will lead productively to future design and goals). They also observed that three kinds of motivational conditions promote the development of expertise: (a) flow (gaining satisfaction and excitement from performance and accomplishment); (b) subcultures (interacting with, learning from, and contributing to others engaged in and perfecting similar activities), and (c) heroism (recognition and value from others).

Elena: How do you see the application of these two concepts in the field of L2 writing?

Alister: Most educational programs and formal tests of L2 writing aim simply to develop and to evaluate students’ minimal competence. Few programs aim to develop “expert” L2 writers on the order of internationally acknowledged authors such as Joseph Conrad or Samuel Beckett. Some of my and others’ research has shown that where people do develop some expertise in L2 writing, they tend to do so in different, variable ways focused on particular aspects of language or writing—such as word choices, advance planning of ideas, or mastery of particular genre forms—according to their motivations, experiences, and goals. For teachers and researchers, too, the organization of institutions and career paths tend to foster competence rather than expertise. Competence is expected in the usual progressions through university degree programs and then (a) for teachers, some practice teaching, licensure, and pedagogical employment and (b) for researchers, the completion of an empirical thesis followed by some publications and professional recognition and then employment as a professor, instructor, assessor, or curriculum developer.

In my plenary talk, I suggested ways in which Bereiter and Scardamalia’s ideas could be applied to enhance expertise among students, teachers, and researchers of L2 writing. Students’ process knowledge and sociocultural conditions for expertise can be stimulated through tasks and heuristics that prompt self-regulation and flexibility, peer writing and responses that involve collaboration and teamwork, writing groups and publishing work within literate subcultures and ecosystems, responses from teachers that point toward promisingness in developing future drafts (rather than correcting minor errors or confusions), maximizing opportunities for revision that push students to develop and extend their skills and competence, fostering excitement in and satisfaction from writing, and developing pride in writing and others’ responses to it.

Elena: And what is the role of writing teachers in helping students develop their expertise?

Alister: Teachers can organize their courses to promote students’ expertise in L2 writing. Self-regulation, flexibility, and intentionality can be prompted by helping students to: write different, important kinds of tasks, genres, and purposes; self-assess their own abilities critically; set and monitor a few specific goals for their own individual improvement; state what they learned from writing each task, and evaluate their successes and problems in doing so; create and analyze portfolios of their own writing; and document their own progress over time. Collaboration, teamwork, and subcultures can be fostered in classroom and other learning environments by creating literate subcultures of practicing writers through activities organized to demonstrate and practice: writing frequently and regularly; peer responses to drafts; collaborative writing in pairs (e.g., wikis); establishing and using students’ own criteria for assessments; publishing students’ writing as newsletters, reports, online posts, and blogs; and interactions in writing and reading groups. Flow, heroism, and promise can be nurtured by responding to students’ writing to make them feel proud and satisfied with their accomplishments (rather than chastising them for errors or faults), to focus on a few major elements for revision to improve drafts of writing (rather than focusing on minor, incidental points), to inform and acknowledge success by others, and to set and accomplish personal goals for success.

Elena: In your plenary talk, you also applied the concept of expertise to researchers of L2 writing. Could you elaborate on that a little?

Alister: These principles can be applied to L2 writing researchers, too. Basic domain knowledge and individual competences for research and theories include declarative and procedural knowledge, for sure, although these are necessary for competence but not sufficient for expertise in research. For example, it is crucial for L2 teachers and researchers to have knowledge about: writing as text, composing, identity, and interaction; L2 and literacy acquisition, variability, and cultural differences; learning over the lifespan; organizing instruction, curricula, and assessment; contexts and populations of L2 writing locally and internationally; and relevant approaches to inquiry and professional development. Certain kinds of process knowledge and sociocultural conditions are needed to stimulate and extend expertise in research, however, through self-regulation and flexibility, collaboration and teamwork, promisingness (in design and goals for research to make new contributions to knowledge), subcultures and ecosystems, intentionality to maximize opportunities at the edge of one’s competence, flow in the excitement of performance, and heroism. These processes are stimulated and instantiated through participation in professional and scholarly conferences and networks, reading and publishing in research and pedagogical journals and newsletters, and interacting with local communities of practice in educational institutions and workplaces.

Moreover, there are specialized subdomains of research in L2 writing. “Heroic” figures have established reputations in these specialized subdomains, such as feedback on student writing, writing assessment, genre analysis, teaching and learning in universities, or teaching and learning in schools. In my lecture, I posted photos of some of the people who have established expertise in these subdomains, and audience members readily recognized the people. These acknowledged experts have published extensively on these topics and are often called upon by journal editors to review manuscripts on specialized topics.

Elena: Yes, I remember looking at those pictures and thinking, “Oh, these are definitely true experts in the field!” To conclude our conversation, Alister, I am sure our readers would be curious to know how you came up with the title of your talk. Who is the “Jack(al) of All Trades”?

Alister: As for the title of my talk, yes, that is quirky, but I am glad that it caught your attention. It probably is also a suitable way to conclude this interview. I framed my title and talk around an experience I had (as many other L2 writing instructors must also have had), late one night, in about my second year of teaching ESL composition, as I worked my way through a stack of draft compositions, responding to and commenting on each paper. I read the phrase, “smart and skilful to become a veritable jackal of all trades.” I cracked up in laughter. The student-author had produced a kind of malapropism that ingeniously and creatively mixed up two phrases: “a jack of all trades (and master of none)” and “as crafty as a fox (or jackal).” I juxtaposed these two complementary notions through my lecture, arguing that students, teachers, and researchers of L2 writing need to act both like a jack and also like a jackal. The jack, like a labourer (in the original meaning of the word) or the image on a playing card, represents an individual with relevant knowledge and various skills. The jackal, like the animal hunting in packs or a trickster kind of spirit, is situated within an ecosystem in which new opportunities need constantly be sought out and exploited. Both characteristics are needed for expertise that surpasses competence.

Elena: Thank you, Alister!

References

Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (1987). The psychology of written composition. New York, NY: Routledge.

Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (1993). Surpassing ourselves: An inquiry into the nature and implications of expertise. Chicago, IL: Open Court.

Elena Shvidko is an assistant professor at Utah State University. Her research interests include L2 writing, multimodal interaction, and interpersonal aspects of language teaching. She is also a TESOL blogger, focusing on L2 writing. Her work appears in Journal of Response to Writing, System, TESOL Journal, and TESOL’s New Ways series.