At AEI’s annual Education Policy Academy, you’ll have the opportunity to spend several days with 20 very sharp graduate students, resulting in fascinating and eye-opening conversations. This discussion delved into the question of what it really means to be an “expert.” I thought some of the lessons from our last gathering were worth sharing, especially in a time marked by mistrust, polarization, and populism.
At my opening seminar, we held a small group quiz. As usual, these talented young scholars (who study education policy) have learned much about research methods and narrow specializations, but not about the more mundane contours of education policy debates. It quickly became clear that there were no. For example, who knows about the nation’s student-teacher ratio, the eligibility requirements for Biden’s student loan “forgiveness” proposal, the size of this year’s national deficit, and how much the Congressional committee responsible for education, the Institute of Education Sciences, is spending? There were hardly any. Every year.
And this is important when it comes to education policy. Anyone who suggests we should spend more money on educational research or hire more educators should know how much money we currently spend or how many teachers we have. . Those who claim that Biden’s student loan program is good (or bad) policy should know what that policy actually is. Those who argue for increased school spending or who argue that Congress is making bad decisions on education have no idea how much debt Washington is borrowing or who specifically is making those decisions. I need to know what’s going on.
However, today’s academic training does not pay much attention to such things due to its relentless emphasis on research methods, publications, and current theoretical constructs. This means papers are completed, careers are launched, and lines of research are initiated without much understanding of how these intersect with the larger world. Worse still, there is no future point in these researchers’ careers where this type of information is necessarily learned or clearly evaluated. As a result, even influential and highly qualified education “experts” can be terribly unclear about how things actually work. (This helps explain why many “evidence-based” strategies actually disappoint. )
This is also a plea for research training in education to show more interest in the world researchers seek to impact, but there is a larger issue here about the nature of expertise itself. In education, expertise tends to be discussed in fairly technical terms. The district hires consultants who are “experts” in social and emotional learning. States are constantly deploying “experts” in evaluation and accountability. The conference will feature “experts” in teacher training and virtual learning.
As someone who is often touted as just such an “expert,” I’ll tell you what I tell my viewers. Please don’t imagine that my qualifications are more important than your experience. Any expertise I share is very partial and very specific. And don’t believe anything I say.
First of all, what does expertise actually mean? In most cases (or perhaps most cases), the experts in question are trained in these topics and have collected different types of evidence about it. This means that you write about what you discover. That’s fine. And that’s certainly a kind of expertise. But that’s only one type.
This kind of “academic” expertise could mean, for example, that a particular math curriculum generally produced these results across a variety of studies, or that this SEL intervention produced such results in a particular school district. I can explain. It’s convenient. However, experts are usually unable to explain why the program worked, why it worked in some places but not others, or how to ensure success in the new environment.
Another type of expertise is “applied” expertise. This is the wisdom of veteran educators who have tried many things in their classrooms and have developed a sense of what works. This is the insight of a veteran district official who has seen where popular new curriculum and materials are lacking.
Plus, you have the “relationship” expertise of someone who actually knows a particular community, whether it’s the local school district or the state’s political terrain. They wonder why school board members are angry about certain vendors, why legislators are passionate about certain programs, or how the collapse of previous reform strategies has poisoned the well. know.
There are various kinds of specialized knowledge in the world. And those seeking to influence educational policy and practice would do well to understand and evaluate all of them.
