Educational Technologies, Expertise, and Decentered Knowledge

Abstract

The World Wide Web is often touted as a way to distribute expertise, thus decentering knowledge creation and dissemination. However, conceptualizing ex pertise as multiple does not sufficiently problematize the unitary expertise model that considers expertise as something held by someone (the "expert") and trans ferred to someone else (the "novice "). The author makes the claim that expertise has been primarily theorized by various psychologicalframeworks; these ways of conceptualizing expertise are largely ignorant of the ways that they position the student as a passive receptor of knowledge and do not fully allow for the problematization of the nature of knowledge. Recon ceptualizing expertise then would require movingfrom a narrowly construed psychological conception of ex pertise to a notion of expertise more sociological in character. This article explores conceptualizations of expertise within some dominant psychological frame works. The author explores how the new information technologies compel a reexamination of these notions of expertise.