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Develop deep knowledge of your field through reflection and criticism
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Develop deep knowledge of your field through reflection and criticism
The term ‘connoisseur’ calls to mind posh art critics, wine snobs and gourmets but the educational theorist Elliot Eisner tried to rehabilitate the term:
Connoisseurship is the art of appreciation. It can be displayed in any realm in which the character, import, or value of objects, situations, and performances is distributed and variable, including educational practice.1
Eisner speaks of connoisseurship as an internal quality that is evidenced in the art of criticism. It is the ability to see holistic qualities of complex situations which other kinds of analysis might miss. The best sports commentators and film critics have this. If we think the term connoisseurship is too elitist, let’s just call it deep knowledge.
In the early days of the Open University, which teaches largely through written texts, Michael Macdonald-Ross started a research group to investigate how they should be designed.2 He reviewed the research literature and concluded that too much empirical research was being carried out on untypical or poorly-designed materials. Part of his solution was to try to discover what the best designers do.
A main aim for communication research… is to externalise or “exteriorize” the know-how of the master-performer. Once this is done, the know-how can be described, discussed, tested, extended and taught. Our aim is to bring the expertise into the public domain so that we can operate on it with all the intellectual tools of our trade.3
We proposed a methodology called Criticism, alternatives and tests,4 which sought to link experimental research to design expertise.
In other words, researchers should strive for deep knowledge of the field they are researching.
1. Elliott W Eisner (1998) The enlightened eye: qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. Merrill, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
2. The Textual Communication Research Group. I joined it in 1974 as a designer working alongside a psychologist, a linguist and an educational technologist.
3. Michael Macdonald-Ross (1989) Towards a graphic ecology, in: Mandl, H., Levin, J.R. (Eds.), Knowledge Acquisition from Pictures and Text. Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam, pp. 145–154.
4. Michael Macdonald-Ross and Robert Waller (1975). Criticism, alternatives and tests – a conceptual framework for improving typography. Programmed Learning & Educational Technology 12, 75–83.