Expertise as a domain in interaction

Abstract

We start this article from Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between propositional knowledge, ‘knowing-that’, and procedural knowledge, ‘knowing-how’, and investigate how participants in interaction display orientation to the latter in various settings. As the knowledge of how things are done, know-how can be analyzed in terms of its relevance and consequentiality for parties in interaction. Similarly, as participants adjust their actions and understandings according to their sense of what they know and assume others to know, their know-how and its distribution may form the basis for adjusting and reshaping their actions, forms of participation and identities. In this sense, we aim at opening an investigation of know-how, and its conventionalized form, expertise, in interaction. In as much as it forms a distinct domain, a new research object – expertise in interaction – is formulated. Methodological issues of how to study expertise in interaction are discussed. The data are in English and Finnish.

The Social Accomplishment of Seeing Together in Networked Team Play

“…The continually updated production of a socially shared perceptual field, distributed across teammates, is, for these players, a taken for granted and unremarkable component of their play. Likewise, through our own shared background in studying game play and teamplay in fast-paced games like CS:GO, we have accumulated a context-sensitive understanding of the game play, similar to the very distinct forms of knowledge that the players possess and employ seamlessly in a taken for granted kind of manner, both individually and collectively (Arminen & Simonen, 2021). Through that level of competence in understanding the game environment and game play, we can analyze how participants were accomplishing interperceptivity.…”

“…It is a precursor to learning which, in this framework, is fundamentally “a process of becoming attuned to certain aspects of the environment in such a way that we gain new affordances, new ways to act and interact with the world” (Linderoth & Bennerstedt, 2007, p. 602). To become attuned to the game environment, to find new ways of handling oneself in the game and make use of the information gained through the accomplished interperceptivity, players rely on a form of expertise that involves locally distributed experience and reflexivity and that is not limited to individual's specific skills and knowledge (Arminen & Simonen, 2021; Kirschner & Williams, 2013). This expertise allows the players to understand the implications of in-game events similarly as others competent in the game play and differently than a lay party.…”

“…Instead of expertise being the performance of canonical actions, it can also be reflected through a player’s professional sensitivity to perceive nuances in situations that require actions outside of the canon. Expertise also, usually, involves some kind of moral dimension that connects to players’ authority in the team, both expected and de facto oriented to authority (Arminen & Simonen, 2021).…”

Expertise in interaction – Introduction

“…For Ryle (1945) eventually all knowledge has a procedural basis, but know-how and know-that are distinguishable forms of knowledge. Arminen and Simonen (this issue) have taken the Rylean distinction between know-how and know-that as a starting point to explore, whether know-how, or its conventionalized form, expertise, is oriented to, relevant and consequential for the parties in interaction, and to what degree expertise and its distribution may have a distinctive implications for parties in interaction. In some environments, propositional and procedural knowledge are clearly distinguishable with differing distributions.…”