Teaching For Expertise

Abstract

One of the aims of professional schools (law, business administration, medicine) is to teach their students in such a way that they will graduate with the knowledge and professional and interpersonal skills required for later practice. We suppose that our teaching and students’ learning will equip the graduates in such a way that they will be able to easily apply such knowledge and skills and stand out positively when compared with graduates of other kinds of schools or other faculties. Hearing that our graduates had to unlearn a great deal or came into practice with ‘two left hands’ is not what we hope for and not what we expect; also hearing that selection of our graduates by major business firms is hardly based on their success in school, but mainly on personality and the extra-curricular activities they have developed, does not convey the impression that a school is really training for the professions, or is training for expertise. Of course, remarks like these can be dismissed as chitchat, but let’s take them serious and let’s see whether economics students are trained for expertise or not. Therefore, we will first discuss features of expertise and expertise development. Next, we will argue whether students of economics and business administration develop along that line or whether they meet serious problems in learning the knowledge and skills that prepare them for later practice, and finally we will analyse the features of curricula that foster a undisturbed development and the conditions that might counteract the development and implementation of such a curriculum.