Making social science matter Book

Dylan Wiliam recommended this book recently when I asked him what were the best books on situated professional judgement, and it didn't disappoint. Flyvbjerg's ultimate topic is 'what can we know about human action' and in what form this knowledge comes. He explores the nature of learning, using the framework from the Dreyfus brothers, and in doing so distinguishes between novice learning, which is rule based; and expert learning, which is 'intuitive, holistic and based on a high volume of concrete experience', and whose rules cannot be verbalised.

This distinction and realisation is hugely powerful, and relates nicely to models of complexity (such as the Cynefyn framework) and models of organisational development, like the Powell's OIQ.

The interesting and powerful thing is that this theory, and the extensive research behind it, has not made it into thinking about learning goals. This seems a massive oversight of all those interested in curriculum, assessment and indeed learning itself - the model explains a great deal of the difficulties those trying to implement standards based assessment in naive ways face. It is hard to understand why the exploration of the separate of novice and expert learning is not a mainstream pressing concern of educators involved in writing curriculum or constructing assessments.