Teacher´s expertise undergoing changes – expertise and discourses of sharing expertise in a digitized learning environment

Authors

• Jenni Huhtasalo Turun yliopisto, Turun kauppakorkeakoulu, Porin yksikkö

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33350/ka.79620

Keywords:

expertise, shared expertise, teaching technology, discourse analysis

Abstract

Expertise and expert work have traditionally been associated with specific professions and professionalism. However, the increasing use of technology in expert work changes the manifestation of expertise and its boundaries. The purpose of this article is to show how expertise is constructed in spoken discourse between university teachers and students, and how expertise was shared in online interviews during bachelor’s thesis supervision of social work students. The concept of expertise was seen as consisting of technological, content-related and scientific expertise. The material was analyzed using both content and discourse analyses. Within the three classes of expertise, there were four different discourses that were used to construct and share expertise between the teacher and the student. The discourses were called 1) discourse of age 2) discourse of teaching 3) discourse of work experience and 4) discourse of inexperience. It was discovered that, through the above-mentioned discourses, the content-related and technological expertise types were shared between teachers and students in interview speech; scientific expertise was the only area of expertise that was not shared in teacher–student speech but remained an area of expertise only for teachers.