“Narrative, Ideology and Myth”, The Second Tampere Conference on Narrative June 26-28, 2003

Narrative Approach to Expertise Ulpukka Isopahkala, University of Helsinki [email protected]

Introduction In this presentation I will argue that the core of expertise is not in knowledge and skills, per se, but in the understanding of professional context. One needs to ‘make sense’ of the field of work to be able to perform as an expert. Real experts are, I assume, people who are able to frame complex situations, to find what is problematic and to do something for it appropriately and skillfully. Such an expertise includes a dilemma: On one hand becoming an expert requires that one is fully involved with the situation at hand without critical awareness; still on the other hand, development requires reflection and surpassing of the existing know-how on familiar situations. In spite of currently expanded research on expertise, there is not enough knowledge to understand this paradoxical co-existence of non-reflective involvement and reflective (re)framing. Nevertheless, we might find a way to exceed and overcome short-sided concepts of expertise if we assume that experts’ understanding happens narratively. Narrative approach increases understanding of the dialectic between experts and their professional context. Experts respond holistically to the requirements of work situations with experience-based knowledge about how things work. This knowledge is not facts or rules but rather episodes about ‘what happened last time and, thus, what will happen again’. It carries assumptions about

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situational elements and interpretations of their meaning from experts’ professional perspective. Moreover, what others express becomes part of the material that the expert has available to make sense of things. Narratives move easily between personal experiences and the social context. They make understandable the intentions that drive the expert’s conduct and the context where those particular intentions make sense. Organizational and professional culture “speaks itself” through (Riessman 1993, p. 5) an individual narrative; although each narrative uniquely integrates events at expert’s work, they also adopt basic themes from the cultural repertoire (Polkinghorne, 1988) of the professional field. The Interpretative Framework Social reality is constructed in the mind of people when they are interpreting the world, other people and themselves. So, knowledge about social reality is always somehow interpreted knowledge. Things do not have objective meaning that we could achieve independently of our interpretive self. Nevertheless, interpretations are not either free from cultural traditions or from what the things themselves want to say. Act of interpreting is participation into a dialogue where meanings are negotiated (Schwandt, 2000). Approach adopted from natural science implies that research provides an objective description of the world and researchers should position themselves outside to do so. However, to understand meanings that people give to their experiences and express in discourse requires interpretation. They do not mirror a world, but are creatively authored, rhetorical, replete with assumptions, and thus interpretative (Riessman, 1993). The objectively understood "truth" of a phenomenon in social reality is not waiting for the researcher anywhere. According to philosophical hermeneutics, meaning is negotiated mutually in the act of interpretation; it is not simply discovered (Swandth, 2000). “When we enter human life, it is as if we walk to the stage into a play whose enactment is already in progress – a play whose somewhat open plot determines what parts we may play and toward what denouements we may be heading. Others on stage already have a sense of what the play is about, enough of a sense to make negotiation with the newcomer possible.” (Bruner 1990, pp. 33-34.) Understanding is possible through participation and conversation. It is something produced in the dialogue, not reproduced by an interpreter through an analysis of that which she seeks to 2

understand; dialogue is the only way to challenge prejudices and commit to change them if they limit understanding (Schwandt, 2000). When I participate to a dialogue, I allow other participants to bring along their interpretations and to question prejudices that I may hold unconsciously. Additionally, I have subjective experience about the studied phenomenon and I need to reflect upon that too. I was also working in the context of the study when I started the research, and therefore participants express things for me as for a member of a community, not like for an outsider. I also use my understanding of the context when interpreting participants’ stories. People interpret their experiences by creating narratives. My interest is on narratives that are “first-person accounts by respondents of their experiences” (Riessman 1990, p.1). At the same time as participants of my study tell what happened, they also tell what the particular event meant for them (Bruner, 1990). Stories that participants tell can be viewed as self-expressions, which help them to ‘make sense’ of continuity and change in ‘self’, thus to form their professional identity (Heikkinen, 1999). Participants’ stories are individual and unique. Moreover, they transmit cultural capital; they are told in a contextually appropriate way. There are many ways to approach narratives. My own interpretation process has two phases; first I will analyze participants’ stories, and then I will locate what is told within a wider cultural context and interpret it from a historical framework (Goodson & Sikes, 2001). The first step in my analysis is based on Labov’s (1972) structural method to analyze oral narratives. Labov defined a fully formed narrative as a story of a past event that has a beginning, middle and an end. Such stories include all or some of the following common elements: 1.

Abstract: summarizing the whole story, what was the story about?

2.

Orientation: who, when, what, where?

3.

Complicating action: then what happened?

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Evaluation: the point of a narrative, so what?

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Result or resolution: termination of the series of events, what finally happened?

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Coda: signals that everything is said, story is ended.

Individual stories can be interpreted in relation to the other stories in an account and as a result, to review whether narrators’ thinking has changed (Bell, 1988). The main focus is on evaluative clauses, because they will reveal what is the point of a story. “The core narrative is a concrete example through which the point is made clear in detail, the same point that is expressed in the 3

talk that surrounds the story” (Mishler, 1986, p. 238). Usually the point is expressing a moral judgment. Despite the structural narrative analysis focuses on the meaning of a text, researcher however can assume that the outside world exists. Narrative is produced in discussion that is a social activity. To be able to participate into the discussion narrator sets his/her words so that listeners can understand them. On the other hand, listeners show their understanding by asking further questions or by responding with their own narrative. Moreover, cultural ‘model stories’ and linguistic rules define how the stories are told. As a consequence, thoughts of a narrator are created and modified in the discussion. Such dialogue is not led by any of the participants but by shared cultural comprehension about interaction rules and target of discussion. All participants, their positions and motives impact the production of a story. By story telling people interpret the meaning of odd or unusual events (Bruner, 1990). I assume that experts in role transition have a need to explain the discontinuity in their practices by telling a story of what happened. Narrative analysis offers a possibility to evaluate whether participants’ thinking progresses during their role transition. When participants change their understanding about expertise, they develop an alternative narrative that truly works; one that enables them to engage with the work in a new way. In every culture we are taking for granted that people behave in a manner appropriate for the setting where they find themselves. People are expected to behave (both speaking and acting) situationally whatever their roles are. When people do behave as expected we do not ask why. Because it is ordinary, it is experienced as canonical and therefore self-explanatory. (Bruner 1990, p. 48.) In contrast, when encountering an exception to the ordinary and ask what is happening, the person will virtually always tell a story that contains reasons (or some other specification of an intentional state). The story, moreover, will almost invariably be an account of a possible world in which the encountered exceptions is somehow made to make sense or to have meaning. All such stories seem to be designed to give the exceptional behavior a meaning in a manner that implicates both an intentional state in the protagonist (a belief or desire) and some canonical element in the culture. The function of the story is to find an intentional state that migrates or at least makes comprehensible a deviation from a canonical cultural pattern. (Bruner 1990, p. 49.) Normative ‘canonical elements in the culture’ motivates and guides story telling; thus I assume that the social reality ‘forces’ narrator to interpret his/her experiences in a certain way, as well as it ‘forces’ reader to interpret texts in a certain way. Researchers need narrative knowing to

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understand; first, the intentions that have driven experts’ conduct, and second, the context where those particular intentions make sense (Czarniawska, 1998). To summarize, I have argued that the plot or rhetoric of a story reflects the overall professional frame of reference: What is told is linked to the ‘point’ and it becomes self-justifying. Narratives reflect how people understand their own expertise and how they want to be understood by others. Personal narratives include cultural meanings and thus enable researchers to see the professional frame of reference as a social construct. Nevertheless, social contradictions are represented in narratives so that experts can control and resolve tensions themselves. Researchers can see stories as detached from the social and historical context where they are produced and accept several equivalent interpretations of their meaning. In such case, the knowing subject – whether it is the expert, researcher, or reader of a study - owns the ‘truth’ of an interpretation (Heikkinen, 2002). Narratives from such a social constructionist viewpoint are interesting especially because they are meaning-making units of discourse and because experts interpret their experiences rather than reproduce the past as it was (Riessman, 2001). However, researchers can interpret narratives via framework that combines subjective aspects and sociohistorical dimensions. Life history research can add a new interpretative layer that involves a historical context for reading life stories (Goodson & Sikes, 2001, p. 17). Case Examples My current dissertation study is about role transitions and focuses on renewal of expertise under changing circumstances. The role transitions of nine technical specialists (four female and five male) were studied in an international data-communications company where the change has escalated and led to several restructurings in the last few years. Participants had heterogeneous educational and working experiences, and at least three years experience in the company. Narrative approach is used to explain how people ‘make sense’ of their expertise and changes in it. I will present four stories from four different experts. These cases are not examples of the final conclusions of my study. They rather demonstrate the idea of narrative approach to expertise. The stories that I present here are from the second interviews that I conducted with the research participants in July/November 2002. Eight months earlier I have done the first interviews just

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about when these experts were changing to new roles within their organization. These stories from the second interview, thus, narrate the experienced role transition. In the analysis process I first wrote transcripts from the taped interviews word by word. Then I defined and marked parts of the interview text as stories. In that definition I used two main criteria: Selected parts included orientation to specific settings (time, place and actors) and changing action (before and after). Those parts include both speech of the narrator (N) and the interviewer who is the listener (L). I believe that the meanings are produced in interaction; interview is a discourse (Mishler, 1986). For this presentation, I have reduced the selected story parts by applying Labov’s (1972) structural categories. The categories did not fit perfectly to the stories that people have told. In some cases I have asked questions that resulted (re)orientation in the middle of the story, and in other cases people repeated things by telling the same thing in another words. That is, as I understand it, a way to emphasize the point of the story. Sometimes people were evaluating one action sequence by telling another action within one and the same story. Reduction is helpful in the first analytical stage. However, when I start to interpret the meanings of what happened, I need to analyze the long versions of stories. I am concern that such reduced representation looses the lively verbal and nonverbal expressions of discourse. Original stories include evaluation that is embedded in repetitive words and phrases, expressive sounds and silences (Riessman, 1993).

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Story 1: “It’s good to get new ideas time to time” Abstract: 01 N: ehkä yks syy miks tuli senior specialistiks oli se, Orientation: 02 mulla oli silloin [useampi tuhat] loppukäyttäjää 03 oli sillä alueella missä mä olin töissä (L: mmm) 04 pidin yllä laiterekisteriä 05 ja hoidin, olin [tukihenkilö] meidän [käyttämälle] työkalulle 06 ja myös olin kehitysryhmässä siihen työkaluun ja (L: mmm) Action: 07 ja tota kyl niinku mun kollegat sano että, osa niistä, 08 että jos kukaan muu ei tiedä ni ne tulee mun luo kysymään 09 (L: joo) ja kyl mä ite pidin kirjaa, että, aa, 10 puoleen vuoteen ei tullu yhtään ongelmaa, mitä ei ois ratkassu (L: joo), 13 että (L: mmm) löyty aina ne ratkasut (L: joo), [koska] 15 siinähän käy sillä lailla tukityössä, et tavallaan ne samat ongelmat pikkuhiljaa toistuu (L: joo) 19 mä olin [myös] tuutorina uusille ihmisille (L: mmm), 20 ku meille tuli tukifunktioon (L: mmm) uusia ihmisiä 21 eli opetin niille [tän] työkalun 22 ja (L: joo) kerroin vähän talon, talon tota toimintatavoista 23 ja (L: joo) autoin sitten niinkun jos, jos oli jotain kysyttävää, 26 sit näiltä uusilta ihmisiltä saatto aina kysyä, että miten, 29 saatto kysyä jotain, et miten sä näät tän asian 32 niin voi, voi kysyy jotain 33 kun itse on tottunu, 34 on tääl [firmassa] on totuttu jotain asioita tekemään tietyl tavalla 35 ni on hyvä saada uusia ideoita myös välillä, 36 että (L: joo), et miten asioita kannattais hoitaa, Resolution/Coda: 37 sielt, siel oli paljon hyviä keskusteluita (L: mmm) sitten 38 ja myös saatiin joitain asioita muutettua, että (L: joo)

In this story, the narrator is telling about his own expertise in his previous role. He includes into his definition of expertise three components: 1. Expert knows how to resolve problems (and we can interpret also that he knows how to resolve problems better than others): ”’ei tullu yhtään ongelmaa, mitä ei ois ratkaissu”, “löyty aina ne ratkaisut’ ja ’jos kukaan muu ei tiedä ni ne tulee mun luo’. He gained this kind of expertise by resolving a large amount of problems in a rather stabile environment. 2. Expert is looking for new perspectives and is ready to question routines: “on hyvä saada uusia ideoita välillä”, asking others “miten sä näät tän asian?” 3. Experts improve things: ”ja myös saatiin joitain asioita muutettua”. This last element is a resolution and end of the story. In that way, the story enables an interpretation that expertise (know-how and continuous development) is nothing without power to influence.

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Story 2: ”It’s good to understand the technical side as well” Abstract: 01 N: tottakai se on erittäin hyvä, et niinkun esimies tajuaa sen teknisen puolenkin siellä, et (L: mmm) Orientation: 02 mun, mul oli tos pari vuotta sitten niin yks semmonen esimies 03 joka oli tullu [liiketoimintayksikön] puolelta (L: mmm), 04 hän oli ollu jossain [tietojärjestelmä]-projektissa mukana, 05 mut hän ei käytännössä [siitä tietojärjestelmästä] ymmärtäny mitään (L: joo) Action: 06 ja sit kuitenkin tosi teknisiä juttuja käydään välillä läpi, läpi 07 niin, kyl sen huomas et 08 ku niistä alettin puuhuu, 09 niin saman tien oli niinkun yhteys poikki, 10 ei tajuttu enää toisiamme ollenkaan, 11 et (L: mmm) ihan turhaa niit oli sille selittää, 12 ku ei se niitä ymmärtäny, Resolution: 13 ehkä, ehkä nyt halua oli jonkun verran, 14 mut että (L: niin) sitten hänelläkään ei tietysti aikaa ollu sitte 15 paneutua niihin niin syvällisesti, et ois päässy kärryille (L: nii justiin)

This story is telling about the narrator’s ex-boss, who was not an expert in the substance area of which he was leading. The evaluation of the story clearly prefers the combination of leadership and the substance expertise. The narrator himself has just moved to lead a team that is working on his own area of expertise. He thus applies to his own standards of technically competent leader. As a consequence, we can interpret that the narrator is actually talking about his own experiences as an expert. Expertise includes four elements: •

First, an expert understands the subject matter (technology): ”tajuaa teknisen puolenkin”.

•

Second, an expert understands things in practice: “ymmärtää käytännössä”.

•

Third, an expert is connected with other experts and understands matters in his own field: “yhteys muihin asiantuntijoihin”, “tajuaa toisiaan”.

•

And fourth, an expert is going into things deeply and gain understanding: “paneutuu syvällisesti”.

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Story 3: ”We need to learn that kind of stuff” Abstract: 01 N: aa, se mikä oli silloin [kun oli juuri vaihtanut uuteen rooliin] sekavaa on tänä päivänä vielä sekavampaa […] Orientation: 02 esimerkiks viime viikolla ni tuli tällanen palaveri, 03 jossa sit niinku, aa, yks toinen [meidän organisaation] niinku tiimi (L: mmm) tuli esittää meille niinku että, Action: 04 et ”hei ette te voi niinku edistyy täs, täs projektissa” 05 siis minä ja mun konseptoija niinku kollega, jotka ollaan molemmat mukana siinä projektissa, 06 ”joo, et te ette pääse [seuraavaan vaiheeseen] ennen-, ennenkuin teil on tämmönen informaatiomalli valmiina” (L: mmm) 07 me ollaan niinku molemmat ”me ei osata tehä sellasta, 08 meil ei oo sellasta koulutusta, Resolution: 15 no okei nyt mä tuun sieltä ulos, 16 mä oon niinku ”aha, no nii, nyt jälleen tää, et meidän pitää niinku opetella sen tyyppisii juttuja, 17 et sehän on kiva”, Evaluation: 18 ei mulla ois ollu mitään vastaan sitä, 19 et jos joku ois niinku antanu mulle kunnollisen matskun ja, ja 20 tota noin ja vähä joku ois tullu siihen niinku jelppimään, 21 et ”hei, et tohon suuntaan tää homma”, Orientation: 22 mut ei ku sitte seuraavana aamuna 23 mä keskustelen sitten taas jonku, keskustelen mun niinkun, aa, siis vähän toisenlaisessa roolissa olevan vanhan tutun kanssa, 24 mut joka on samas organisaatios kuitenki, Action: 25 ni se oli niinku, et “Ei, Ei, Ei, et ei oo koskaan ollu tarkoitustaan, et konseptoijat tekee sellaisia [informaatio] ma-, malleja, 26 et tota (L: mmm), et meidän tarkoitus on olla puhtaasti businesskonseptoijia 27 et tekninen konseptointi tulee ihan muualta (L: mmm), Resolution: 28 mä olin vaa, et “aha, no en oo kyllä nyt sit yhtään teknist konseptoijaa nähny yhdessäkään projektissa” (L: nii) Coda: 35 [jos sillon] ni mul on ollu joku käsitys mitä mun pitää oppia, 36 jotta mä niinku pärjään täs duunissa (naurahtaa), 37 niin ee-emmä nyt enää tiedä sitten niin paljoa (L: nauraa)

This story is telling about a situation where the person is expected to do something that she has no experience about. She does not have the needed competence but she is ready to learn it (the first resolution). However, competence development seems impossible due to the missing knowledge, support, and direction (lines 19-21). Telling a continuation story emphasizes the point of the first action sequence – finally it is not even sure whether there is a need to learn the new competence. However, narrator reminds that it is very probable because in the organization there is no such competence (the second resolution). We can interpret that the narrator is talking about the mismatch between what she thinks is expertise way of doing things and the way that things work in her working environment. Expertise means to know how things should be done. First step is to gain needed knowledge and

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then to apply that knowledge into practice. Such expertise requires that there is knowledge available and that people follow the common guidelines in applying it. Story 4: “You know what you are doing, so I let you do” Abstract: 01 I am quite posit-positively surprised that businesspeople consider us really as a partner and not as a, you know, as a supplier or (L:mmm) Orientation: 03 most difficult [task] I have been doing for [our own organization] actually (laugh) (L: right) Action: 06 maybe they were expecting me to organize more than my role should be (L: mmm) 07 and also in the countries the people, aa, who are the local organizers, aa, 08 wanted also to be the technical persons. Evaluation: 09 It was not as well organized as businesspersons, 10 when it is business it is much more easier to make the-the division of the job (L: right), 11 so, we do the technical thing and they organize all the other things Resolution: 12 And, yeah, when working with persons [from our own organization], I had the feeling to be like a supplier facing a customer, 14 We did not maybe had especially good contact with the person I was dealing with, Orientation: 16 L: was it only like one time? (N: aaa) 17 or with a particular person? 18 N: Aa, one, okay, aa, The two times were very difficult to organize. 19 The first time I think it was purely organizational (L: right), 20 but second time it was also because of our relationship with this person that was not so good (L: mmm). 21 So, I would say that the stress was aaa extreme-ing from top to, I mean (L: mmm) from person to person (L: right). Action: 22 So, this person was stressed, stressing me, and I was stressing the person working with me, 23 so it was (L: laughing) (L: mmm) not so nice, but. Abstract: 24 Usually, there have been some, some problems and so on, 25 but (p) we never, I never got a feeling that I was mistreated or (L: mmm) 26 Because I hear, I hear sometimes from [our] people that 27 they are not well treated (L: mmm) or respected by businesspersons Orientation: 37 I have, I had to deal with, with communications people so, 39 mainly communication managers and so on 40 and this service is very special service in a way, But, aaa, Action: 41 I, I met different kind of people, 42 some people who are really scared about it (L: mmm) 43 and needed to be comforted (L: mmm) and so on, 44 and some others who took it more lightly 45 and (L: mmm) say "okay, but you know what you are doing so I let you (L: mmm) do your thing" 46 and they were not so worried (L: mmm).

This story is about the definition of the new role: What the role should be and thus what the role of others related to it should be. The role of an expert is defined by presenting two different episodes of co-operation. In the first one the own organization has been a customer and the cooperation ended with role confusion. Customers did not trust person’s expertise and wanted to do technical things themselves. In the second one the communications people have been

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customers and the co-operation ended with respect and trust: “you know what you are doing, so we let you”. This story is an example of the style that the narrator uses to express his experiences as an expert; he is telling about people he is dealing with. Contacts at work are important because they define who he is and thus what is his expertise. Conflicts, on the contrary, are a treat to expertise because they deny the person’s rights to “know what is right things to”. Expertise that can be interpreted from these stories is not only technical competence, but it is something that others around him reflect back to the person. It is about recognition, achievement of things, and about making things happen. Own expertise is thus defined in relation to other people. The comment in the end of the interview makes this point clear: N: I have the feeling my role is, is more valued (L: mmm) than before because, of cause, aaa, if there are thousands of people doing the same job as you do (L: mmm) then it, it's harder in a way to, to be pointed out (L: mmm) if, if you, if there are only hundreds of people then it's, you feel that you are doing something special in a way (L: mmm, mmm) Conclusion A lot of work has been done both in research and in practise to define external standards for expertise in different professional settings. A common sense is that experts have excellent competence and performance that exceed the requirements at work. Moreover, expertise is defined as a process of progressive problem solving in which people continuously reframe their settings and tasks. Such problem solving does not lead to routine strategies but, instead, to working at the limits of existing competence and surpassing of previous expertise (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993). All the people who participated in my study fit to this definition in a way that they had acquired a certain expertise in their previous roles and were about to surpass the existing expertise in their new roles. However, each of them had a unique way to interpret the “standard definition of expertise” when it came to define their own experiences. The case examples that I presented here show that an alternative approach to the standard definitions of expertise is possible. The way people make sense of their professional experiences in their stories tells us about what kind of meaning categories they use when evaluating expertise. Finally, I believe that it is time to listen the stories of people who actually do the expertise work; how they make sense of their own expertise.

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References: Bell, S. (1988) “Becoming a Political Women: The Reconstruction and Interpretation of Experience Through Stories”, In A. D. Todd & S. Fisher (Eds.), Gender and Discourse: The Power of Talk, Ablex Publishing Corporation, New Jersey. Bereiter, C. & Scardamalia, M. (1993) Surpassing Ourselves. An Inquiry into the nature and implications of expertise, Open Court, Chicago. Bruner, J. S. (1990) Acts of Meaning, Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Czarniawska, B. (1998) A Narrative Approach to Organizational Studies, Sage Publisher, Thousand Oaks. Goodson, I. & Sikes, P. (2001) Life history research in educational settings, Open University Press, Buckingham. Heikkinen, H. (2002) “Whatever is Narrative Research?”, In R. Huttunen, H. Heikkinen & L. Syrjälä (Eds.), Narrative Research: Voices of Teachers and Philosophers, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä. Heikkinen, H. (1999) ”Opettajuus narratiivisena identiteettinä”, In A. Eteläpelto & P. Tynjälä (Eds.), Oppiminen ja asiantuntijuus: Työelämän ja koulutuksen näkökulmia. WSOY, Juva. Labov, W. (1972) Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Mishler, E. G. (1986) “The Analysis of Interview-Narratives”, In T. R. Sarbin (Ed.), Narrative Psychology, Praeger Publisher, New York.

Polkinghorne, D. (1988) Narrative knowing and the human sciences, State University of New York Press, Albany. Riessman, C. K. (2001) “Analysis of Personal Narratives”, In J. F. Gubrium & J. A. Holstein (Eds.), Handbook of Interviewing, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks. Riessman, C. K. (1993) Narrative Analysis, Sage Publications, Newbury Park (California). Schwandt, T. A. (2000) “Three Epistemological Stances for Qualitative Inquiry”, In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (2nd edition), Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks (California).

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