The book offers condensed summaries of twenty-three major skill acquisition and expertise development models presented by leading researchers during the last half a century of classic and new research. This book presents new researchers in learning, training, cognitive sciences, or education disciplines with a big picture starting point for their literature review journey. The book presents an easy-to-understand taxonomy of twenty-three models, giving new researchers a good bird’s eye view of existing models and theories. They can decide which direction to dig further. The reviews in this book are complemented with over 200 authentic sources, which a researcher read for a detailed and deeper dive and set the direction for further exploration. This book would also act as an essential reference for training & learning professionals and instructional designers to design research-based training curriculum to develop the skills of their staff. Chapter 1 of the book elaborates on how the processes of learning, skill acquisition, and expertise development are interwoven. Chapter 2 presents a classification system to categorize various models reviewed in the literature under five groups. Chapter 3 describes twelve models of skill and expertise acquisition which are represented in the form of stages used frequently in learning, training, and performance literature. The chapter also briefly discusses each model's implications toward developing the skills and expertise of a less proficient individual to a higher level of proficiency. Chapter 4 reviews practice-, time- or task-based models, which are theories or models suggesting that acquisition of knowledge & skills, development of expertise, and performance improvement is a function of nature of the practice, amount of time spent on the task and task type. Chapter 5 presents the factor-based models, suggesting the interplay of several factors that influence the acquisition of knowledge & skills, development of expertise, and performance improvement. Chapter 6 embarks on describing expert modeling-based models, suggesting modeling an expert through elicitation or guidance for the acquisition of knowledge & skills, development of expertise, and performance improvement. Chapter 7 covers some newer movements toward cognition-based models, which are theories or models focusing on mechanisms of cognitive learning for the acquisition of knowledge & skills, development of expertise, and performance improvement. Chapter 8 concludes the book by integrating views from various thought leaders to explain a famous staged skill acquisition model.

The book, Teaching and Learning for Adult Skill Acquisition: Applying the Dreyfus and Dreyfus Model in Different Fields, will fill a unique niche in the field of adult, higher, and workforce education. It offers a current volume for scholars and practitioners based on both empirical studies and practice-based research on adult skill acquisition and development. Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1980, 1988, 2004, 2008) developed the novice to expert model of skill acquisition that illustrates growth over the course of a person’s career in a particular domain. The skill model highlights a learner’s movement across six levels of skill development: novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, expert, and mastery. This book will present examples of the application of the Dreyfus and Dreyfus model in different fields (i.e., health care, education, law enforcement, business, serious gaming, military, ethics training, etc.) providing insight into how practitioners can develop their skills in their particular domains and how educators can promote this development. This collection will be appropriate for a wide variety of professors, researchers, practitioners, and students in the field of adult, higher, and workforce education.

Expertise and research into the development of expertise and skill acquistion in sports performance is a specific area of research within the more general field of motor skills acquisition. This is the first fully comprehensive and focused work on the subject.

Skill Acquisition and Training describes the building blocks of cognitive, motor, and teamwork skills, and the factors to take into account in training them. The basic processes of perception, cognition and action that provide the foundation for understanding skilled performance are discussed in the context of complex task requirements, individual differences, and extreme environmental demands. The role of attention in perceiving, selecting, and becoming aware of information, in learning new information, and in performance is described in the context of specific skills. A theme throughout this book is that much learning is implicit; the types of knowledge and relations that can profitably be learned implicitly and the conditions under which this learning benefits performance are discussed. The question of whether skill acquisition in cognitive domains shares underlying mechanisms with the acquisition of perceptual and motor skills is also addressed with a view to identifying commonalities that allow for widely applicable, general theories of skill acquisition. Because the complexity of real-world environments puts demands on the individual to adapt to new circumstances, the question of how skills research can be applied to organizational training contexts is an important one. To address this, this book dedicates much content to practical applications, covering such issues as how training needs can be captured with task and job analyses and how to maximize training transfer by taking trainee self-efficacy and goal orientation into account. This comprehensive yet readable textbook is optimized for students of cognitive psychology looking to understand the intricacies of skill acquisition.

The Athletic Skills Model offers an alternative to dominant talent development theories in the form of holistic broad-based movement education, focusing on health and wellbeing. It places the emphasis on ‘physical intelligence’ – including attributes such as agility, flexibility and stability – through adaptable and varied training programmes, creating a skilled athlete before introducing sport specialization. The book sets out the scientific underpinnings of the ASM before going on to offer practical guidance on the content of the programme, how to adapt and vary the programme, and how to apply the approach to different age groups and sports. The ASM’s application in the youth development programme at AFC Ajax is explored in depth, before a future of talent development with an emphasis on athletic, rather than sport-specific, expertise is imagined. The Athletic Skills Model introduces an important and timely challenge to conventional wisdom in talent development and is a fascinating read for any upper-level student or researcher interested in youth development, skill acquisition, motor learning or sports coaching, and any coaches wanting to refresh their approach to talent development.

First published in 1981. This book is a collection of the papers presented at the Sixteenth Annual Carnegie Symposium on Cognition, held in May 1980.