Abstract
People who can act knowledgably, who are flexible and adept in their use of different kinds of knowledge and who can shape their environment to generate new insights are demonstrating a capacity which we call ‘epistemic fluency’. This chapter argues that epistemic fluency plays an important, though underappreciated, role in professional life. To understand how knowledge works in routine and innovative professional activities, one needs to look beneath the surface appearance of behaviours and language and find generative patterns – such as epistemic forms and games. This chapter provides an overview of the core conceptual concerns of the book, tracing their development across the 19 chapters that follow. It also provides a summary of the body of empirical research on which we draw when illustrating our arguments.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Sitting by Nelly’ refers to informal learning on the job, done by watching a more experienced worker perform the tasks to be done.
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Markauskaite, L., Goodyear, P. (2017). Introduction. In: Epistemic Fluency and Professional Education. Professional and Practice-based Learning, vol 14. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4369-4_1
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