Transition expertise : cognitive factors and developmental processes that contribute to repeated successful career transitions amongst elite athletes, musicians and business people
Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis examines the nature of transition expertise which enables individuals to make repeated successful transitions over the course of their career.It addressed four areas that contribute to transition expertise: 1) cognitive flexibility that enables the generalisation of expert knowledge and processes; 2) inferential and inductive cognitive mechanisms that enable expertise to be generalised; 3) personal intelligences that are used to support transitions; and 4) practical intelligence as it supports performance contextually during transitions.The study used retrospective interviews to gather data from elite performers in three fields who had made successful career transitions: sports people who become national coaches or heads of national bodies; successful musicians who become heads of faculty or principals of a conservatoire; successful business people who become senior vice presidents or CEOs.Participants were able to generalise expert knowledge and processes beyond their primary domains, contrary to widely held views about the domain specificity of expertise.Cognitive flexibility enabled this generalisation and was developed through broad based training, early exposure to multiple domains and the early use of generative cognitive processes during the development of primary domain expertise.Inductive, inferential and analogical cognitive mechanisms were the main tools through which expertise was generalised during transitions.Personal intelligence contributed to transition expertise.Intrapersonal intelligence enabled individuals to understand how their abilities, values and motivations shaped their career progression.Interpersonal intelligence enabled individuals to respond effectively to the requirements of their peers, direct reports, stakeholders and organisational context.Contrary to expectations, self regulatory processes did not play a central role in the management of transitions.Practical intelligence enabled transition expertise.It involved more than applying subject-area and tacit knowledge.It encompassed the abilities to: identify and resolve problems; manipulate environmental objects in the form of administrative tasks, schedules and plans; utilise resources in terms of people and materials; and shape their environment, corporate structures and culture.Transition expertise develops and evolves over the course of a career as it uses convergent and divergent cognitive processes, inductive mechanisms, personal awareness and cognitive pragmatics to address issues of increasing scope and implication.While motivational factors, self belief and personality resiliency are important contributors to transition expertise they did not form part of this study.Though the process of producing this dissertation has been, in many ways, a solitary one in which self-imposed exile was necessary to hold onto the elusive discipline required to pursue and complete it, several people have figured directly in this accomplishment.First of all I would like to thank my business partner and long-time friend, John Syer, who supported me unreservedly at the launch of this project and well into its midst before he sadly passed away.It was his fundamental unconditional belief in me at the beginning that made this project possible.I would like to recognise the unremitting support and belief in me of several good friends and colleagues: Hetty Einzig who has travelled much the same journey, Karina Kaldewaaij who has always loved the idea of learning, Oliver Ziehn whose boundless enthusiasm for the project has propelled me along, Stella van Boch who has always thought it was a 'wonderful' ideal and John Carey who has stood as an examplar of scholarly mien and genuine passion in the pursuit of knowledge.The staff at Brunel has been consistently supportive in particular Liz Johnson who helped me get started and Ushma Gudka who helped me bring the project to completion.Penultimately, I would like to thank Aquiles Alencar-Brayner whose steadfast support-interspersed with admonitions and occasional dire warnings and has made it possible for me to live through this project and pursue it to completion.I reserve final recognition for Fernand Gobet, my supervisor, whose combination of expert knowledge, clear direction unceasing patience, constant engagement, and gentle but sustained pressure (combined with a sharp editing pencil) has helped me produce a final product that is far better than what I could have conceived or achieved without him.xviii Chapter 2. Methodology will discuss the theory behind the decision to use qualitative methodology, why retrospective interviews in particular were used for collecting data in the study and the process used for the analysis of the data.Chapter 3. The pilot and the main study will explain the reason for the use of a pilot study and a main study and describe the two studies conducted in this project.It will explain how the main study was modified in light of some methodological shortcomings and some preliminary theoretical outcomes that were identified in the pilot.Part 2 will consist of four chapters, each of which will address one of the major theoretical areas under consideration in this dissertation and their operation in career transitions.Perhaps atypically, the theoretical review will be spread over these four chapters so that the analysis and discussion of the data take place in proximity to the relevant theory.Each chapter will be structured in the same way: firstly a review of the appropriate literature and theory, then analysis of the data and finally a discussion of the data in light of the theory.Chapter 4. Expertise and expert generalisability will give an overview the major theories of expertise and identify some of their most important cognitive structures and processes.It will address specific issues which affect cognitive flexibility such as encoding specificity, deliberate practice, reductive bias, automatisation, and functional fixedness.It will then discuss how they may constrain the generalisation of expert knowledge and processes that have been acquired or developed in the primary expert domain to secondary domains and subsequent career stages.It will then investigate how cognitive flexibility can be developed in ways which mitigate these limitations.xix Chapter 5. Intelligence and inferential processes will present an overview of the major approaches to the study of intelligence.It will focus primarily on those cognitive factors or mechanisms which support cognitive flexibility and the generalisation of the cognitive processes and knowledge from one domain to another.It will then investigate how these factors inference, induction and analogy in particular operate to generalise expert knowledge and processes during transitions.Chapter 6.The personal intelligences in transitions will review the important place given to intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence in most models of intelligence.It will explain how intrapersonal intelligence provides self awareness, self control, and the ability to adapt consciously to changing circumstances during transitions.It will then explain how interpersonal intelligence enables individuals to situate themselves in their context, learn from their environment and respond appropriately during transitions Chapter 7. Practical intelligence in transitions will review this somewhat awkward but useful conceptualisation of an area of intelligence theory which provides a 'basket' into which a variety of real life applications of intelligence can be collected and studied.The main focus will be on three common forms of practical intelligence as they operate during transitions: problem resolution, administrative organisation and the use of environmental resources.Part 3 will consist of three chapters which will identify and review the overall patterns and findings of the study as they elucidate the operation and xx development of transition expertise.It will include the conclusion to this dissertation.Chapter 8. Transition expertise over the career cycle will revisit the career cycle and the stage transitions discussed in the first chapter.It will also review further theories about the development of intelligence and expertise in adults and their correspondences with adult developmental theories such as wisdom models of expertise and evolving self-concept models.The development and evolution of transition expertise over the course of a career will be discussed in light of these models and the supporting evidence in the data.Chapter 9.The transition process and transition expertise will review the transition process itself and in particular the movement from a stable career position through an unstable transition process to a different but stable new position.It will then discuss some important types of transitions including reactive transitions, initiated transitions, failed transitions, and choices to not transition.It will examine the operation of convergent and divergent cognitive processes during transitions and how these provide further insight into the nature of transition expertise Chapter 10.Conclusion will summarise the findings of the dissertation, present general conclusions drawn from these findings, and suggest areas for future study.
Author: Christopher James Connolly
Language: English
Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W146853441