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To understand expertise and expertise development, interactions between knowledge, cognitive processing and task characteristics must be examined in people at different levels of training, experience, and performance. Interviewing is widely used in the initial exploration of domain expertise. Work and cognitive task analysis chart the knowledge, skills, and strategies experts employ to perform effectively in representative tasks. Interviewing may also shed light on the learning processes involved in acquiring and maintaining expertise and the way experts deal with critical incidents. Interviews may focus on specific tasks, events, scenarios, and examples, but they do not directly tap the representations involved in task performance. Methods that collect verbal protocols during and immediately after task performance better probe the ongoing processes in representing problems and accomplishing tasks. This article provides practical guidelines and examples to help researchers to prepare, conduct, analyse, and report expertise studies using interviews and verbal protocols that are derived from thinking aloud, dialogues or group discussions, free recall, explanation, and retrospective reports. In a multi-method approach, these methods and other techniques need to be combined to fully grasp the nature of expertise. This article shows how the cognitive processes in data collection constrain data quality and highlights how research questions guide the development of coding schemes that enable meaningful interpretation of the rich data obtained. It focuses on professional expertise and provides examples from medicine including visual tasks. This comprehensive review of qualitative research methods aims to contribute to the advancement of expertise.

The aim of the present empirical study was to explore students' self-regulated learning behaviours in vocational education and training and to describe the micro processes associated with planning, monitoring and evaluating during practical learning tasks. The 18 participants were well-performing students from upper secondary vocational education. We collected data from observations, interviews and self-reports to gain detailed insights into students' behaviours and thoughts during practical task performance. The results reveal that most of the students planned their time and resources, but did not develop elaborate plans to regulate their learning behaviours. They monitored their work carefully and adjusted when necessary. When evaluating, students focussed more on work outcomes than learning processes. The results also showed that the students' actual behaviours corresponded with self-reports on internal regulation, with three students overestimating their internal regulation. This study sheds light on an underexplored context and population regarding self-regulated learning. Though the well-performing vocational students engaged in self-regulation, their self-regulating behaviours were led by a combination of hands-on activities and evolving work outcomes. Thus, it was the emerging performance and experiences that triggered their learning. Although self-regulated learning behaviours in vocational education and training were present, we conclude that instructional support needs to be developed and empirically tested to actively facilitate and foster vocational students' learning by doing and reflection.

In vocational education, workplace simulations (WPS) have been implemented to ensure a better connection between the educational setting and the labour market. Moreover, WPS are supposed to motivate students and promote self-directed learning. So far, however, not much is known about the way students experience these WPS. The aim of the present exploratory case study was to investigate students' perceptions and preparedness for WPS and explore what factors they perceive to be relevant for their learning in these simulations. Forty students from three different pre-vocational secondary schools participated. Semi-structured group interviews were conducted and thematic analysis was used to examine the qualitative data. The results revealed that authentic WPS can increase student motivation and engagement. Learner characteristics regarded as relevant in WPS were motivation, responsibility, independence and discipline. For students, the presence and guidance of the teacher played an essential role in their working and learning effectively. They felt limited in making choices to direct their own learning. Assessment criteria were not transparent enough for students. Concluding, we found that students perceived factors closely related to self-regulated and self-directed learning to be relevant for their learning; however, these learning activities and processes have not yet been sufficiently promoted and supported in the investigated vocational schools. The study highlights design dilemmas for vocational practice and offers indications in how to match both learning environmental characteristics and teacher support tailored to learners' needs.

Higher education (HE) is engaged in a variety of educational innovations, as well as professional development initiatives (PDIs) to support teachers in attaining the required expertise. To improve teacher professional learning and development (PLD) and innovation processes, it is important to understand whether, how and why different PLD practices work for different innovations, contexts and populations. However, research is characterized by descriptive, single case studies and lacks a common framework to relate research findings. To address this shortcoming, this study collected and compared a wide variety of cases to develop a typology of practices. The results showed that educational innovations and teacher PLD were typically configured in three ways: (1) the focus is on implementing a new form of education and teacher learning is used as a means to this end, (2) the focus is on teachers' professional learning and the educational innovations are spin-offs, and (3) the focus is on stimulating innovations and teacher learning is a side-effect. These types of configurations differed regarding the educational innovation, required teacher expertise, professional development initiatives, teacher learning, and outcome measures. The typology serves as a framework that may help to reflect on practices, bridge disciplines, and formulate hypotheses for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dutch medical disciplinary boards consider physicians' gut feelings an element of the professional standards. Some indications can be found in the international literature suggesting intuitive feelings of unease of patients or their relatives can also contribute to adequate diagnostics. What is the view of disciplinary boards on this? A search in the disciplinary boards' database (2010-2017) found 55 rulings where the search term 'ongerust' (worried) was related to a patient, family member or partner and 51 rulings where the term 'bezorgd' (concerned) was related to a patient, family member or partner. The disciplinary boards expect that doctors are prepared to discuss worry and concern with their patients. Additionally, they consider patients' worry and concern to be a useful part of the doctors' diagnostics, which may possibly result in reviewing the diagnosis. This is consistent with the international literature.

What role does uncertainty play in the doctor's diagnostic reasoning process? Would it not be better to avoid uncertainty as much as possible? In this article we answer this question from an epistemological perspective. Doctors build up relevant, situational knowledge during the diagnostic process through listening, observation and interpretation during their contact with the patient. Uncertainty can play a crucial role in this. We use a practical case to illustrate how allowing in some uncertainty - in the form of gut feelings - can improve the quality of the diagnostic thought process.