Professional Knowledge and Expertise

Professions are according to Abbott the most important way expertise is institutionalised in modern societies. Sociologists have studied the characteristics of professionalism as well as the role of professionals in society. Even though an abstract knowledge is considered a core if not the core characteristics of professions, sociologists have examined the characteristics of professional knowledge used in occupational practise only to a limited extent. In my paper I discuss important contributions within the literature on expertise and argue that some of these perspectives are highly relevant to complement sociologists understanding of professional knowledge.

While sociologists have emphasised that abstract knowledge acquired in higher education is an important characteristics of professionalism, practical training and tacit knowledge is found to be the most important preconditions in the literature of expertise. Sociologists do not deny the need for practical training, but tacit knowledge is a somewhat mysterious term often considered as opposed to abstract explicit knowledge. Based on questioning why knowledge is tacit, Harry Collins (2010) distinguishes between three types of tacit knowledge. This distinction opens up for a more nuanced perspective on the relationship between tacit and explicit abstract knowledge. His perspective also imply that explicit knowledge play an important role in the development of expertise and transmission of knowledge.

Professional work is characterised by uncertainty. Inspired by Collins different types of tacit knowledge, I distinguish between three types of uncertainty that have significant importance for the reliability of professional expertise: 1) Explicit uncertainty related to uncertain knowledge; 2) Cognitive uncertainty related to characteristics of the human mind (heuristics and biases) and; 3) Interactional uncertainty related to interpretation and interaction. An explicit abstract knowledge base is an important resource in handling all these types of uncertainty, but these uncertainties can never be totally abolished.