1. Inside knowledge: second order measures of skill.
- Author
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Pinch, Trevor, Collins, H. M., and Carbone, Larry
- Subjects
- *
SOCIOLOGY of knowledge , *SOCIOLOGICAL research , *ABILITY , *TRAINING , *LEARNING , *SOCIOLOGY - Abstract
The article presents a paper that aims to make a contribution to the sociology of skills. It explains that a research, which suggests that skills and their transmission are the properties of communities, leaves unanswered the question of how information may be explicitly transmitted and acquired as part of the process of leaning a skill. It further discusses, studies of skill accept that skill acquisition occurs within a culture; it also examines in detail, which aspects of skills can be explicated and which cannot. Such a second-order study is presented here. It identifies a quasi-quantitative measure of skill acquisition-hardness. This measure is useful in understanding how task uncertainty is resolved in practice and how new skills are learnt. It explains learning how hard something is and how hard one should go at it is a part of becoming a skilled person. It mentions that the question of the transfer of skills is deeply sociological so long as one thinks of skills as being the properties of communities.
- Published
- 1996
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