Learning to See: How Scientists Develop Professional Vision and Decomposition Expertise

Abstract

Professional vision refers to the shared practices by which members of a profession see and discursively articulate phenomena in their perceptual field. Extant research has paid limited attention to how professional vision is learned. Analyzing journal club meetings in academic science, this qualitative study asks, what are the practices by which early-career scientists learn professional vision and, as part of this learning process, what expertise do they develop? The findings show, first, how scientists engage in ambiguous reporting through which they communicate an article’s knowledge claims to other research group members. Next, scientists collectively engage in critical deliberation through which they identify and evaluate the article’s specific components, namely, its visualizations and analytical tools. Finally, scientists engage in self-centering the critical gaze aiming to reflexively relate the components of the article with their own ongoing research. These findings contribute to professional vision and expertise research by detailing the steps through which professional vision is learned and by demonstrating how in the process decomposition expertise is developed. Decomposition expertise enables professionals to break down the products of their work into individual components, assess each part, and evaluate how the components come together to form the whole. In academic science, decomposition expertise is critical for recognizing questionable analytical approaches and knowledge representations, detecting mistakes and misconduct, and enhancing efforts to make important contributions to the field.