ABSTRACT
The commonplaces of our culture have led us to believe that being an expert in an area means knowing a lot. In the early years, as children, we strive to achieve this expertise on our own—trying, for example, to master everything about dinosaurs. Later on, we often rely on the expertise of others: To understand the implications of a split vote in an upcoming election, for instance, we search out experts on the electoral college. The common assumption running through both these examples is that expert practice—what an expert does—is what an expert knows. And under this assumption, as we have seen, literacy is incidental rather than central to the development of expertise in the academic professions.
