Abstract

In this study, we report methods and some results concerned with explicating the nature of knowledge of industrial trainers who are at different levels in expertise. Working with the three senior trainers in the training center of a large business group, we defined a list of 29 core elements to be acquired and mastered in the career paths of the professional trainers in the center. The knowledge elements are concepts, propositions, or practical know-hows of which the trainers should have a good grasp. The rating task was presented to employees with all possible pairs of knowledge elements and required them to judge the relatedness of the elements using a 10-point scale (0, 1, 2, ..., 9). Twenty one subjects completed the ratings. The rating task assumes that the less related elements be perceived further apart in one`s knowledge Structure. The ratings were put into a procedure called Pathfinder (Schvaneveldt, Durso, & Dearholt, 1985), a network scaling program based on the graph theory in mathematics. It generates a link-weighted network, a configuration in which elements are depicted as nodes and relationships are depicted as links between nodes. We used a method of assessing knowledge structure in order to obtain access to participants representations and worked with a small group of experts to identify the detailed level-specific facts and to understand the differentiation among the groups of trainers.