Adaptive Strategies

Adaptive expertise

This strategy calls for the learner to self-assess competence in content knowledge or procedural skills, and determine whether their current funds of knowledge adequately address the new challenge presented. The objective is for learners to recognize a gap between what they know or can do and what they need to know and be able to do in order to resolve the new challenge presented.  This strategy promotes mindfulness in and of the learning process, highlighting the learner's ability to adjust or adapt expertise, that is, medical, procedural, scientific or clinical knowledge, practices and skills, to meet shifting demands.

Peer Teacher

This strategy anticipates a learner with an established ability to self-regulate, that is, to act as their own teacher. Students who tend to demonstrate facilitator-like behaviors, for example, in Case-based Instruction (CBI) are approximating mastery of sufficient, perhaps specific, content or procedural expertise that enables them to serve as a peer instructor or leader. This strategy, then, asks the student to convey not only what they know but how they developed their knowledge or skills, and is based on the notion that students learn by teaching. This strategy affords the peer-teacher a sense of accomplishment and confidence, and requires them to engage in reflective awareness of the learning process as they devise successful strategies for teaching. This strategy should be employed with guidance from an educator who can engage the peer teacher in reflective discussion about the process of preparing to teach, teaching, and improving through self-assessment.