For some reason, the term “domain knowledge” has been on my mind a good deal this morning as I pour through some edu journals on my iPad.

Here’s one:

ScienceDirect – American Psychologist : Teaching Thinking and Problem Solving: : Research Foundations: “They argue that these programs can be strengthened by focusing more explicitly on domain knowledge, especially when students are helped to understand how different ways of learning new knowledge can affect their abilities to solve relevant problems”

And here’s another:

Domain-Specific Knowledge and Cognitive Performance.: “Empirical findings based on the expert-novice paradigm are used to: (1) compare the knowledge structure and memory performance of experts and novices of different ages; (2) compare the knowledge representation of younger and older experts; and (3) explore the relation of individual differences in general intellectual abilities to the acquisition and use of domain-specific knowledge.”

In general it seems we don’t discuss domain specific knowledge enough in our schools and stick with the metacognitive-basis of learning. I need to work on that myself.

I find it interesting that most of the education journals I’m finding on Google Scholar on “domain knowledge” are dated around the late 80′s into ealy 90′s then drop off.

Back to the journals.