In their book Rethinking Expertise, which inspires this chapter, Harry Collins and Robert Evans (2008) distinguish between common expertise (ubiquitous expertise) and specialist expertise. Shared by all, ubiquitous expertise brings together the many skills that each member of a society must be able to master like natural spoken language. On the other side, two types of specialist expertise are distinguished: contributory expertise and interactional expertise. On the one hand, contributory expertise refers to what is required to carry out an activity with skills in a specialized field. The authors distinguish five stages in the acquisition of this type of expertise: novice, advanced beginner, competence, proficiency, and expertise. On the other hand, interactional expertise is essentially defined by mastery of the language of a specialized field in the absence of practical skills. The transition from contributory expertise to interactional expertise is only possible, however, if the contributing expert develops two dispositions or abilities: interactive and reflexive ones.

In this contribution, I will depict the division of labour in expertise, rules and resources that produce expert knowledge. A double movement of politicisation of science and scientification of politics is specified (Maasen, Weingart, 2006). Expertise includes different social encounters and arrangements, a distributed activity, diversified routines, and practices, but also processes of meaning and legitimization that are far from being a priori determined (Hutchins, 1995; Collins, Evans, 2008; Normand, 2016) It is subjected to contingencies, unforeseen events, conflicts, negotiations, compromises. It reveals hierarchies, asymmetries, and power relationships. I present “expertise in the making” in opening the “black box” as Social Studies of Sciences and Technologies have previously done in studying laboratories (Latour, 1987).

Inspired by studies in the Sociology of Science and Technologies, this contribution aims to describe my learning experience in different European expert networks and programs in education. It focuses on the pragmatic dimensions of expertise, in the appropriation of some categories and modes of reasoning, but also on some required social skills to be include and recognized in an epistemic community with its norms and expectations. It also highlights the framing of social encounters and negotiations, in procedures, devices, and a division of labour that control the production of knowledge as "deliverology" before it is publicised (Gunter, Mills, 2017). 

In line with Pierre Bourdieu's thinking, reflexivity is that stance which makes it possible to "objectify the subject of objectification" (Bourdieu, Wacquant, 1992) by activating all the instruments of "epistemological vigilance": the sociologist must use his or her own research instruments to analyze himself or herself, i.e. to analyze his own work as the subject of sociological science. Data have been collected from notes during expert meetings as a participant observation and drawn from official and non-official materials produced by expert groups in which I was involved.

European sociology in education generally maintains a tight boundary between science and expertise. My participation in several European expert networks led me to relativize this "great divide" according to Bruno Latour’s words (1993). Indeed, it is possible to draw analogies between expertise and science, in the way people interact, in the process of knowledge building, in belonging to a community, in the interplay of interactions and power asymmetries. I will report on it from my experience and a self-distanced perspective. Self-socio-analysis is part of this kind of "reflexivity" mentioned by Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant when they called for "epistemological vigilance" and "self-criticism" in the objectification of sociological practice (Bourdieu, Wacquant; 1992). The expert’s multiple commitments correspond also to different ways of legitimizing expertise in a collective enterprise and a translation process that disseminates knowledge well beyond its original production space. This politicization and politicking are sequential steps to export expertise into a visible, readable, and accessible policy agenda and discourse of truth for lay people and the public.

Bourdieu, P., Wacquant, L. J. D. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Collins, H., Evans, R. (2008) Rethinking expertise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gunter, H. M., Mills, C. (2017) Consultants and consultancy: The case of education. Cham: Springer. Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild, Cambridge, MA: MIT press. Latour, B. (1987). Science in action: How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1993). We Have Never Been Modern. New York: Harvester. Maasen, S., Weingart, P. (Eds.) (2006). Democratization of expertise? Exploring novel forms of scientific advice in political decision-making, Dordrecht, Springer. Normand, R. (2016). The Changing Epistemic Governance of European Education: The Fabrication of the Homo Academicus Europeanus? Dordrecht, Springer.