Investigating Instructional Design Expertise: A 25-Year Review of Literature

Defining instructional design expertise has been a concern among scholars for many years. Understanding expertise and expert performance is complex due to the nature of ill-structured problems and the variety of contexts in which instructional designers work. If the field seeks to effectively prepare designers and enhance performance in existing professionals, a unified understanding and definition of expertise is needed. This 25-year review evaluated existing definitions in well-established literature. Findings revealed a lack of a clear, consistently used definition. Scholars predominately used expert characteristics to conceptualize expertise. A synthesis of these characteristics illuminated three traits of expert instructional designers: knowledge, skills, and dispositions. These traits informed the creation of a new definition. Innovations in research, theory, and practice are discussed which would provide new avenues for understanding, developing, and evaluating expertise over the next 25 years. © 2020 International Society for Performance Improvement.