ABSTRACT
An expert is one who ‘has extensive skill or knowledge in a particular field’ or someone who is ‘skilful or knowledgeable’ (Collins English Dictionary 1979). Perhaps the dictionary should also have offered the possibility that an expert is both skilful and knowledgeable. Yet it would be true to say that for a number of years the word ‘expert’ has fallen into something like disrepute as terms such as ‘competence’ have dominated the vocabulary of political correctness. On the other hand, in the circles of Human Resource Development, ‘expertise’ seems to be more centrally placed than ‘competence’, at least in the USA (Swanson 2001).
