Abstract

Scholars and practitioners have long viewed learners as works-in-progress and as somewhat empty vessels to be filled with appropriate knowledge and skills to become future expert practitioners. However, based on an ethnography of two engineering laboratories, I found that laboratory members regularly swap the roles of learner and instructor, regardless of their status as an undergraduate student, a graduate student, or a faculty member. Furthermore, undergraduate students make crucial contributions to their research communities in the form of knowledge, creativity, and opportunities for other members to learn and build relationships through teaching. What, then, do the identities of “novice” and “expert” mean in practice? I argue that it is more productive to define the identity of a community based on mutual learning and epistemic exchange rather than on expertise.