INSIDE KNOWLEDGE - 2ND-ORDER MEASURES OF SKILL

This paper is intended as a contribution to the sociology of skill. Re search which suggests that skills and their transmission are the prope rties of communities leaves unanswered the question of how information may be explicitly transmitted and acquired as part of the process of leaning a skill. Second-order studies of skill accept that skill acqui sition occurs within a culture, but then go on to examine in detail wh ich aspects of skills can be explicated and which cannot. Such a secon d-order study is presented here. Observations of veterinary surgery ar e used to identify a quasi-quantitative measure of skill acquisition - hardness. This measure is useful in understanding how task uncertaint y is resolved in practice and how new skills are learnt.