A naturalistic study of railway controllers.

There is an increasing prevalence for work to be analysed through naturalistic study, especially using ethnographically derived methods of enquiry and qualitative field research. The relatively unexplored domain of railway control (in comparison to signalling) in the UK is described in terms of features derived from observations and semi-structured interviews. In addition, task diagrams (a technique taken from the Applied Cognitive Task Analysis toolkit) are used to represent controllers' core elements of work, i.

The nature of expertise: a review.

This paper reviews the complex topic of expertise. It begins with an explanation for the range of interest and viewpoints, and moves on to a discussion of the nature and study of expertise. The diversity in definitions, domains, disciplines, and the impact of these factors on approaches to investigation, are offered as possible explanations for some of the differences that appear to run through the literature.