deliberate practice - ku · history section, spring semester 2015 deliberate practice an attempt at...
TRANSCRIPT
History section, Spring Semester 2015
Deliberate PracticeAn Attempt at Teaching Students How to Write Better
Problems
• Many teachers do not themselves write well.!
• Many teachers do not know how to teach writing.
Presentation
• 1. What is talent?!
• 2. How do we generate/stimulate it?: Deliberate Practice.!
• 3. My experience at applying DP in an academic setting. !
• 4. Results.
What is talent?
1. Traditional, “romantic” view: Talent is innate = spontaneous mastery of a discipline or ease at learning it. !
2. New, “cynical”, view: Talent is a product of intensive training, typically for about 10,000 hours.
From the cynical view to…
• Deliberate Practice, generated from a study of the training methods of violinists:!
• The most skilled violinists did not train significantly less or more than their colleagues.!
• It was the way they trained that made the difference.
Deliberate Practice• Clear purposes and objectives.!
• Identification of weaknesses and challenges.!
• Strong focus, high intensity, and planned training.!
• Lower the pace, be patient.!
• Free of fear of errors: Experimentation.!
• Continuous supervision, feedback, and evaluation.!
• Differentiated collective training that inspires, challenges and pushes.
Zones
• Comfort zone: Train skills that you already master.!
• Learning zone: Trains skills that you do not possess but can obtain. !
• Panic zone: Trains skills that you cannot yet master.
Conclusions (i)• Talent is not about nature, but principally about culture. !
• The more complex a domain is, the more complicated it is to show talent - and the less biology matters.!
• It is necessary, but not sufficient to train 10,000 hours. !
• Good News: Many can become talented.!
• “Bad” News: It takes hard work and great sacrifice.
Conclusions (ii)
• Less comfort, more motivation.!
• Help from others to develop further.!
• Many years of experience in a domain often leads to a decrease and not an increase of skills.!
• Deconstruction and reconstruction of talent.
Applying DP in Academia
1. In teaching, move away from a sole focus on a subject defined in time and space - and applying different approaches to it. !
2. More focus on the student’s competences. !
3. In my case: Increase their writing ability.
Guiding Principles and Means (i)• “Learning by doing”.!
• Teacher: Less of a lecturer, more supervisor/coach. !
• Not only displaying the best, but the real research process (experimentation, failures, etc).!
• Exercises to create trust and confidence. !
• Evaluations.
Guiding Principles and Means (ii)
• Identify levels in the classroom.!
• Differentiated teaching (plenum, groups, individually).!
• Pass ownership of their own development to students.!
• Feedback.
Basics• Writing processes.!
• Notes.!
• Argumentation.!
• Metatext.!
• Conceptualization.!
• Writing Styles.
Writing Well• Process: Get started early; plan your writing; identify when you
are best at writing, etc.!
• Genre: How to introduce a theme and formulate a problem; scientific language; position yourself as a writer; meta communication, etc.!
• Narrative Dimension: “Ladder of abstraction”; suspense; traces in the text; alternate between different tenses, etc. !
• The Sentence: Length; active and passive verbs; important words, etc.
Results• From 22 to 27 students.!
• About 20 students showing up per lecture.!
• About 80-90% submission of writing assignments (voluntary).!
• About 10-12 students very active per lecture.!
• Positive evaluations.
Limitations
• Better integration.!
• Writing assignments should be integrated into the exam. !
• More feedback, especially from me.!
• Too little time, maybe too ambitious!