>There is a conflict between practice and experience in that a goal of
>practice is to reach the point where you carry out the procedure
>WITHOUT THINKING ABOUT THE UNDERLYING CONCEPTS OR PRINCIPLES. It
>beomes automated and brainless, a skill of the fingers (or toes). For
>that reason, I think practice should be dispensed only with a doctor's
>prescription, AFTER one has shown mastery of the concepts. In
>pracitce our education system tends to work the other way around --
>try to get everybody to go through the motions and hope a few will see
>the reasons.
>
i would point out however that the notion that we apply principles or
concepts without thinking is precisely what we really want ... for example,
a student comes in with some statistical question ... or idea about a
research project ... and, WITHOUT sitting there 'thinking', you as the
expert have ready made questions ... suggestions ... paths or leads for the
student to follow ... THIS is what we do BECAUSE we have practiced these
'ideas' over and over again. we don't 'think' when we now apply what we
have learned ...
think about grading papers ... while students struggle with DOING the paper
or project .. the GOOD faculty member has no such problem examining and
finding flaws and good points ... it comes automatically BECAUSE we have
done it a 1000 times ... this is not bad ... it is good. for, if we did not
have that 'developed' level of skill ... we would take FORever to grade
papers ... we would have to RElearn on the spot ... each and every aspect
of what we are expecting from paper and project work ...
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