On 1/6/2011 11:00 AM, Claudia Stanny wrote:
There is practice and there is deliberate practice (see the work of Ericsson, who is the source for the 10,000 hour estimate). Mere repetition of exisitng moves and skills (Allen's example of copying an existing piece over and over as "practice" in composition would fall into this category) does not move an individual to the next level of expertise, even if they do this work for 10,000 hours. Ericsson and his colleagues argue that the extended practice must be deliberate practice, in which the person works on progressively more challenging tasks and takes advantage of the feedback from a skilled mentor or coach to direct attention and effort toward areas that need improvement. Ericsson had an article in the NYTimes magazine (March 2007) in which he discussed the emergence of world-class tennis players from tennis camps in Russia with dreadful facilities but excellent coaching and players who deovoted massive time in deliberate practice. An excellent description of deliberate practice (including a discussion of the role of other factors such as genetics) is presented in a Psychological Review article: Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Romer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. /Psychological Review, 100,/ 363-406. Ericsson is a prolific publisher. A quick PsycINFO search will locate many recent articles, in which he applies this notion of deliberate practice to attaining exceptional performance in music, medical work, sport (in general and for specific activities), and even Scrabble play.
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I've been thinking a lot lately about what might constitute delibrate practice for teaching in higher education. Any thoughts?
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Claudia Stanny
The emphasis in deliberate practice seems to attend to feedback with the help of someone skilled in the task/profession.
One approach that might help an individual is being able to share course evaluations/feedback with other senior faculty.
My first semester at ASU, a student said that my course was the only one in which she was failing and that I had unreasonable expectations. I was in a quandry about the issue and reported what had happened to a crusty older female professor who had been teaching at ASU for several years. She laughed and informed me (with the verbal delivery of Anne Bancroft) that this student was failing her class also. I looked up the student's academic record and found that she had failed several courses. Thankfully, I discovered that I was not very special.
We have open-ended questions on our course evaluation forms in addition to the standard p-Likert questions: What did your instructor do that he/she should do again next semester? What did your instructor do that he/she should *not* do again next semester? What did you do to contribute to this being a successful course? (The last was my idea; to emphasize the course is a two-way street.)
The answers are often very interesting -- especially since I can recognize the handwriting :-) Typically, students who don't come to class often will complain that the course seems disjointed. These comments lead to my opening-class remarks on the importance of attending this class and taking notes. Later, I got thank-yous for making class expectations clear. (One would think regular attendance should be obvious but I learned that this is not true for many faculty from the viewpoint of students.)
The common answers to "what did you do to contribute to the success of this class" were regular attendance, paying attention, taking notes, and asking questions. Again, we think this should be obvious but discussion with students suggests (anecdotally) that this relationship is not clear to them in other classes.
Finally, I have the personal goal of revising 10% of exam questions each year--to make me match my exams with what happen in class.
Ken --------------------------------------------------------------- Kenneth M. Steele, Ph.D. [email protected] Professor Department of Psychology http://www.psych.appstate.edu Appalachian State University Boone, NC 28608 USA --------------------------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=7722 or send a blank email to leave-7722-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
