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.

Deconstructing Talent

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!

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