I've been reading the Talent Code (a condensation of The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance). One thought that came instantly to mind is how do the Aden Bowman Senior Football coaches ignite the players of a small school to 3 straight city championships and two provincial championships in 3 years?
Talent Code starts with deep practice which creates the broadband networks that result in expertise. Myelin (page 44-45) is the stuff which wraps around nerve fibres (page 31, 38) and Coyle compares it to creating a broadband neural network. What is deep practice? Rule 1 (page 79) is to chunk up the task. Chunking is about taking it one step at a time and slowing down practice so that you can attend to errors and correct them. Rule 2 is repeat it - attentive repetition is a must. As Horowitz said (page 88) skip 1 day practice, he notices, skip 2 days practice, his wife notices, skip 3 days practice the world knows it. Rule 3 is learn to feel it. He sums it up as (page 92): 1. Pick a target, 2. Reach for it, 3. Evaluate the gap between step 1 and step 2, 4. Return to step 1. In other words, when one is deep practicing, you are operating at the edges of your current ability and this helps to build expertise (and myelin).
The second part of the book is about ignition (motivation). On page 104 there is an interesting graph showing that a student who is committed can practice less and achieve more that an uncommitted student who practices more. On page 107 he quotes an interesting piece from Tom Sawyer (Tom 'conning' his friend to paint the fence). On page 135-137 he refers to Carol Dweck's Mindset work. Students who were praised for effort rather than achievement eventually achieved more because they adopted a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindest.
Now, this stuff all makes very good sense. There are really very few natural born talents. The 'talented' are not born that way. Instead, they have unconsciously developed a way to attain expertise. The physiological manifestation of this expertise is building myelin (much like athletes building muscle through exercise). The unconscious mind can process 11 million pieces of info/sec whereas the conscious mind can only process 40 pieces of info/sec (page 112).
The next part is about KIPP, a college prep school programme. One common thread seems to be a built-in desire to achieve as the students are largely from have-not families (sort of like the rundown Russian tennis school). The standard motto is "Work hard and be nice". The primal cues KIPP students follow (page 149) mirrors the sporting examples he's already used. Page 150, self-discipline is twice as accurate as IQ in predictng a student's GPA - more evidence that one is not born with talent. Page 150 (Mindset stuff) - the only way to reach them is to change the way they see themselves.
The last chapter - Epilogue is a must read. He refers to Dweck's work again and summarises most of what he's talked about. He also ends with a personal experience coaching his previously hapless Little League team. Although they did not win the tournament, they did improve vastly over their previous outings. He also noted that Toyota's culture of continuous self-improvement was key to their rise. This is what I thought was needed in our CDMs last year - however, there is not a true learning community where people feel comfortable having a real discussion rather than the typical show and tell.
Wooden's quick and precise comments is similar to what Dylan Wiliam indicated about feedback in a video Garry Davis referred EHCI staff to - feedback should be given every 30 seconds. Now, that would seem hard to do in a class of 35 like I had last year. I think the only way to get this kind of 'just in time' feedback is to develop a true learning community where students use peer and self assessment to make progress.
More to come ...
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