Teaching Toward Expertise

These notes accompany the slides of the Teaching Toward Expertise presentation at Loyola Marymount University on 2006-09-28. These notes reside at http://cs.lmu.edu/~ray/talks/teaching.html.

Goal

The purpose of the presentation is to briefly look at our current understanding of how experts think and act and discuss teaching strategies that guide students toward achieving expertise (or proficiency).

Expanded Outline

    Introduction
        What the talk is and is not about
        Preparatory Questions
        Teaching Resources
    Background
        Teaching 101
        Theory
        Practice
    Learning, Understanding and Expertise
        Terminology
        What is an Expert?
        Examples
        Ten-Year Rule
        The Expert Mind
        Mistakes and Misconceptions
    Teaching for Expertise
        What we have covered so far
        Good news and bad news
        Preparatory Questions
        Strategies
            Mentoring
            Coaching
            Guru
        Teacher-Student Relationship
        An Amazing Example
        What we are doing in CMSI
    Assessment
    Wrap Up
        Summary
        References
        Parting Shots

Remarks on the Slides, with References

5. S�crates Brasileiro Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira
6. The Incredibles has a (refreshing!) anti-mediocrity message.
7. Bloom's Taxonomies:
   • Cognitive: Knowledge → Comprehension → Application → Analysis → Synthesis → Evaluation.
   • Affective: Receiving Phenomena → Responding to Phenomena → Valuing → Organization → Internalizing values
   • Psychomotor: Perception → Set → Guided Response → Mechanism → Complex overt response → Adaptation → Origination
   Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development
   • Sensorimotor → Preoperational → Concrete Operational → Formal Operational
   Gardner's Multiple Intelligences
   • Thought-based: Verbal-linguistic, logical-mathematical, naturalist
   • Sensory: Visual-spatial, body-kinisthetic, auditory-musical
   • Communicative: Interpersonal, intrapersonal
18. These people have a lot of raw talent plus...
    • Wolfgang Mozart — trained intensively by one of the great music teachers of his day (Leopold Mozart)
    • Andre Agassi — was batting tennis balls suspended above his crib as an infant and was hitting thousands of balls per day as a young child.
    • Tiger Woods — started golf at 3
19. The steps are crucial. "...it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time" (Phillip Ross).
20. Norvig's quote is from this article, where you will find references to the cited work of Benjamin Bloom and John Hayes
21. There's an an article in Psychology Today on the Polgár sisters.
24. Misconceptions from Howard Gardner's The Unschooled Mind, Chapters 8 and 9, include
    • "Six times as many students as professors" rendered as 6S=P.
    • Soil loses weight as plants grow on it
    • Balls shot out of curved tubes will continue moving in a curved path
    • Upward force of the hand acting on a coin thrown into the air
    • Preference of J.C. Pellow poems to John Donne and G. M. Hopkins
    • "Is it more likely Linda is a bank teller or a bank teller and a feminist?"
28. There are biological differences that may influence how some cognitive tasks are approached, but that need not in any way impact outcomes.
35. Watch the entire Alan Kay video at Google video or at archive.org.
40. The Dewar-Bennett Mathematical KEG is online.
43. Garlikov's Socratic Method teaching transcript ranks #2 on Google when searching for "socratic method", right under Wikipedia's article.
45. Read about Carol Dweck's work (here)

Acknowledgements

Thanks to

• Dr. Jackie Dewar, Professor of Mathematics, and Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence, for reviewing an early draft of this presentation.
• My colleagues in Computer Science Division (Drs. Phil Dorin, Stephanie August, Dondi Dionisio and Profs. Caskey Dickson and B.J. Johnson) for years of twice-weekly lunches many of which included discussions of teaching.
• Dr. Richard Plumb, Dean of the Frank R. Seaver College of Science and Engineering, and Drs. Barbara Marino (Chair) and Dr. John Page (and the aforementioned Dorin, Dionisio, and Johnson) for supporting my nomination for the award for which this talk is given.
• The Fritz B. Burns Foundation, who seems to be lacking a Wikipedia presence (not for long, I bet), for years of support to LMU.

Errors and gaffes in the presentation are mine, not theirs.