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Re: [Phys-L] Importance of practice



On 7/21/2015 5:10 PM, John Denker wrote:
On 07/21/2015 10:13 AM, Donald G Polvani mentioned:

Daniel T. Willingham [ref 1]
"Practice Makes Perfect—but Only If You Practice Beyond the Point of Perfection"
http://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/spring-2004/ask-cognitive-scientist

How do I /not/ love this, let me count the ways.

1) First of all, just because something is proverbially
true does not make it actually true. They say the early
bird gets the worm ... but when it comes to mousetraps,
the early mouse gets killed. The /second/ mouse gets
the cheese.

More to the point: Practice absolutely does /not/ make
perfect. It would be more nearly correct to say
*Practice makes permanent.*
If you are practicing the wrong things, practice is worse
than nothing.

This should be obvious. We've all seen it a thousand times.

This has direct application to teaching, for instance in
connection with so-called "guided inquiry". There needs to
be a treeeemendous amount of guidance, especially at first.
Otherwise students are going to form some deeply-entrenched
misconceptions, and there will be hell to pay trying to
dig out from there.

Willingham describes practice as necessary for building knowledge, particularly in hierarchical situations. Setting up a strawman -- raving against a rhetorical phrase? convincing us of the truism that practicing incorrect skills is counter-productive? -- is not conducive to meaningful discussion. The final comment about guided inquiry is true but has little (nothing?) to do with practice as a pedagogical retention tool.

the spiral approach
2) We agree that the spiral approach makes sense. So I agree
with Prof. Polvani ... but not with Prof. Willingham, who
is at best ambiguous and ambivalent on the subject.

Willingham did NOT mention spiral approach. What he did mention is SPACED or DISTRIBUTED OVER TIME (as opposed to MASSED) practice. These are standard terms in education psychology and cognitive science and nobody familiar with them would confuse it with spiral approach to teaching (rather than to practice). I did not find Willingham ambiguous and/or ambivalent. Perhaps JD's lack of familiarity with the disciplines made him feel that way.

What's worse is how the ideas of "practice", "automaticity",
"mastery", and (gasp, choke) "beyond mastery" are used in
the schoolhouse. Even if the last section of reference
[1] is ambiguous, most of the people who use those terms
are quite uncompromising. They demand immediate mastery
(and beyond) in such a way that it becomes the /opposite/
of the spiral approach.

This continues the misunderstanding of what Willingham is discussing. When _instruction _occurs, it should be taught to mastery of understanding at the level that is expected at this grade. Then practice takes place, and that is what Willingham focuses on here -- practice. He offers clear operational definitions what "mastery" and "beyond mastery" ((aka "overlearning") mean.

Sal Kahn is a well-known example of this. He gets a
lot of things right, but IMHO he is inflexible and quite
wrong about this. He won't let students learn things out
of order ... /his/ order. He won't let them "move on"
to thing B until they have provably mastered thing A ...
according to some sequence that /he/ thinks is correct.

Willingham does not insist on particular order -- or method -- of learning anything, he just describes how one can be effective in creating long-term retention of whatever is learned.

Again: The spiral approach is the only thing that has
ever made sense to me. Introduce a bunch of new ideas,
touching on each one lightly, and then spiral back,
reinforcing each idea and (!!!!) connecting it to the
other ideas. The connections were not possible the
first time around the spiral, because the ideas had
not been introduced yet. And so on, introducing new
ideas, reinforcing old ideas, and making ever-more
connections.

Yet again JD confuses learning -- the acquisition of new knowledge and new understanding -- with practice intended to create long-term retention of whatever has been learned.

For example: Knowing the times tables (aka short
multiplication facts) is *not* a prerequisite for
learning the long multiplication algorithm. You
can do long multiplication just fine, even if you
have to refer to a multiplication table and/or count
on your fingers for each of the short multiplication
steps. Forsooth, carrying out long multiplication
gives you an opportunity and perhaps a reason to
practice short multiplication skills ... in which
case skill is seen as a consequence, *not* as a
prerequisite.

I guess I and Willingham differ from JD about what exactly is doing multiplication "just fine." JD may also try doing division this way ... he should let us know how long did it take him.

At a lower level, being able to recite the alphabet
is absolutely not a prerequisite for learning to
read. If anybody has questions about this, we
can discuss it in more detail.

I do not see where Willingham argues one needs to recite the alphabet to read, but I would appreciate understanding how one can read if one does not know the letter-sound correspondence.


At a higher level, neither speed nor accuracy
with grade-school arithmetic is a prerequisite
(or any kind of necessity) for doing higher math.

Willingham writes specifically:

The student who struggles to remember the rules of punctuation and
usage (or must stop to look them up in a reference book) cannot
devote sufficient working memory resources to building a compelling
argument in his or her writing.
That's just not true. Once I was discussing this
with Tom Clancy, who I reckon knows a wee bit more
about writing that Willingham does. Somebody asked
him what sort of English classes one should take in
order to become a novelist. He said
"None of that matters. The main thing a writer
needs is a good story to tell. All that other
stuff -- spelling and grammar et cetera -- is
not critical. You can hire an English major
for minimum wage to blue-pencil your draft if
necessary."

He said his previous career as an insurance adjuster
was good preparation, because he got to see lots of
different people, strong ones and weak ones, and got
to see how they behaved in various weird situations.
He got to hear how they talked.

Neither Tom Clancy nor John Denker know more than Willingham about the cognitive skills one needs for writing. Both may be better as "writers" in the sense of telling an interesting story. But that is not what Willingham discusses. And, in any case ... a reference to authority from JD? My, my.

The student who does not have simple math facts at his or her
disposal will struggle with higher math.
The part that is true is irrelevant to the topic
of the paper, and the part that is relevant is
untrue. Mastery and automaticity and endless
practice with "simple math facts" is absolutely
not required for higher math. Probably "most"
professional mathematicians are "good with
numbers" but some of them would have trouble
balancing a checkbook without a calculator.
Either way, the point is, it's irrelevant to
the job description. Mathematicians are allowed
to use calculators. Why would anybody bother to
do long division if they could use a calculator
instead?

"Higher math" is not math of mathematicians. Few, if any, will become mathematicians from any given K-12 classroom. "Higher math" is simply what is typically learned in high school algebra -- manipulating, simplifying, transforming, and reducing rational and polynomial expressions. I wonder if JD actually believes that automaticity with "simple math facts" is not highly advantageous for these.

-----

I have no idea what result Willingham and others
are trying to achieve, but the actual result is that
students are drilled, drilled, drilled until tears
run down their cheeks, learning stuff that didn't
need to be learned, and all the while learning
to hate school.

This is simply venting. Nobody suggested drilling until tears run down anyone's cheeks. Another reason why distributed practice is so effective.


3) It is astonishing to see what Willingham does
*not* discuss in any detail: Independent and
critical reasoning, judgment, originality,
creativity, integrity, professionalism, et cetera.

Automaticity is in many ways the opposite
and the enemy of these things.

First, Willingham does not address all these because they are not important to the question he attempts to answer. Second, cognitive psychologists are deeply aware of the importance of automaticity for human thinking, something a physicist is likely ignorant of. Finally, it is simply ignorant to argue that one can reach any of the higher level skills without automaticity of lower level skills ... there was discussion here a few month back about the severe limits of working memory ... must have been completely ignored by JD.


4) Automaticity is the characteristic of automatons,
i.e. robots. Automaticity is important if you believe
the purpose of the educational system is to produce
a bunch of meat robots, i.e. to emphasize ritual,
obedience, and conformity. Plenty of so-called
teachers are in fact martinets who believe precisely
that. I vehemently disagree.

Drilling, drilling, drilling produces automaticity.
Another word for this is rote learning. Obviously
rote learning counts as learning ... and for *some*
purposes it is useful, occasionally life-critical
... but for most other purposes it is the least-
valuable form of learning.

Again, it almost doesn't matter what Willingham
says in the body of the article; martinets will
take the title and abstract and use it as a license
to drill, drill, drill until the students can't
see straight.

Gibberish teeing off etymological roots.

5) Willingham talks about "Becoming an Expert".
However, I insist that real expertise is nearly
the opposite of automaticity. If I wanted
automaticity, I would entrust the task to a
robot, not to an expert. Automaticity allows
you to shoot from the hip ... whereas true
expertise often consists of knowing when /not/
to shoot from the hip. Anybody who had any
real expertise would know that.

Expertise, like any high-level cognitive skills, is founded on automaticity of lower level skills. As much as JD may believe, his rhetoric cannot stand to the expertise of hundreds or thousands cognitive psychologists supported by countless experiments.

For example: Suppose I take a stack of documents
to the patent lawyer. Do I expect automaticity?
Do I expect him to write out a patent application
"on the spot"? Am I going to hover over him until
he does? You've got to be kidding. More likely
he's going to think about it for a week and then
get back to me with a long list of questions.
Does that make him unprofessional? I don't think
so. I'm not going to give automatic answers to
his questions; I'm going to think about it for a
week and then get back to him. Does that mean I
am not an expert in the field? I don't think so.

One actually does a huge amount of automaticity from a good lawyer when writing a patent. For selecting the proper patent domains, for using specialized language both for description and particularly for claims, for watching the language for exclusions that can inadvertently narrow patent's scope or, conversely, that can broaden it so it may become void. All these are automatic for a good patent lawyer ... he or she do not need to reach for legal precedents to know how to tailor the appropriate language. 90% of patent lawyer's work is based on automaticity ... which allows him or her not to charge for hundreds of hours of legal work but only for tens.

If you act automatically, any bad guy who knows
how you were trained can manipulate you into
making spectacularly bad decisions. There are
in fact bad guys who specialize in this. Daniel
Kahneman wrote a nice book discussing many of
the bad things that result from over-reliance
on automaticity. I heartily recommend the book.
It's well written ... but not easy to read.

==========

Here's another example, namely US Airways flight
1549, the one that ended up in the Hudson River.
This is a case where we can sharply compare
automaticity versus expertise and professionalism.

There actually were some automatons in the cockpit,
notably the autopilot, the ground-proximity warning
system, and the alpha-protect system.
In contrast, there were also a couple of
professionals in the cockpit.
Take a guess: Who saved the day? The automatons, or
the professionals????

a) The autopilot was not turned on at the time of the
bird strike. The First Officer was hand-flying the
plane. The pilots could have turned on the autopilot,
but they didn't bother, and it would not have made
much difference either way. It would've taken about
the same amount of effort to tell the autopilot what
do as to just do it by hand. If they had switched
it on, they would have had to switch it off about
a minute later.

b) The GPWS was turned on by default, as usual. It
got left on. All it did was generate unhelpful
nuisance warnings. In the aftermath, the NTSB
recommended adding to the emergency checklist an
item about turning off the GPWS. That's serious
business. You don't lightly add items to an
emergency checklist.

c) The alpha-protect system was on and could not be
turned off. The A320 is a fly-by-wire aircraft,
and the computer gets the final say. It made
things worse: In the last seconds of flight, the
pilot commanded the plane to raise the nose another
degree or so and the airplane did not respond,
because the alpha-protect system would not allow it.

How did the pilot know how to fly the airplane if not through automaticity? If he had to figure out which lever to pull or which switch to throw he would have no time for analyzing the situation. Instead, knowing that automaticity will allow him to *execute* whatever he needed to do, he could focus on *what* he needed to do. Automaticity is not only memorizing a checklist. Similarly, automaticity is not a high-level conscious process ... it just enables it and makes it more efficent.

In summary, I score the automatons 0-2-1: No wins,
two losses, and one tie.

Now what about the pilots? Do you think they were
trained-trained-trained to achieve "automaticity"?
If so, you really don't understand the job.

Sure, they were trained to know the emergency
checklists by rote ... but they were also trained
to understand the same issues at a much deeper
level. The two types of learning are not mutually
exclusive. All of the rote stuff the First Officer
knew was unnecessary in this case, because he had
the Quick Reference Handbook to follow. What's
more, virtually all of the QRH was irrelevant!
The engine-restart procedures assumed the engine
quit at altitude, allowing plenty of time for a
restart. Step 3 on the checklist involved waiting
for 30 seconds. Think about that. The total time
from bird strike to touchdown was one minute and
15 seconds. The First Officer skipped the 30-
second wait step. An automaton would not have.
On the other hand, he never made it past step 4,
because both engines were completely ruined.
(He had no way of knowing they were ruined, so
it made sense to attempt the restart.)

They crew didn't even make it as far as step 0 of
the ditching checklist ... and wouldn't have been
able to complete the checklist anyway. And no
automaton could have done better. An automaton
can only do what it is programmed to do, and
nobody had ever contemplated making a ditching
decision on such short notice.

So this is why you need professionals. They went
off-script. Waaaay off-script. I'll concede the
pilots exhibited "some" elements of more-or-less
"automatic" behavior. For example, the autopilot
could have kept the aircraft right-side-up,
automatically. The pilot was able to do the
same thing, subconsciously, "automatically" if
you will ... but that's not the interesting part
of the story. The interesting part is all the
non-automatic stuff he was doing at the same time.

Sure, those guys were experts. They were well
trained. However, the objective and result of
the training was not automaticity. Not even
close.

I've got a million stories like this. Ask me about
the Thévenin equivalent story sometime.

=========================

My suggestions:

*) Let up on the rote drilling, drilling, drilling.
There are a *few* situations where rote is the
right approach, but presently we are overinvested
in rote by many orders of magnitude.

Let up on the automaticity, mastery, beyond-master,
conformity, subservience, and Kadavergehorsamkeit.

*) Instead cultivate independent and critical
reasoning, judgment, originality, creativity,
professionalism, integrity, etc.

*) Rely on the spiral approach.

*) Rely on personal responsibility. I tell my
students very explicitly: I cannot teach you
more than a tiny percentage of what you need
to know. My job is to get you started in the
right direction, to motivate you to set high
standards for yourself, to help you learn how
to learn, and get you to a point where you
can safely teach yourself the rest.

Many of them achieve mastery, but they do it
on their own, and I'm usually not around to
see it. Sometimes long afterwards I get to
see it or hear about it, which gives me a
big smile.
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Long ago I observed that expertise in one domain does not necessarily translate into other domains, although the expert often believes it does. This seems to be such case.

But why the anger?

Ze'ev