Friday, December 26, 2008

outliers

A few days ago Charlie Rose interviewed Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell is a contributor to the New Yorker plus has written three books: The Tipping Point, Blink, and just recently Outliers. In this newest book he explores expertise. Or, put more simply, what allows some people to become really really good at what they do? Charlie's interview is both informative and entertaining. Gladwell's book draws extensively upon cognitive psychology research. In addition, there are plenty of implications for educational practice that can be drawn from this conversation.
gladwell interview link

On this same show (broadcast December 19, 2008), Charlie also interviewed Geoff Colvin, author of “Talent is Overrated.” This is also a very interesting interview. Across both interviews the development of expertise is discussed, and the specific role of deliberate practice is emphasized.
colvin interview link

Deliberate Practice Defined
The text below was taken from Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993). Their article is titled, "The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance" and was published in the Psychological Review. This short description provides an overview of what the concept of deliberate practice is all about.

Consider three general types of activities, namely, work, play, and deliberate practice. Work includes public performance,competitions, services rendered for pay, and other activities directly motivated by external rewards. Play includes activities that have no explicit goal and that are inherently enjoyable. Deliberate practice includes activities that have been specially designed to improve the current level of performance. The goals, costs, and rewards of these three types of activities differ, as does the frequency with which individuals pursue them.



In contrast to play, deliberate practice is a highly structured activity, the explicit goal of which is to improve performance. Specific tasks are invented to overcome weaknesses, and performance is carefully monitored to provide cues for ways to improve it further. We claim that deliberate practice requires effort and is not inherently enjoyable. Individuals are motivated to practice because practice improves performance. In addition, engaging in deliberate practice generates no immediate monetary rewards and generates costs associated with access to teachers and training environments. Thus, an understanding of the long-term consequences of deliberate practice is important.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

first post

This is just an example post.