The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance

In this episode I unpack Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer’s (1993) publication titled “The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance,” which debunks the notion of innate abilities within a domain and describes the role of deliberate practice in achieving expert performance.

Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week of this podcast alternates
between an interview with a guest or
multiple guests
and a solo episode where i unpack some
scholarship in this week's particular
episode i am
unpacking the paper titled the role of
deliberate practice
in the acquisition of expert performance
and this was written by k
anders erickson ralph klump and clemens
teshrumer
and apologies if i mispronounced any
names as always you can find
links in the show notes which you can
visit by clicking on the link in your
app
that you're listening to this on or by
simply going to jaredaler.com
and go into the podcast tab in the show
notes if you click on the author's last
name you will go to the google scholar
profile so you can read more papers by
them
or you can click on the title of this
particular article and it'll send you
directly to
a pdf of the paper so you can read it
which i highly recommend you do because
i'm not able to talk about everything in
this particular episode
all right so here's the abstract for
this paper quote the theoretical
framework presented in this article
explains expert performance as the end
result of individuals prolonged efforts
to improve performance while negotiating
motivational and external constraints
in most domains of expertise individuals
begin in their childhood
a regime of effortful activities
deliberate practice
designed to optimize improvement
individual differences
even among elite performers are closely
related to assessed amounts of
deliberate practice
many characteristics once believed to
reflect innate talent
are actually the result of intense
practice extended for a minimum
of 10 years analysis of expert
performance provides unique evidence of
the potential
and limits of extreme environmental
adaptation and learning end quote
all right so if i were to summarize this
paper into a single sentence i would say
that this paper debunks the notion of
innate abilities within a domain
and it describes the role of deliberate
practice in achieving
expert performance okay so why am i
talking about this in a computer science
education podcast
so one of the benefits that cs educators
might have
is if you work across multiple grade
levels you're able to
take an approach to developing expertise
over the long term rather than just
for a quarter a semester or a year that
some teachers have
so for example when i worked in the k-8
school that i previously worked at in
avondale
one of the things that i considered was
how do i help kids develop expertise
from kindergarten all the way through
eighth grade in computer science
so if you are working with grade levels
this is something that might really
help you and the kids that you work with
so rather than teaching
concepts for supposed mastery within a
semester or a year
we as a field should really think about
how our learning experiences help kids
develop expertise
in computer science over decades now
deliberate practice is the framework
that inspired malcolm
gladwell's book outliers and in that
book gladwell discusses
what he calls the ten thousand hour rule
however many people don't actually
realize that he's citing erickson's work
so like this paper and some other works
by erickson and some of the other
scholars that
are cited in this publication also one
of the things of note is that the ten
thousand hour rule is not actually a
rule
it's an average that changes for each
domain so some domains is around eight
thousand
other domains it's actually around
twenty thousand now this has been a
particular
interest of mine for many years so one
of the reasons why is because i started
making music in eighth grade
and i was just kind of okay at it got
some lessons didn't really do
anything great with it my freshman year
of high school
i was in the marching band and i had a
part where i was literally just supposed
to keep the beat
to the music on a cowbell and i was so
bad at it that i could not
just keep a straight beat just literally
going
doing that so they cut that part for me
and i didn't get to play that part i had
to play other stuff
that apparently was easier however by my
sophomore year i became first chair of
every ensemble
and by my senior year i received a full
ride in percussion performance
so one of the reasons why i'm interested
in this area is because i was curious
why was i able to excel at that rate
while my peers who were also interested
in making music
were not now it turns out that my escape
from suicidal thoughts
likely ended up leading to a healthy
coping mechanism in the form of
practicing music as much as possible
to escape those thoughts because i was
constantly practicing i was able to
increase my abilities as a performer to
further kind of like understand
this process i started to study sports
psychology during my undergrad and
just as electives and then dove deeper
into this topic in my masters
after i actually got into the research
on this side of things like reading
erickson's works and a bunch of other
people on this
i went out and tried to apply the
concepts from what i learned
in my own learning and my own
facilitating or teaching with kids
and it works really well but i have to
say it is not at all easy to do
so what i'm hoping is that this
particular podcast provides a framework
for considering how to develop your own
expertise and the expertise of kids that
you work with alright so let's get into
the article itself so this article
begins with a brief
history of the views of talent and
expert performance
so for example discussing sir francis
galton's view that high performance in
an area was due to innate capacities
which fun fact sir francis galton is a
cousin i believe of charles darwin now
this
view of the innate capacities or
abilities has continued up to the time
of this publication which was 1993
and even modern day in some areas so for
example it was thought that people had
innate memory capacities or neural
transmission speeds
that could not be improved through
training and practice alone
however research in those areas have
found that quote
experts are faster and more accurate
than less accomplished individuals
however experts's superior speed and
their domain of expertise does not
transfer to general tests of speed
end quote and that quote experts's
memory for representative stimuli
from their domain is vastly superior to
that of lesser experts
especially for briefly presented stimuli
but when tested on randomly rearranged
versions
of representative stimuli from their
domain presented with short exposures
or on materials outside of their domain
the memory of experts
is no better than that of ordinary
individuals the domain specific nature
of experts's superior performance
implies that acquired knowledge and
skill are important to attainment of
expert performance in quote so both of
those quotes are from page 365.
so in other words even in areas where
many people for
many many years have considered that you
cannot improve like
how fast your brain process things or
your memory
there have been studies that have shown
that you actually can
and that is domain specific and is a
result of intentional practice
now erickson and the other authors don't
completely rule out heritable traits
as some sports and activities favor
heritable traits such as height so for
example
basketball however you can still be
really good at dribbling and shooting
etc
while playing basketball even if you are
not tall so the next section of the
paper discusses whether or not
experience within a domain correlates to
maximal performance
so for example is a teacher who has been
teaching for 30 years
inherently going to be better than a
teacher who's only been teaching for 10
years
now the authors would argue no it
depends on the amount of feedback
and the actual amount of effort went
into improving
your performance over time as an
educator so as some examples in the
paper they mentioned
some examples of changes in world
records for olympic events
significant changes over time and world
records in general
and other domains that have been
systematically measured or evaluated in
the past couple of centuries
like music chess etc here's a quote from
page 366
quote in virtually all domains insights
and knowledge are steadily accumulating
and the criteria for imminent as well as
expert performance undergo continuous
change
to reach the status of an expert in
domain it is sufficient to master the
existing knowledge and techniques
to make an imminent achievement one must
first achieve the level of
an expert and then in addition surpass
the achievements of already recognized
eminem people and make innovative
contributions to the domain
in sum the belief that a sufficient
amount of experience or practice leads
to maximal performance appears incorrect
in quote so the next section of the
paper addresses the belief that
people with innate abilities are able to
achieve expert levels of performance
much faster
and with less effort than people without
such innate abilities
however they point out studies in chess
music mathematics tennis
swimming long distance running and other
domains that most experts take at least
become an expert in a domain
in addition people who start at young
ages in domains such as music
poetry or even science still tend to
take an average of 10 years to refine
their expertise
and if you're thinking of videos that
have gone viral of young musicians
playing complicated material
they tend to be great for their age in
terms of technical ability but
not an expert when compared to outside
of their age group
so here's a quote from the paper from
page 369
quote in the performance of music
children and adolescents are judged
principally on their technical
proficiency
expert adult performers however are
judged on their interpretation and
ability to express
emotions through music the ability of
many child prodigies in music
to succeed as adult musicians is often
attributed to
difficulties making this transition
possibly resulting from inappropriate
training and instruction during the
early and mid
phases of music training to become
outstanding musicians at the
international level
individuals have to contribute unique
interpretations of music end quote okay
so while kids might be able to achieve
technical abilities they still have to
put in the time to develop those
technical abilities and a lot of time
and if you're thinking yeah but what
about mozart
here's some context for you mozart's dad
was considered to be an excellent music
teacher
who dedicated a lot of time teaching
mozart when he was a toddler
in addition mozart was obsessive about
making music
so he became good at a young age because
he was always making music
and had guidance from his father who was
a well-known music pedagogue
and for context i've had the privilege
of working with children who might be
considered prodigious and adults who are
considered to be some of the best in
their domain and what they do
every single one of them spent countless
hours refining their craft in different
ways
in order to become an expert in that
area you have to practice
and it's a lot of practice so here's a
summary quote from page 366
quote we have shown that expert
performance is acquired slowly over a
very long time
as a result of practice and that the
highest levels of performance and
achievement
appear to require at least around 10
years of intense prior preparation
end quote so the authors end this
introduction by arguing there's not
enough research on how to develop
expertise through practice so the
remainder of the paper kind of describes
how to do it through something they call
deliberate practice
okay so a quick summary of the
introduction so they provide a
brief history of the idea of expertise
or talent or innate abilities
they summarize some of the research
behind the idea that
abilities are in fact not innate and
then they argue that
we need to have some research that shows
well how
our abilities developed over time all
right so now getting into deliberate
practice
so here are some of the characteristics
the first one is motivation to
participate in the domain
and to improve performance over an
extended period of time like
years the next characteristic is the
activity needs to take into account
where the participant is
at in that moment so can't be too hard
it can't be too easy
it needs to be in that like goldilocks
zone the next characteristic is that
participants should receive
immediate feedback or knowledge of how
they did so without being able to refine
practices through in the moment feedback
participants are not likely to improve
over extended periods of times
they'll just be guessing and the last
characteristic is that the participants
need to be able to repeatedly perform
the task
whether it's the same task or something
that is similar so what does this mean
for computer science education
so the first thing is that we need to
find ways to motivate kids to want to
learn over an extended period of time we
can't expect kids to become an expert in
coding or computer science
after just a quarter a year whatever now
the best approach that i
have found is to start with students as
interests and have many avenues for
engagement
another thing that we need to consider
is we need to design experiences or
spaces with resources that allow kids to
explore
and learn in increasingly complex ways
that align with their current abilities
kids are going to come in with different
experiences with computers and computer
science
and as they're learning it they're going
to have more opportunities inside or
outside of school
or less opportunities than their peers
so we need to have a range of resources
that accounts for these different skills
or understandings another thing that we
need to consider is that kids need to
receive immediate feedback from computer
science facilitators peers or software
to help with continuous refinement they
can't just work on something and then a
month later actually get some feedback
on it so for example
can't just write code for a program and
then a month later press the compile
button and see if it actually
works you need to be able to constantly
receive feedback on what's working and
what needs improvement such as through
debugging
and kids need to be able to repeatedly
apply their understandings in
interesting and meaningful ways assist
with sustaining
engagement over an extended period of
time now one of the things i've
mentioned in the podcast repeatedly is
trying to work with kids one-on-one
rather than teaching to a group
or to a mean of the group so here's a
quote from page 367 that talks about the
importance of this
quote although it is possible to
generate curriculum and use group
instruction
it is generally recognized that
individualized supervision by a teacher
is superior
research in education reviewed by bloom
shows that when students are randomly
assigned to instruction by a tutor or to
conventional teaching
tutoring yields better performance by
two standard deviations the average
tutored student performed at the 98th
percentile of students taught
with the conventional method
interestingly the correlation between
prior achievement and achievement on the
current course
was reduced and correspond to only about
six percent of the variance of the
tutored students
as compared with around 36 percent for
students taught with conventional
methods
end quote so in other words working with
kids one-on-one works much better than
working
with kids in a group and not being able
to provide that individualized feedback
now since reading this
research and trying to apply it in my
own life one of the things i need to
consider
is how should there be a balance between
deliberate practice
and a balance between play inquiry
experimentation etc
in the k-8 spaces that i particularly
worked on i prefer to focus on play
inquiry experimentation and just
cultivating motivation or enjoyment
within the field one of the reasons for
this is because i'm trying to build off
the interests of the kids that i'm
working with and if i were to
immediately jump into deliberate
practice with kids
they would likely want to quit or lose
interest in cs education
or whatever domain i'm facilitating so
here's a quote that elaborates on this
this quote is from page 368 quote in
contrast to play
deliberate practice is 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 in quote so in other words
deliberate practice can be
exhausting although i've worked with
many kids and adults who are interested
in engaging in deliberate practice
in a particular domain most people are
unwilling or uninterested
in the actual amount of time it takes
and the amount of money and the
amount of effort that can actually go
into developing expertise over many
years
okay so the authors note that there are
three requirements of deliberate
practice
so here's the first one from page 368.
quote
first deliberate practice requires
available time and energy for the
individual as well as access to teachers
training material and training
facilities the resource constraint
if the individual is a child or
adolescent someone in the individual's
environment must be willing to pay for
training material in the time of
professional teachers
as well as for transportation to and
from training facilities
and competitions end quote here's the
second requirement from pages 368 and
quote second engagement in deliberate
practice is not inherently motivating
performers consider it instrumental in
achieving further improvements in
performance
the motivational constraint the lack of
inherent reward or enjoyment
in practice as distinct from the
enjoyment of the result or improvement
is consistent with the fact that
individuals in a domain rarely initiate
practice
spontaneously end quote and here's the
final requirement from page 369
vote finally deliberate practice is an
effortful activity
that can be sustained only for a limited
time each day during extended periods
without leading to exhaustion effort
constraint to maximize gains from
long-term performance individuals must
avoid exhaustion
and must limit practice to an amount
from which they can completely recover
on a daily or weekly basis end quote now
in each one of these
quotes they mentioned some constraints
the resource constraint the effort
constraint and the motivational
constraint i'll talk a little bit more
about those in a moment now when
engaging in
expertise acquisition they argue that
there are three phases
to this so the first phase is beginning
with an introduction to the domain so
so for example hour of code or a
computer science class that's getting
your feet wet into it
the next phase for expertise acquisition
is when
deliberate practice begins so
intentionally setting forth to try and
improve your abilities in
understanding over time and the third
phase starts when a person strives for
improvement within the domain full time
now having worked with every grade
kindergarten through graduate students
at a university it's interesting to
think about which
phase a person might be in within a
domain given the age that you're working
with
so for example most of the k-8 kids i
worked with were in phase one many of
the high school kids i worked with were
in phase two
and many of the undergrad and graduate
students were in phase three
however that's a generalization as i've
seen
each phase across different grades and
age groups
okay so now that we know the
characteristics and requirements for
deliberate practice and we know what the
phases are what are some of the
constraints that
prevent people from all becoming experts
in a domain so the first one is a
resource constraint
to engage in deliberate practice it
often requires a lot of time
and money for parents to help kids
attend practices or purchase equipment
pay for lessons or coaches etc and this
directly relates to some equity issues
in terms
of who has access to engage in
deliberate practice
so for example a student who cannot
afford private lessons
and has to work an after-school job is
not going to be able to put in as much
time as a student who can pay
for one-on-one instruction and has the
luxury of being able to practice
rather than having to work minimum wage
job this is one of the factors of why i
was able to excel over some of my peers
because i did not have to work i had
that privilege and all i had to do when
i got home was practice so as a musician
i was able to accelerate at a faster
rate
than my peers who had to work jobs and
who had to engage in activities that
prevented them from being able to
practice
or some of my friends who did not have
the money to afford private lessons
to improve their performance okay so the
next constraint is the effort constraint
so it takes a lot of time and energy to
engage in deliberate practice
so here's a quote from page 370 quote
the limited duration of practice is the
best evidence of the effort it requires
when individuals especially children
start practicing in a given domain
the amount of practice is an hour or
less per day
similarly laboratory studies of extended
practice limit practice
to about one hour for three to five days
a week end quote
and a little bit further here's picking
up the quote again quote
studies show essentially no benefit from
durations exceeding
four hour per day and reduced benefits
for practices
exceeding two hour end quote so in other
words yeah you could put in 10 hours a
day if you wanted to
but you're gonna have diminishing
returns after only a couple or a few
hours
so you might be able to work on your
stamina but you are likely not improving
and if anything you might be
regressing in your abilities and could
lead to injury
exhaustion burnout etc one of the
reasons why is because when engaging
in deliberate practice it is recommended
that individuals are fully
in attentive in their own practices and
without having enough time to rest or
recover
between that that's when it can cause
the exhaustion
fatigue injuries etc quote in summary
disregard of the effort constraint on
deliberate practice leads to injury and
even failure
in the short term optimal deliberate
practice maintains equilibrium between
effort and recovery
in the long term it negotiates the
effort constraints by slow
regular increases in amounts of practice
that allow for adaptation to increase
demands
end quote from page 371 all right and
the third constraint is motivational
constraint
quote interested individuals need to be
engaged in the activity and motivated to
improve performance before
they begin deliberate practice end quote
from page 371
this is one of the reasons why i focus
so much on interest-driven learning
having personally put deliberate
practice to the test in multiple domains
like music computer science i can attest
to how difficult it is to sustain
intense engagement over multiple years
without the motivation you'll likely get
burned out and lose interest in the
subject
matter which is something that schools
are honestly particularly
good at doing they're really good at
burning kids out think of the ted talk
by
the late sir ken robinson okay so quick
summary of the constraints so we have
constraints around resources
effort and motivation if you do not have
the resources do not have the effort and
do not have
the motivation you likely will not be
able to obtain expert performance so
these are three things that we need to
consider when we're working with kids
if we're trying to help them become an
expert within a domain like computer
science
okay so the next big chunk of the paper
is two studies that highlight
the role of deliberate practice in
expert performance
i highly recommend reading through the
paper to get the details of those
findings
but a basic summary is that quote elite
performers spend
much time on deliberate practice and in
those cases in which amount of weekly
deliberate practice has been recorded
high level performance is associated
with higher levels of deliberate
practice at the same age
in quote from page 390 and another quote
from page 390
quote the structure of training programs
in virtually any domain
adapts the deliberate practice
activities to suit the level of current
performance
increased complexity and proficiency of
acquired skills and characteristics
leads to increased performance and
allows for engagement in more
challenging deliberate practice
activities for a longer period of time
in quote in other words it gets
increasingly complex over time
and you'll be able to practice more
over an extended period of time and
here's one more summary quote
from these studies from page 392 quote
across many domains of expertise a
remarkably consistent pattern emerges
the best individuals start practice at
earlier ages and maintain a higher level
of daily practice
moreover estimates indicate that at any
age the best individuals in quite
different domains such as sports and
music
spend similar amounts of time on
deliberate practice in virtually all
domains
there is evidence that the most
important activity practice
thinking or writing requires
considerable effort and is scheduled for
a fixed period during the day
for those exceptional individuals who
sustain this regular activity for months
and years
its duration is limited to two to four
hours a day which is a fraction of their
time awake
end quote all right so listening to that
quote and some of the other stuff i've
been talking about you
may have been thinking some of the
ethics behind deliberate practice
here's a quote from page 393 that is a
little long but
is really worth considering quote in the
current system
with age-matched evaluation of
performance it is impossible for an
individual with less accumulated
practice
at some age to catch up with the best
individuals who have started earlier
and maintain maximum levels of
deliberate practice
not leading to exhaustion as noted
earlier the amount of possible practice
appears to slowly increase with
accumulated practice and skill
hence individuals intent on catching up
may suddenly increase the amount of
deliberate practice to the level
or even above the level of the best
performers within months these
individuals are likely to encounter
overuse injuries and exhaustion and may
terminate their engagement in their
domain
convinced that the best performance are
qualitatively different
furthermore the difference in
accumulated deliberate practice
in late adolescent for the good and best
violinist is remarkably large
and to eliminate this difference the
good violinists would need to practice
an additional five
hours per week beyond the current
optimal level of weekly practice
for more than eight full years end quote
okay so how does
this relate to cs education or education
in general
so what it's saying is if we have kids
who are starting to learn how to code
maybe in kindergarten maybe they spend
an hour a week
or in kindergarten then first grade
maybe they spend two hours a week et
cetera
by the time they get to eighth grade if
you have an eighth grader
who has never coded before and is just
getting started it would be nearly
impossible for them to catch up
with the students who have had
kindergarten through 8th grade working
on the skill
so the idea of cs for all and starting
early
becomes an ethical consideration when
only some schools offer
this and other schools do not so if we
look at this from
an ethical and expertise acquisition or
skill acquisition
lens it's problematic when schools don't
offer a particular subject area
if we think that subject area is
important to engage in and become an
expert in
all right so the next big chunk of the
paper is a general discussion
there's a lot of content in this
particular section and i'm going to
briefly summarize only some of it again
i highly recommend reading this actual
paper
and thinking of the implications in your
own life and in your own teaching or
facilitating
so one of the sections kind of addresses
what some of you might be thinking you
might be thinking yeah but x person has
y
physical characteristics that helps them
with a particular domain
while that is true these are more than
likely a result of
intense practicing other than like
height or something like that
so here's an example so intense
practicing over prolonged periods of
time
can result in cognitive adaptations
genetic adaptations
neurological adaptations perceptual
motor adaptations
physiological adaptations psychomotor
adaptations and more
the authors highlight some examples but
i've also read other studies in various
sports psychology
medicine and other journals to confirm
these adaptations
so if you have a fixed mindset about
your own abilities or the abilities of
the kids that you work with
check out these studies for some
examples of growth that i honestly
didn't even know was possible until i
started reading it and applying these in
different contexts
so the next section of the general
discussion the authors discussed the
apparent
innate talent in children in savants and
found that quote
exceptional abilities observed in
children in idiot savants are consistent
with all the characteristics of acquired
skills
most of them can be easily acquired by
adults through known training methods
although some of them may be more easily
acquired during childhood
the motivational factors that lead
children in idiot savants to focus their
time
and energy on activities that improve
performance are still poorly understood
in quote from page 396. an apologies for
using the word idiot that was
a direct quote so this finding relative
to savantism
has been found in many other studies
that i have looked into
so for example calendrical savants are
individuals who can
like you say what day of the week was
january 3rd 1912
and they'll be able to like very fast
tell you
what day of the week that was so
calendrical savants
actually engage in obsessive practice
memorizing formulas for these dates so
it's not like they were just born all of
a sudden with
an infinite calendar in their brain they
regularly practice this and are
constantly thinking about
memorize formulas for remembering dates
so next the authors discuss how it can
be difficult to measure and predict
performance
when it takes about a decade of intense
practice to achieve expert results
so if we want to actually look at
expertise in computer science we need to
actually engage in longitudinal studies
we can't just be like oh well we did
this intervention for a week
and they learned and they increased from
a three out of five to a four and a half
out of five look at us this is amazing
now they're experts no it we need to
actually look at stuff over
decades of time to see how people are
actually learning these things
over multiple years alright so here are
a couple of quotes
that kind of summarize the overall paper
and conclude it so here's a quote from
page
quote we reject any important role of
innate ability
it is quite plausible however that
heritable individual differences
might influence processes related to
motivation
and the original enjoyment of the
activities in the domain and in even
and even more important affect the
inevitable differences
in the capacity to engage in hard work
deliberate practice
in quote and here's one more quote from
page 400.
vote it does not follow from the
rejection of innate
limits on acquired performance that
everyone can easily attain
high levels of skill contemporary elite
performers have overcome a number of
constraints
they have obtained early access to
instructors maintained high levels of
deliberate practice throughout
development
received continued parental and
environmental support
and avoided disease and injury when one
considers in addition the prerequisite
motivation
necessary to engage in deliberate
practice every day for years and for
decades
when most children in adolescents of
similar ages engages in play and leisure
the real constraints of the acquisition
of expert performance becomes apparent
the commitment to deliberate practice
distinguishes the expert performer
from the vast majority of children and
adults who seem to have remarkable
difficulty
meeting the much lower demands of
practice in schools adult education
and in physical exercise programs end
quote all right so that's kind of a
main summary of some of the findings in
this particular paper again there are
two studies embedded within this that i
very briefly summarized
the findings from and there's a lot more
content in here that
provides examples and dives into the
nitty gritty like you might be
thinking yeah well what about the
familial dynasties like the bach family
like they were all great musicians blah
blah well they actually talk about that
so i highly recommend reading it which
again you can find in the show notes
just click on the title of the article
in the show notes
okay as always in these unpacking
scholarship episodes i like to share
some of my lingering questions or
thoughts
so one of them is are we as cs educators
designing classes
experiences or curricula that develop
expertise or are we
developing general knowledge depending
on how you answer that
is going to determine a completely
different approach to what you should
take in the classroom
if you are going to engage in deliberate
practice what kind of balance should we
strive for between play and deliver
deliberate practice
especially if we are saying that
everybody should learn computer science
education
well what about those who are not
interested in deliberate practice that
will likely burn them out
maybe we should engage and play with
them but the ones who are interested
in diving deep into cs education how can
we provide deliberate practice
opportunities for them in our classes
so while i have previously mentioned how
scholars like resnick russ kaphai pepler
etc
focus on play and how that really
resonates with me the sustained
engagement within a domain that
motivates children
doesn't necessarily guarantee kids will
become experts within the domain without
striving to continually improve their
abilities
through something like deliberate
deliberate practice so this is one of
the reasons why i encourage kids to
engage in ipsitive assessment practices
to assess their current understandings
in relation to prior understandings
and to then set their own goals for what
they wanted to learn next
so if they weren't forging new paths or
creative applications of their
understandings
then i'd sit down with them and help
them brainstorm new ways to challenge
themselves to dive deeper in the areas
that they are interested in so for
example a group of middle schoolers
were making variations upon maze games
in scratch
and every time they finished one i'd ask
what are you gonna work on next and then
they'd be like oh i want to create
another maze game but we're going to
make it
slightly different and so they weren't
really pushing themselves as hard as
they could
so after a couple variations on maze
games i just sat down with them and
went okay how can you challenge yourself
to do something new and different
so you weren't just doing the same thing
over and over so they were having fun
but they're also diving deeper into what
they're doing now that being said
my intense focus on play in the
classroom can
lead to lifelong engagement without
necessarily developing expertise and
domain
so yeah kids might have enjoyed my class
but it didn't
it doesn't necessarily mean they
actually obtained expertise within
computer science over multiple years
they may have just realized yeah i enjoy
this thing it's fun cool but i'm not
going to become an expert in it however
i would argue that a premature focus on
deliberate practice can lead many to
burn out within a domain
if they aren't willing to engage in the
drudgery of increasing their own
performance
so if i had forced deliberate practice
on kids that i was working with
many of them likely would have not
enjoyed computer science so you have to
figure out your own balance between
play and deliberate practice in the
classes and experiences you facilitate
another question that i have is if
deliberate practice can only be
sustained for a limited amount of time
each day
when should students engage in
deliberate practice so for example which
domains or subject areas
should they focus on and why those over
others if we need to limit
deliberate practice so there's time for
recovery what does that mean about how
we structure
in school and out of school time so for
example how much homework should kids
have
and how frequently should kids engage in
homework how many breaks throughout the
day should kids have
in between classes many olympians and
expert performers
sleep more than people who are
non-experts one of the reasons
why is because they take naps in the
middle of the day do we need to include
nap time
if we're going to structure school
around developing expertise i don't know
and speaking of so if deliberate
practice has requirements
for rest between sessions how can we
model
and support rest between learning
experiences should there be more recess
should there be a nap time should there
be days off in between intense work days
here's a quote from page 391 quote when
expert performers make a full-time
commitment to the domain
our studies show that they spend between
related activities
less than half of that time about 25
hours per week
is spent on deliberate practice and this
time is distributed across the entire
week in practice sessions of limited
duration
end quote in other words if you're
listening to this and like wow
deliberate practice is awesome i'm going
to do this eight hours a day every
single day of the week
that's not going to go well for you or
the kids that you work with so
scheduling that time for rest
another question that i have is which
phase of deliberate practice
are the students you work with and how
does or doesn't your class align with
those phases
so are they in the introduction phase
are they in the deliberate practice
phase
or are they in the phase of full-time
engagement in deliberate practice
if you're a k-8 teacher you might be in
phase one if you're in high school you
might be in phase two
if you're working with undergrad or
graduate students you're probably in
phase three
with the students that you're working
with now that being said another
ethical thing to ponder if it takes
about 10 years to become an expert in a
domain
what does that say about the ethics of
having new teachers working with
students
is it ethical to have a first year
teacher working with students without
much support students in that class
likely will not receive
as good instruction as somebody who has
been doing this for multiple decades and
engaging in deliberate practice around
their pedagogy
another ethical question is what about
the ethics of grades based on
performance
for example is it fair to be graded on a
curve
when somebody like myself could go home
and practice
every day for multiple hours whereas
some of my peers
did not have private instruction in
music did not have the ability to
practice at home because they had to
work multiple jobs in high school
etc was it fair for them to be assessed
on their performance abilities compared
to somebody like myself
who had many other advantages and
privileges i'd argue
no but it's something that we should
talk about is if we are actually
developing expertise and we're taking
into account all these things that we
need to consider that impact the
development of expertise
grades might be an unethical measurement
that we use in classes
if we're basing it on performance think
of the kids who are able to go home and
work
on their projects and think of the kids
who don't have access to internet or
devices at home
the grade base on performance is
unethical when some kids are able to go
home and continue to refine their
abilities
and other kids are not all right so
those are some of my lingering questions
and thoughts
i know i had a lot of them on this one
again this is heavily influenced in my
own thinking
in education and the way this is that i
learn so i highly recommend checking out
the show notes
in the app that you're listening to this
on or going to journalis.com and
reading the actual paper by clicking on
it in the show notes thank you so much
for listening to this episode
i hope you stay tuned next week for
another interview
and two weeks from now for another
unpacking scholarship episode
if you be so kind please consider
sharing this with somebody or providing
a review on whatever platform you're
listening to this on
i hope you're all staying safe and are
having a wonderful week

Article

Ericsson, K., Krampe, R., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406.

Abstract

“The theoretical framework presented in this article explains expert performance as the end result of individuals’ prolonged efforts to improve performance while negotiating motivational and external constraints. In most domains of expertise, individuals begin in their childhood a regimen of effortful activities (deliberate practice) designed to optimize improvement. Individual differences, even among elite performers, are closely related to assessed amounts of deliberate practice. Many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years. Analysis of expert performance provides unique evidence on the potential and limits of extreme environmental adaptation and learning.”

My One Sentence Summary

This paper debunks the notion of innate abilities within a domain and describes the role of deliberate practice in achieving expert performance.

Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts

Are we designing classes, experiences, or curricula to develop expertise or general knowledge?
What kind of a balance should we strive for between play and deliberate practice?
If deliberate practice can only be sustained for a limited amount of time each day, when should students engage in deliberate practice?
- If we need to limit deliberate practice so there's time for recovery, what does that mean about how we structure in-school and out-of-school time?
- If deliberate practice requires rest between sessions, how can we model and support rest between learning experiences?
Which phase of deliberate practice are the students you work with and how does/n't your class align with those phases?
If it takes about ten years to become an expert in a domain, what does that say about the ethics of having new teachers working with students?
- What about the ethics of grades based on performance?

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode
- How to Get Started with Computer Science Education
  - In this episode I provide a framework for how districts and educators can get started with computer science education for free.
- Mind the Gap: The Illusion of Skill Acquisition in Computational Thinking
  - In this episode I unpack Bao & Hosseini’s (2023) publication titled “Mind the gap: The illusion of skill acquisition in computational thinking,” which compares learning, perceptions of learning, and confidence among adult learners participating in interactive, video-based, and text-based learning.
- Situated Language and Learning with Bryan Brown
  - In this interview Bryan Brown, we discuss the importance of language in education. In particular, we discuss the role of language in teaching and learning, discursive identity, situated language and learning, the importance of representation in education, the role of language on stress, how smartphones and virtual communication platforms (e.g., Zoom) could change learning, and many other topics relevant to CS education and learning.
- More episodes related to deliberate practice
- More episodes related to expertise
- More episodes related to skill acquisition
- All other episodes
Read Malcom Gladwell’s book that describes the “10,000-hour rule”
Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk titled “Do schools kill creativity?”
Read more about ipsative assessment
- Read more about assessment in CS education
Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter