(Kurita)Hello, everyone. (Students)Hello. (Kurita)This is “Interactive Teaching” WEEK 3 entitled “Learning Sciences”. In this session, we would like to discuss the development of mastery. Before we get into the main topic, let me clarify the goal of this week: “Understand the factors related to the promotion of learning: motivation, mastery, and practice and feedback". We covered motivation in the last session. The objective for this session is shown on the second: “Be able to explain the mastery of students and methods to support them". This is the objective. Here is the table of contents: a description of mastery, experts’ blind spots, what educators can do, and the wrap-up. What is mastery? "Jukutatsu" is the Japanese translation for mastery. It means acquiring higher-order skills in a particular field. This figure illustrates an experimental instrument, a book, and a basketball. You are now on the road to the mastery of researchers. For example, professional athletes are also experts. There are several elements of developing mastery. I would like you to imagine in what way you have learned. First of all, you acquire component skills. This is a bit abstract, so I shall explain it later on, but it means that you acquire small partial skills. You then combine and integrate what you have learned to be able to do separately. Finally, you use the skills acquired with the right timing. Developing mastery is the ability to use various kinds of skills when you need to use them. I would like to explain this by using the example of developing mastery in shooting a ball, since I played basketball in both junior and senior high school. The left half of the slide shows the part of the figure I just showed you. Component skills in this case include basic physical ability, control of the ball, shooting form, and shooting methods. There are many methods used for shooting a ball. They include shooting while running, and as I am showing you by gesture, shooting after stopping, shooting from a distant point, and shooting in close proximity. Basketball shooting also includes practice in judging a situation. These are component skills that you need to integrate. When shooting a ball, it is not just about a single player stopping and shooting the ball by themselves. You need to receive a pass and then shoot, or you need to dribble and shoot immediately, and so on. Furthermore, you need to appropriately shoot a ball by dodging opponents in the game; this entails the ability to use skills with the right timing. This is what developing mastery means. I think it is easy to imagine various kinds of sports and come up with your own experiences of making gradual progress in something through such steps. Now, I would like you to change your viewpoint. Experts are people who have developed mastery in a field. Are they undoubtedly good at guiding novices or novice learners to develop mastery in that field as well? When I ask a question using the word “undoubtedly”, you should expect that the answer is “no”, but please raise your hands if you think they are undoubtedly good at guiding novices. No one thinks that, as I expected. Please raise your hands if you think they are not good at guiding novices. Yes. Thank you. Of course, there are some experts who are really good at teaching novices, but considering the blind spots of experts, there are some pitfalls that experts are likely to suffer. This figure shows the four categories of the stages of how novices develop mastery from the perspective of competence and of incompetence. These words may sound strong, but they mean whether one is capable or is incapable of doing something. The other perspective is being conscious or unconscious. It means whether one is conscious of being capable or being incapable of doing something. The first step is the state of unconscious incompetence. Think of driving a car. It means that you have no idea how to drive a car and that you actually cannot drive a car. For example, a child in the age of three or four has no idea how to drive a car. The second step is the state of conscious incompetence, which means that you are aware of not being able to do a particular thing. You know what a car is, but you cannot drive a car. And the third step is the state of conscious competence. It is the phase of newly licensed drivers. You know that you can drive a car by being conscious of each action. At this stage, you confirm every step of driving a car by pointing at items one by one like starting the engine, releasing the parking brake, and muttering while putting the blinker on. The fourth step is the state of unconscious competence. It is the ability to start a car right after closing the door without thinking of anything. People in this stage are close to experts. Then, where could the students attending the class for the first time be placed in this figure? They should be around here (between step 2 and 3). They attend a class because they do not understand particular knowledge. They know what they don’t know. Some of them might be very close to step 3 and a little more effort would push them toward conscious competence. The purpose is to have these people as close to the stage of unconscious competence as possible, but in fact, people in the unconscious competence stage are often poor at explaining in small steps because of their excessive competence. In cooking, for example, saying “Just stir-fry them”. cannot be understood by a person who is holding a kitchen knife for the first time. Instead, they need instructions like, “Stir-fry them with medium heat for X minutes”. Experts are likely to be poor at explaining in detail. That is the blind spot of experts. Being a faculty member and developing mastery in research does not make you a good instructor for novices. Experts cannot be good instructors unless they are conscious of breaking down their own skills into small components. Let’s consider what educators can do. We would like to see what educators can do with each step of developing mastery. Development of mastery starts with the acquisition of component skills, followed by the integration of these component skills, and the appropriate use of skills at the right time. What educators can do to support the acquisition of component skills is to identify those skills. Educators must identify and break down skills that they can unconsciously perform into small components. Then, they must design and set an environment for students to practice these component skills. These are the first steps. This approach only leads to the mastery of separate skills, so educators need to move on to the second step: the integration of skills. They need to design and deliver classes structures that accommodate the integration of component skills. The third step: to be able to use skills at the right time. Educators should present the students with context to show them the situations in which the skills they have learned can be used. This concept is called transfer. Educators need to design a class that enables students to apply acquired skills. These are the things educators or instructors can do to support the development of mastery. You need to be especially cautious of the blind spot by identifying the component skills. Now, let’s wrap up. Mastery is developed through the acquisition of component skills, integration of skills, and appropriate application of those skills. Educators will be able to support students by being conscious of the above steps. That’s all for this session.
