spacing

As a central office administrator, have you ever trained others on a new program, but realized shortly afterwards that the training did not result in any discernible change in practice?  Did you feel like you were just spinning your wheels?  

I know this has happened to me on more than one occasion.  Perhaps I would have been more successful if I had taken into account the Curse of Knowledge.  The phrase ‘Curse of Knowledge’ comes from a 2015 Edutopia post entitled “The Teacher Curse No One Wants to Talk About.”  

The writer, Christopher Reddy, discusses the idea of the Curse of Knowledge, urging educators to keep the curse in mind when they become frustrated with their students’ failure to grasp content knowledge.  

The Curse of Knowledge basically means that once someone has reached a level of mastery of a discipline, whether chemistry or pole vaulting, that she often forgets how difficult or lengthy the path to expertise was.  

I often forget about the number of hours I have logged over the past 14 years in our district’s student information system.  When I train others on how to use a certain functionality, I tend to forget that they do not have the same level of exposure that I do to the product.  Otherwise, why would they be at my training?  Am I right?

Reddy provided several ideas regarding how to mitigate a teacher’s Curse of Knowledge.  While all of the ideas are effective, ‘narrative’ and ‘spacing’ resonated most with me.  

Using narrative as a way for teachers to mitigate the Curse of Knowledge means that they provide students with a story framework to shape their current learning.  Reddy relates the effectiveness of narrative to oral tradition.  Indeed, many cultures, including the many American Indian tribal cultures, have strong oral traditions that would provide pegs for students to hang their new learning.  

Engaging students with a story provides them a familiar and low-stakes entryway into the new topic.

So what type of narrative could I use to facilitate learning and retention of my workshop topics?  For example, when I am teaching someone how to build ad hoc queries, I can use a story about choosing what clothes to wear.  The closet is my database, and my clothes (fields) are all organized by color (topic).  When I know what look I am going for, I can find my clothes under specific categories.  

Another technique shared in the article is spacing.  With spacing, the specific learning is periodically revisited, thus ensuring that students practice it to the point of automaticity.  For example, if students studied multiplication tables earlier in the year, the teacher will periodically review them with the class.  She might do this in various ways, such as a bellringer activity or as a bonus question on a current test.  

Students studying symbolism in a work of literature would utilize spacing through continuing to identify and trace the development of a symbol in future works.  Teachers of English Language Arts often use this spiraling technique to review and reinforce prior learning.

Spacing is an easy way to consistently reinforce learning that it strikes me as a great way to also offset the summer slump that plagues students.  If students are reinforcing their learning of a particular concept throughout the year, with different lengths of time between the reviews, then the summer break may become just another interval.  Bolstered by the reinforcement during the year, the student may have achieved automaticity with the skill or content by school year’s end.  

How does spacing apply to professional development?  Let’s say I have introduced a new school improvement tool to leadership teams.  I might want to use spacing to reinforce the initial training on the tool. I could do this by communicating to the leadership teams through the tool.  I might refer the tool or the process when I email the teams.  I might ask them to collaborate with me using the tool.  

I tend to think that narrative and spacing are strategies that we – administrators and teachers – use automatically.  Think about your work this school year.  Have you used either of these strategies with educators or with students?  Do you believe spacing could help students retain information over the summer months?

I would love to hear how you might have used either of these techniques.  Tell me your ideas in the Comments.