Practice is the single most important factor in determining a person’s ultimate achievement in a given domain (Ericsson and Pool, 2016, p.238)”
Anders Ericsson adds just one caveat: the only “minimum requirements” for success are basic physical traits, like “height and body size in sports (Ibid., p.235).” This is a powerful message which many schools have promoted; so have some teacher educators, including me. But Ericsson’s work is proving problematic.
Recently, the ever-interesting Lorna Shires highlighted two limitations of deliberate practice:
- It’s merits have been exaggerated and it is poorly defined
- It’s useful for skills which can be drilled and copied, (like rebounds in basketball or classroom management techniques), but not for more sophisticated elements of coaching (or teacher education), like game play, analysis and decision making
This post reviews recent criticisms of deliberate practice and their implications for teacher education. In a future post I’ll discuss Lorna’s second challenge.
Criticisms of Ericsson and deliberate practice
Zach Hambrick and his colleagues have spent years reviewing and chipping away at Ericsson’s claims. Three issues have emerged:
1) Deliberate practice is not the single most important factor in success
Ericsson claims deliberate practice is the most important factor affecting success. However:
- A meta-analysis showed that deliberate practice accounted for only 26% of the difference in performance in games, 4% in education and less than 1% in the professions (McNamara, Hambrick and Oswald, 2014).
- Deliberate practice does not explain variation in success at elite levels in sport: medallists practise less than non-medallists across their careers, for example (Hambrick et al., 2018).
- Success in chess and music is due to practice – and also starting age, working memory, personality and heredity (Hambrick et al., 2014)
- Ten years’ of deliberate practice leading to mastery is a “useful reminder to the layperson that expertise is acquired gradually” but in some fields, including chess and athletics, top performers succeed more quickly (Hambrick et al., 2018, p.3).
Practice is neither the sole, nor the principal component of success; many of the claims underpinning deliberate practice cannot be supported.
2) Deliberate practice is ill-defined
Hambrick and his colleagues suggest that Ericsson has modified his definition of deliberate practice. For example, Ericsson has variously stated that deliberate practice:
- Must involve a teacher
- Often involves a teacher
- Need not involve a teacher (Hambrick et al., 2018., Table 2, p.6).
Studies Ericsson has cited as examples of deliberate practice, he has subsequently described as not being examples of deliberate practice. Hambrick and colleagues accept the definitions may change, but suggest this must be made explicit. Otherwise, unsuccessful studies practice can be explained by claiming that “the practice was not sufficiently deliberate, or that the teacher (if one is involved) did not use the correct method or was unqualified. This wiggle room makes any claims about the importance of deliberate practice difficult to falsify (p.4).” Currently, they state, there is a “cloud of confusion around the deliberate practice view that makes it difficult to empirically evaluate (p.5).”
3) It is naive to look for a single explanation
Ericsson argues that deliberate practice determines success; Hambrick et al. show that it never explains more than half of a person’s final performance. They add that, just as “the nature versus nurture debate” is over in other areas of research, it is over in research on expertise too – “or certainly should be (p.2).” Expertise derives, they argue, from a combination of heredity, environmental influences, the specific task, domain-general expertise and domain-specific practice.
What should a teacher-educator do?
What affects teaching?
So what is a teacher educator to do? David Berliner preempted the current debate by noting that talent is important in teaching, but it is an:
Extremely complicated interaction of many human characteristics. These might include sociability, persuasiveness, trustworthiness, nurturent style, ability to provide logical and coherent stories and explanations, ability to do more than one thing at a time, physical stamina, the chance to ‘‘play teacher’’ with a younger sibling or playmate, and so forth. The ‘‘talents’’ or background characteristics for those who enter the teaching field as adults are likely to be both biological and socially determined, and the interactions among these are probably well beyond our ability to catalog (2001, p.465).”
Moreover, he notes that such arguments
May be secondary when studying a field like teaching. Overlooked is the power of context… teachers will reach differential levels of productivity depending on… workplace conditions (Ibid.).”
This point can be extended theoretically: Mary Kennedy (2010) has argued persuasively that we should look for teaching quality, but instead we seek teacher quality; we focus on individuals’ skills, qualifications and values and overlook the different pressures individuals are under: timetables, classes, bureaucratic incursions and reform clutter. Berliner’s point can be extended empirically too: Kraft and Papay (2014) demonstrate that teachers improve more in well-functioning schools. Talent is important in teaching, but hard to identify; context is crucial.
So how should we train teachers?
Ultimately, however:
This debate is important but of little practical interest to those who study pedagogical expertise…. Regardless of the talents, proclivities, and opportunities that motivate one to become a teacher as an adult, extensive deliberate practice is still needed to become highly accomplished in teaching (Berliner, 2001, p.465).”
We can seek the best applicants, but as teacher educators we must help all our teachers improve. We can lobby to improve the school’s conditions, but we still need to plan professional development. We can’t control who’s in the room, we can’t control how many hours they’re teaching, but we can design effective training.
Deliberate practice is a powerful approach to professional development. Deans for Impact (2016) suggest five principles of deliberate practice which teacher educators can use now:
- Push beyond one’s comfort zone
- Work toward specific goals
- Focus intently on practice
- Receive and respond to high-quality feedback
- Develop a mental model of expertise
And two we need to build consensus around:
- Which training techniques are effective?
- In what order should skills be learned?
Conclusions
Ericsson’s work helps us design effective training; Hambrick’s work encourages us to look beyond that training; Berliner draws them together to suggest we can improve teaching quality by:
1) Recruiting the best candidates
2) Offering deliberate practice
3) Creating an environment which promotes improvement
Ericsson’s message is crucial – which is why understanding the strengths and the limitations of his work matters. If we believe that:
Some people have a talent for something and others don’t and that you can tell the difference early on”, we risk a “self-fulfilling prophecy…. The best way to avoid this is to recognise the potential in all of us – and work to find ways to develop it (Ericsson and Pool, 2016, p.242).”
Many factors influence success; deliberate practice is the only one solely under the control of teacher educators (and teachers): it has a crucial role to play.
If you found this interesting, you may like:
I’ve previously written about practice in teacher education, to:
- Suggest that all teacher education should be practice-based
- Show how I plan a practice-based training session
- Offer a framework for designing practice
I’ve summarised Hambrick et al.’s 2014 paper: Deliberate practice. Is that all it takes to become an expert?
Maria Konnikova has written a superb summary of the debate between Ericsson and Hambrick
References
Berliner, D. (2001). Learning about and learning from expert teachers. International Journal of Educational Research 35, pp.463–482.
Hambrick, D., Burgoyne, A., Macnamara, B. and Ullen, F. (2018). Toward a multifactorial model of expertise: beyond born versus made. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1423(1), pp.284–295.