Third lesson we can learn form sports: Ability counts!

In this posting, I will explore what we in gifted education can learn from the following two principles of training in sports:

(4) Training occurs in stages beginning with basic skills, to specific competition skills, to expert performance skills.
(10) Skill levels, interest, and task commitment become more important as athletes get older and develop into expert or elite athletes.

How feasible do you think is the notion of a heterogeneous varsity basketball team based on age or a competitive marching band consisting of any interested musician, regardless of ability level?

How to group students to best effect for instructional purposes is the topic of continuing debate in the United States. This debate started when the first decision was made to move the responsibility for educating children from the home to the community and the formation of schools.

In most schools today, children are grouped into grades on the basis of age. This decision had its foundation in early psychology – remember Binet and his inquiry into what average children of a certain age was to be able to do? It was also a response to mandatory education laws that dramatically increased the enrollment in schools. It seemed to be the most efficient and cost effective way of grouping children for instruction.

When it became evident that this form of arranging students in schools had inherent flaws in that students showed different abilities, instead of rethinking the issue and starting over with a better plan, education administrators tinkered with the flawed plan (somewhat like Microsoft kept "improving" the original dos-based Windows operating system by building more and more on the original platform) and instituted tracking, where students were grouped within the original grade levels, but in ability-leveled tracks (usually based on IQ scores). In essence, they were just making more categories based on the original organizational chart.

Before the 18th century, this focus on age-based grades and set curriculum was not so distinct. In Ancient China the custom was to instruct interested students in particular knowledge and skills based on their ability, not their age. They advanced through the hierarchy based on test scores. Those who continued to achieve highly was able to move up and those who achieved well only at a certain level, found occupation at that level, with no disrespect for not reaching the highest levels. In Ancient Japan, students received instruction based on their birth status (one type of education for Samurai children and another for commoners). This instruction (especially for the Samurai) was not geared towards age-based grades, but depended on ability. In Renaissance Europe, education happened by taking children into apprenticeship for specific trades. They progressed from novice to master through ability. Those who did not show the skill or did not have the knowledge remained novices or beginners without ever rising in the hierarchy of expertise.

In modern times with the spread of universal education, the major philosophical issue affecting the decisions on how to structure education and group children for instruction is whether education should be aimed at elevating the masses (universal education) or at nurturing those who show evidence of the greatest potential. This issue is often posed as a dichotomy between elitism and democratic equality – the equal treatment of all.

However, Dr. Dun Yat-sen, a Chinese scholar, has said that the democratic practice of educating equally individuals of unequal intelligence (having the same expectations and standards for the bright and the not so bright) is a false conception of equality that leads to mediocrity and wasted talent. True equality consists rather in providing each individual an “equal opportunity to profit by education according to his intelligence, says Dr. Dun Yat-sen.

Grouping students by age into grades where specific curriculum is prescribed, brings with it some concern about those students who cannot achieve well in age-in-grade instruction. In US schools, there is a growing concern about the “achievement gap,” the gap between those students who are achieving at grade level and those who cannot reach that achievement level. Much research is being done on teaching strategies and curriculum that close the achievement gap. In other words, instruction that will help low achieving students “catch up” to those other students who are achieving on grade level. Very little attention is given to the other group of students whose needs are not met in such age-in-grade grouping – the high ability, high performing, gifted students. Most school reformers focus on the disadvantages that low performing students suffer in school, whether due to disabilities, low socio-economic status, ethnic and linguistic diversity, and other issues.

Few crusaders for better educational opportunities for disadvantaged students consider the fact that gifted children also suffer disadvantages when being grouped with students who evidence lower and slower cognitive abilities, or those students who have already mastered the curriculum designed for their age peers. Administrators now have to continually move the parameters:

- They have added Kindergarten before grade 1, primarily to prepare children for the curriculum covered in grade 1. Early Start programs and pre-school have to prepare students for what they will be learning in Kindergarten. The children left out in the cold, are the ones in Kindergarten who can already do everything the Kindergarteners (or even first graders) have to learn, but is stuck in Kindergarten because they are "the right age."

- They have to make exceptions to the plan: Early entrance to school, subject acceleration, grade skipping, special services for gifted students, etc. Administrators do not like making exceptions – it disrupts the even flow of students through the system, causes scheduling headaches, and costs money for extra personnel and materials.

We know that these high performing students come in many different forms: Some are high performing across the curriculum and in all domains; others are high performing in one or two domains. It seems sensible to group students by ability rather than age and grade, with others of similar ability and achievement, regardless of age and grade. This is a controversial subject however, deeply rooted in the belief that all students should receive the same education. The debate on equality vs equity continues to rage in the media, in professional journals, and in schools.

I believe that this logic is based on a faulty premise – that “same” means “equal.” Therefore the conclusion that grouping gifted students with peers of similar ability is discriminating against their age peers of different ability is falacious. However, this debate continues and educators concerned about gifted students have to seriously consider the grouping options available in their current teaching situations for their students that will afford them the best opportunities to develop their talents and improve their expertise.

So, here follows Rule #2 in Catharine de Wet's School of Dreams: Children will NOT be grouped by age. They will be grouped by ABILITY. They will be able to receive instruction on their ability level and they will be able to progress through curriculum that will not be set for coverage in a specified period of time.

Impossible you say? I don't agree. It happens in more places than you might know. The advent of the internet makes individualized schooling much more accessible to able students than when they depended on adults to dispense training and knowledge. You can read more about this at: http://www.educationsector.org/usr_doc/Virtual_Schools.pdf in a report by Bill Tucker on Laboratories of Reform: Virtual High Schools and Innovation in Public Education.

It will however, require that parents, teachers, and administrators rethink the purpose of education. It's for the children, you see, not for teachers and administrators. And it is for developing talent and expertise, not for providing work for adults.

Second lesson we can learn from sports: Training and developing skills,

The first part of this series developed ideas around starting early and broadly in sports training. The second part deals with training and skills acquisition, and the development of expertise. From the ten rules we initially set, the ones we will address in this post are:

(1) A strategy of training as many students as possible in basic skills of the sport.
(4) Training occurs in stages beginning with basic skills, to specific competition skills, to expert performance skills.
(5) No one is excluded in early stages through aptitude or skills tests, but everyone has the opportunity to learn basic skills.
(6) Training is not limited to sport specific skills, but also includes character and psychological training.
(10) Skill levels, interest, and task commitment become more important as athletes get older and develop into expert or elite athletes.

One model that discusses the acquisition of skills under direction of an instructor, is the Dreyfus and Dreyfus Five Stage Model of Skill Acquisition. Dreyfus and Dreyfus published their book describing this model in 1980: A Five-stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition. http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA084551&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf.

The five stages are: novice, advanced beginner, competence, proficiency, expert. In very short, what distinguish these stages are two things: how a person interacts with the rules of the task, and the volume of task features a person can handle.

A novice has to have the task broken into small, context-free features by the instructor and can recognize these features, because the instructor describes them (even demonstrates). For example, a child learning to play basketball, has to learn ball handling skills out of the context of the game itself. Also, the novice needs to have the instructor make the rules of the task explicit and judges his own performance by his adherence to the rules.

An advance beginner learns more features and examples of those features, and are able to recognize features not given by the instructor but that fits with the experience. This person knows performance rules, knows non-situational features, and recognizes situational aspects. He still judges his performance by edherence to rules. Performance is slow, uncoordinated, and laborious. In our basketball example: the young player can start to learn certain moves and features of the game, can run some drills, but still cannot play a game.

In competence, the features and aspects of the task become overwhelming. The learner starts creating hierarchical organizing categories to make decisions. The decisions have to do with reaching goals - the learner selects a plan, perspective, or goal and then selects features and
aspects most important to that goal, perspective, or plan. Choices between many options becomes important and creates uncertainty and necessity. Where Novice and Advanced Beginners are not concerned with results, just rule adherence, the competent performer is concerned with results – there is an emotional connection and responsibility for results. With experience competent performers start distinguishing between features and aspects that works in a given situation, and remembers the senses of opportunity, risk, expectations, threat. These memories (based in experience) become basis for proficiency. Our young basketball player can play games now, but still need a lot of coaching and makes many mistakes.

In proficiency the learner recognizes a situation as similar or different from previously experienced situations and can come up with an appropriate plan without conscious planning. The proficient learner sometimes experiences breakdowns in “seeing” due to in sufficient experience that lessens as experience and situational understanding increase. Our basketball player can now play games and only occasionally will make a mistake.

The expert understands, acts, and learns from results without any conscious awareness of the process because his database of classes of similar situations that require similar actions becomes immense. What is important about an expert is that her actions and choices relevant to the tasks happen with no conscious thought and no reference to the original rules - it is entirely internalized.

It seems to me that young sportsmen and women learn skills in their chosen sport in much the same way. The crucial understanding for us is that at any point along the acquisition of skills, a person may decide to participate at that skill level and progress no further. Progress along the continuum of skill acquisition occurs entirely voluntarily and due to effort and application and time spent in pursuing proficiency. As acquisition progresses, the effort required increases and task commitment becomes more and more important. It also seems to me that fewer and fewer people gain the higher levels of skill acquisition.

In the next post we will relate this information to learning in school.

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First lesson in talent development from sports: Start young with everyone

This first discussion combines several of the ten strategies listed in the previous blog posting:
(1) A strategy of training as many students as possible in basic skills of the sport.
(2) Start young with opportunities to learn the sport and participate.
(3) Access to sports is open to everyone who may wish to participate.
(5) No one is excluded in early stages through aptitude or skills tests, but everyone has the opportunity to learn basic skills.
(7) In early stages no one is excluded if they do not display the predispositional characteristics, so that they have the opportunity to possibly develop those characteristics.

These 5 strategies have one common philosophical basis: make opportunity available to as broad a population as possible and give everyone who shows interest basic training. Then see what pops up.

Dr. Ralph Richards of the Western Australia Institute for Sports delivered a paper at a convention in 1999 in which he outlined the identification and talent development of swimming athletes (www.wasa.asn.au/html/coaching/rtf/tid-ascta.rtf). “The best form of Talent Identification and Development,” says Richards, “is mass participation. The best way to identify talent is to have large numbers of young children exposed to quality learn-to-swim programs and then to keep them in the sport during the age-group years.”

This happens in most all sports. Opportunities to participate is open to all who wish to participate, and everyone gets quality instruction in the rules and philosophy of the game, as well as opportunity to practice and play. My brother Ben lives in South Africa and used to coach boys' rugby at his son's school. I watched him once working with a team of 6-7 year olds in a game. He was on the field with his boys, directing them, giving them guidance and advice as they played their little hearts out. Once he had to physically turn a little boy around who was well on his way to the opposing team's end zone. I watched him pat the little guy on the backside and say - Go the other way, tiger! The other team's coach was doing the same things. At that stage it wasn't so much about winning, as about learning and enjoying!

Many of those little boys continued playing rugby for their elementary school, and some played for their secondary school. One or two even went on to play for their university or town rugby club. They all love rugby, though, and are informed (and very vocal) fans and spectators.

What is striking is that none of those little guys are told - you can't play because you are not good enough. How ludicrous would that be? How do we know which ones are going to develop into fine players and which ones will drop out of the team after one season?

Contrast this with talent development in schools. We don't give any particular attention to the bright kids until second grade (and then only in those states that identify gifted kids at that age). Then we test them for intellectual ability, and we set an arbitrary cutoff score and the ones who make it are crowned as "gifted" and the ones who don't make the cut, very often never again have the opportunity to try out for the "gifted team."

No wonder we miss a lot of talented students who could have gained immensely from enriched curriculum and instruction! No wonder the dropout rate amongst high ability high schoolers is increasing steadily - kids are bored with school and take their GED and go on to college.

So Rule #1 in Catharine de Wet's School of Dreams: Every single child in my School of Dreams gets enriched curriculum and instruction. Any child who shows interest in a topic can pursue that topic. We won't ever use test scores to admit a child or exclude a child from any subject or course we teach. Their performance, and continued interest, will determine whether they go on to more advanced courses in that subject or domain.

Impossible to do, you say? Only if we continue to organize schools based on age and lockstep curriculum. Who says all 6 year olds have to enter school and learn to count and learn their letters and their colors? Who says a 6 year old who already knows those things should not be in a different class with kids who have commensurate abilities? Who says we cannot schedule classes in different subject at the same time for all grades so that a third grader can attend a reading class with fifth graders who read at the same level? Or a fourth grader who struggles with mathematical concepts can attend a math class with third graders? Who says?

You may answer, "Everybody!"

WHY?

Lessons for Gifted Education Learned from Sports

Living in Alabama, and working across the street from the Bryant-Denny Football Stadium in Tuscaloosa has had its inevitable effect on me. I have developed a deep interest in college football courtesy of Paul Finebaum (local sports radio host) and Coach Saban, and not excluding the fine young gentlemen who actually do the work on the field.

This has made me reflect on how differently sports coaches approach talent development from gifted educators. For the next several weeks I will be discussing this issue, since I sincerely believe we can learn valuable lessons from sports.

In short, we can learn the following 10 strategies from sports;
(1) A strategy of training as many students as possible in basic skills of the sport.
(2) Start young with opportunities to learn the sport and participate.
(3) Access to sports is open to everyone who may wish to participate.
(4) Training occurs in stages beginning with basic skills, to specific competition skills, to expert performance skills.
(5) No one is excluded in early stages through aptitude or skills tests, but everyone has the opportunity to learn basic skills.
(6) Training is not limited to sport specific skills, but also includes character and psychological training.
(7) In early stages no one is excluded if they do not display the predispositional characteristics, so that they have the opportunity to possibly develop those characteristics.
(8) There are opportunities to be involved in a sport beyond active athletic performance.
(9) There are opportunities to be involved in a sport socially or recreationally.
(10) Skill levels, interest, and task commitment become more important as athletes get older and develop into expert or elite athletes.

If you stick with me through the next few weeks, we will discuss one or two of each of these strategies each time.