The expertise conundrum- Relook at Mastery

Ask any renowned clinician the secret of this diagnostic acumen and the chances are that he will given a self-effacing shrug of his shoulders and ascribe his expertise to experience. Can experience be taught? For those naysayers, the refutation is that if Henri Charriere , author of Papillon can make the experience of his adventures and sufferings come alive for the reader, then perhaps there is a way that the components of expertise or the substance it is constituted of, can be transmitted, taught, brought on par with the learner. If by definition an expert has handled many variable situations successfully on many occasions, logically if these same situations are simulated subjectively or objectively in their diversity and situational uncertainties, expertise could be taught. The moot question- Can mental conflict be simulated particularly in a human interpersonal context? Experts probably are better at handling situations with mental conflict and requiring tough decisions better than the ones who don’t call themselves experts.

The other explanation of expertise could be that it is waiting within the learner, as it were, to be discovered..to be revealed when father time is opportune.  So in concrete terms, skills could be taught and learned. But expertise’s cornerstone is mastery, the unknown variable which transcends pure technical skills and borders on the surreal, much like a Neymar or Messi whose guileless fluidity on the footfall field defy normal teacher-learner paradigms. The sculpture hiding inside the rock, metaphorically speaking, waiting to burst out into the sculptor’s world will at once spur adulation for our new Michaelangelos. But more importantly, it should engage us in the primal question- how does one facilitate the talent, the gift, the expertise to recognize the sculpture or the learning at its most subliminal, minimalistic, almost invisible level almost as it arises in perception for the sculptor or the learner? Can this; this bewitching flirtation on the interface of science and art, man and god; what we call mastery be indeed taught?

For this, we need to overcome the invisible fetters of language itself. Indeed the english word construct ‘teaching’ leaves much to be desired in its ability to convey its core. All that we have been discussing so far in this blog can be done scant justice by what we normally understand by teaching. German seems to have a wide repertoire of words to encapsulate the different strands of what ‘teaching’ in its widest sense could connote. Bringing along (beibringen), lecturing (unterrichten), transmitting (vermitteln) , teaching (lehren) are at least 4 different emanations of the spectrum continuum of teaching & learning in the german language. Teaching expertise could be better understood as bringing along (beibringen) someone who is suitable to be an expert.

How does one become suitable to be an expert? How mastery is born and is sustained may have everything to do with the mind of the expert. Mastery’s subjective existence is from its ontological declarative reality. Being Master may precede Mastery or phenomenologically speaking, they would arise together. It’s objective existence could be like the postulated Schroedinger’s cat of quantum mechanics embodying the different demonstrable attributes of being absolute Master to absoute novice in a probabilistic (sine wave if you must)  continuum. One does not really know the reality of mastery in the context of studying it objectively. That is, until we open the box and collapse 'reality'   Mastery is dead. Long live the Master.  Mastery is alive. All hail the master.

'Beautiful game' of the mind

Wanting to be understood and wanting to understand are more closely related than is immediately evident. Teaching and Learning are synonyms respectively for these two phenomena. We teach best what we most need to learn is an absolute truism with no exceptions. The mind talking to itself (remember Plato)  reassuring itself through its own rational voice that what it has learned is indeed true in an almost ontological way ( let there me light and there was light) as if by repeating it, making somebody understand it, being understood, teaching it, it almost becomes true for the teacher, the one who seeks to be understood..No wonder then that so many of us, almost a silent seething majority in the cities of the world want to teach; we feel passionate about it, more alive, more relevant in a silent celebratory way. 

A secret to teach better and learn better ( now that the dichotomy between these two is extinguished at least for this blog) is to imagine the stuff. There is a certain image which preempts our new cognitive inputs about the learning. Getting in this image can put us in a productive proactive mindset for learning to happen. Imagine = image + in. No wonder. If I am learning, say, architecture of royal palaces in ancient mesopotamia, a certain imagination of what I might know about babylon, palm trees and hanging gardens could prime me better. Of course, if I am a complete ignoramus of ancient history, maybe geography could come to help to mark a beginning point in my learning, by imagining where the deuce this country is on the globe!  Interestingly, if I am the one teaching architecture of royal palaces in ancient mesopotamia, I could begin my teaching by broaching the very same topics as mentioned earlier. Imagination activates prior knowledge which facilitates learning. Prior knowledge as we all know is a key element of adult learning which on utopia means lifelong learning. It is also an interesting way to acknowledge and validate oneself ( all that reading has not gone in vain!) and an inexpensive prophylactic to Alzheimer's.Thank you Albert Knowles for the construct of prior knowledge which helps some of us to deconstruct the phenomenon of learning. As a parting example, some of you did get riveted, albeit for a split instant, by the title of this post, considering that Futbol rules right now :-)

The magic of repeating..

The way hindu ascetics learned the vedas was by rote repetition to begin with. Saying stuff aloud again and again starts establishing that sound energy as much in your psyche as much in the external universe. Even without knowing the meaning initially, the sound gets charged and very potent. Imagine  what would now happen if the preceptor adds meaning to the established sound patterns which a student/learner has been saying aloud for some time already. There would be an explosion of meaning, realization which would imbue the whole being of the learner. This could be one way of learning. The strategy of repetition without knowing the reason or the meaning seems to unclutter the potential learners mind, make him empty psychologically as it were, albeit for a limited time, perfect for the preceptor to pour in the knowledge. Remember the scene from Karate kid where the boy has been instructed to paint the fence in a exact right-left motion little knowing that this was training of the highest order which would stand him in good stead in the coming days. A modern perspective on repeating an action in the context of learning is learning of skill objectives or psychomotor objectives (learning objectives are of 3 types- knowledge/cognitive, skill/psychomotor and attitudinal/affective). Learning by watching , learning by doing and learning by repeating are established models of learning skills. Improvement of technique will need some cognitive or knowledge inputs to understand the why of the action. Some readers will remember the classical and romantic realities in the book- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where classical represents internal form and romantic represents aesthetic external perceptual reality. It is not enough to practice riding a motorcycle mechanically but also important to know how the gearbox and transmission functions to have a superlative fulfilling ride. Don't we all want our learning to be like that? Wait for my next post. If you want to enhance your memory click here