A persistent challenge in my teaching practice is navigating the line between what I know and what my learners know and gauging which of my disciplinary knowledge and skills have a complexity I take for granted. As experts in our fields, it can be difficult for us to stay mindful of just how complex basic disciplinary concepts can be for our learners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this blog post, I want to share two experiences: one recent and one from my past. These two experiences have me thinking about ways I can break down complex skills into simpler, component skills to practice and combine for my students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
About two months ago, my wife and I\u2019s new baby started learning to drop things. Here\u2019s how it would go\u2014 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, she would look at the toy, consider it, and pick it up off the floor. Next, she would raise it above her head, arm outstretched, and… pause. A beat would pass while she held the toy aloft, and then she would either: (1) slam the toy and her fist down on the floor; (2) give her arm a little jerk that caused the toy to slip from her fingers; or (3) manage to open her hand to drop the toy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we drop something, it\u2019s easy to think of it as one action, but it\u2019s more like three or four actions: picking up the object, lifting it, possibly positioning it, and opening the hand to release it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As she began acquiring this skill, our baby had most of those actions figured out, but at some point, she got hung up at the end when she had to open her hand to release the object. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This action is actually a specific skill babies acquire around the age of 8-9 months called \u201cvoluntary release,\u201d and it\u2019s crucial for learning how to engage with the world around them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Suddenly becoming aware of how secretly complex dropping something is and watching my daughter break it down into component skills to master and eventually combine, I had a moment of recognition as it called to mind my university students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first semester I taught on my own in the university setting, I relied on teaching materials gifted to me by my mentor professor. Among these materials were lessons for scaffolding teaching analysis to students. At the time, I wasn\u2019t sure how necessary these were. Did I really need to hold my students\u2019 hands through it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fast-forward to mid-semester and the beginning of our rhetorical analysis unit. Standing in front of my class, I pulled up an image of an advertisement on the screen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOkay,\u201d I said, \u201clet\u2019s just do a basic analysis to get our feet wet. What\u2019s some things going on in this image?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Around the classroom: blank looks, awkward shifting, fidgeting with pencils and phones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A student raised their hand. \u201cLike, the theme?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That was the moment I realized there was a disconnect. To me, analysis was a relatively basic skill\u2014the kind of thing that is a one-step process. For my students, it was fully unfamiliar, and the closest thing they could approximate to it was \u201cfinding the theme.\u201d We muscled our way through the rest of the lesson that day, and before prepping for our next meeting, I returned to the original materials from my mentor professor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A footnote: It\u2019s worth noting that this was long before I learned about Bloom\u2019s Taxonomy<\/a> and its depiction of how skills build upon one another with analysis falling between identification (the most basic) and creation (the most complex). <\/p>\n\n\n\n