Deliberate practice, after Ericsson

::TODO in inbox::

“Deliberate practice” (Ericsson et al, 1993) describes:

• high-effort, high-motivation activities…
• … with the specific goal of improving performance
  • Typical work and performance environments don’t constitute deliberate practice
• … which are carefully designed (and continuously updated) for that purpose
  • Expert coaches facilitate effective deliberate practice

• Deliberate practice is generally not regarded as enjoyable; it’s instrumental to improving their performance, not inherently motivating.
• Because deliberate practice is high effort, students can only practice for a limited time each day, and they need the opportunity to recover completely on a regular basis.
• requires legibility for the the student: they must be able to see their progress

• Deliberate practice is incremental: “Deliberate practice nearly always involves building or modifying previously acquired skills by focusing on particular aspects of those skills and working to improve them specifically; over time this step-by-step improvement will eventually lead to expert performance.” (Ericsson and Pool, 2016, p. 100)

  References

  Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363. Ericsson et al - The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance

Ericsson, A., & Pool, R. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise (1 edition). Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Peak - Ericsson and Pool

Backlinks

• Ericsson et al - The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance
  • Raw hours don’t equal expertise: need Deliberate practice, after Ericsson
• To what extent does spaced repetition memory system practice constitute deliberate practice?
  • Do the review sessions of a Spaced repetition memory system constitute Deliberate practice, after Ericsson?
• Expert coaches facilitate effective deliberate practice
  • Practice efficacy is highly sensitive to method design; past a certain level of performance, effective Deliberate practice, after Ericsson typically requires an expert coach’s knowledge about practice methods, as well as their supervision and feedback. For instance, an expert coach (typically also or formerly an expert practitioner) will invent new tasks (based on their knowledge of practice methods) to overcome weaknesses.
• Typical work and performance environments don’t constitute deliberate practice
  • Effective Deliberate practice, after Ericsson offers students opportunities for focused repetitions. During a baseball game, a batter may only swing a dozen times, but a batter working with an expert coach may attempt hundreds of pitches a day. Even better: those pitches may all be designed to exploit a specific weakness (Ericsson et al, 1993, p. 368).
• Knowledge work rarely involves deliberate practice
  • Athletes and musicians pursue virtuosity in fundamental skills much more rigorously than knowledge workers do. One likely reason is that athletes/musicians engage in Deliberate practice, after Ericsson—that is, activities focused specifically on improving skills.
• [[Moreau, D., Macnamara, B., & Hambrick, Z. (2018). Overstating the Role of Environmental Factors in Success: A Cautionary Note. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 28, 096372141879730.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418797300]]
* Survey article skeptical of Growth mindset, Grit, brain training, etc. Also points out that contra Peak - Ericsson and Pool, Deliberate practice, after Ericsson isn’t enough to explain differences in expert-level performance: there must also be some heritable component.