Deliberate practice

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

• high-effort, high-difficulty activities…

• … with the primary 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

• … and which is generally not inherently enjoyable

  • But: Deliberate practice doesn’t have to be unenjoyable

• 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 (presumably for motivational reasons).

• 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)

See criticism, reviewed here (Cedric Chin): The Problems with Deliberate Practice

• on syllabus design: Teaching Tech Together

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