As we noted in the previous post, if we want to understand or improve important performances, we need to appreciate that there are multiple aspects to performance itself, any one of which can be targeted for analysis OR improvement. These aspects are:
- Identity
- Learning Skills
- Knowledge
- Context
- Personal Factors
- Fixed Factors
Last time, we took a closer look at identity and how it affects performance, using the identity of a gardener as our example.
Now let’s look at Learning Skills (we’ll get to the ‘Learning’ part in a bit).
When you perform, you actually DO something. Different performances are largely distinguishable by the different things that are done. Gardeners garden, which includes planting, watering, troubleshooting, weeding, and so on. Each of those actions are skills that the gardener has developed and can continue to get better at. A green thumb can get greener, in other words. You wouldn’t expect a gardener to be great at plundering (unless maybe one stumbled across an abandoned-and-gone-to-seed greenhouse), but for a pirate, plundering is an essential skill. Pirates who can’t plunder are terrible pirates…maybe we wouldn’t even call them pirates. Perhaps pirates-in-training. The same goes for a gardener who can’t tell a flower from a weed. But both can learn the skills that are essential for their key performances.
There are, however, skills that different performance share; both the gardener and the pirate must be able to select tools (integrate resources to increase effectiveness), for example, though the performances and identities of gardener and pirate are very different. A gardener needs to be able to decide which tool is optimal for breaking up hard soil (a hand cultivator or spike aerator) and which is best for planting bulbs (a widger or dibber—no really!). The pirate needs to be able to decide which tool is best for stopping a ship without disabling it (grapeshot in a cannon) as well as which tool to use when silently dispatching foes (a cutlass works well here). “Selecting tools” is not only a shared skill, but a skill, that when improved, helps both gardener and pirate do all kinds of other things better in their very different performances. A gardener who can select tools well is able to take care of difficult tasks without having to needlessly kneel and crouch. A pirate who is good at selecting tools is likely to live longer and not make the cardinal error of bringing a saber to a blunderbuss fight.
Consider “selecting tools”…how often do you, as (hopefully) a non-pirate, need to select tools to increase your effectiveness? When you’re tending the fireplace or grill? When cooking, baking, or cleaning? When doing home repairs? When preparing a spreadsheet or resume? In sharing photos with family and friends? ALL of these and more! The power of the skill “selecting tools” is that it is actually embedded in everyday behavior and operates in conjunction with specialized knowledge. It can be consciously improved and refined…and when it is, the performance, whatever it is, improves. That makes it not just a skill but a LEARNING skill.
And there it is. This is what the student shares with the gardener and the pirate.
When we help students improve their learning skills, we’re helping them to be better at the performance of learning: to be better learners! As educators, we can intentionally target learning skills in learning activities. If we want students to be better at selecting tools, we create activities that give them the opportunity to practice and refine that skill. In a writing class, that might be considering different rhetorical devices and when each works best in an argument essay. In a math class, that might be determining which method of factoring an equation is the most efficient. A lab class could have students work with different types of measuring tools. A history class could help students learn to appreciate primary sources versus secondary sources or ledgers versus journals versus census data as tools. Each of these examples will help students develop the skill of selecting tools and what they learn in their composition course will help them in their math course which will also help them in their biology lab. The student who improves their ability to select tools improves their ability to learn…what we refer to as their performance as a student.
Put generally, the student who improves their learning skills gets better at learning. They’re that much more likely to succeed not just as a student, but in walking whatever life path they choose, even if it might occasionally involve a plank.
