Do you have tips for Recalling what it was like before you understood?
Find a way to do the activity in a way that negates your previous knowledge and training.
For example, when I used to teach hooping, if I wanted to remember what it was like to try doing a move that you don’t already “have”, I would do it in my non-dominant direction. It would feel completely awkward, and I would catch myself making all the mistakes that first-timers to that move make, since I hadn’t already trained it into muscle memory. Then when I taught a class, I would be prepared with what mistakes to look for, and already thought of ways to explain how to correct it.
As another example, in a Math Education course I took, they taught us how to do basic arithmetic in different bases (i.e. binary or hexxadecimal) in order to get rid of our intuitive understanding of those operations. That way, we could learn and explain it from a fundamental level, and we would remember how difficult it was at first, to learn.
Ooh! That’s actually quite good. This might even make for a good post. Have you thought about writing one up? Even just putting this comment in a post would be good I think.
I wonder if it would be useful to do this with a bunch of skills that you’ve already mastered (handwriting with non dominant hand, etc.). It would be neat to make a list of ways to negate previous knowledge and training.
It would feel completely awkward, and I would catch myself making all the mistakes that first-timers to that move make, since I hadn’t already trained it into muscle memory.
This is an awesome strategy!
One of the things I do to figure out how people can do stuff wrong (i.e. in swimming, which isn’t something you can try doing in your non-dominant direction) is to break down the motion into tiny parts and do that tiny part while watching them, to figure out if that tiny part is the one they’re getting wrong.
I also do a lot of trial and error, because sometimes someone’s stroke will look intuitively wrong to me in a way I can’t really explain to myself, so I make a guess, teach them how to correct that, and then watch again and see if my intuition is any happier with it.
Find a way to do the activity in a way that negates your previous knowledge and training.
For example, when I used to teach hooping, if I wanted to remember what it was like to try doing a move that you don’t already “have”, I would do it in my non-dominant direction. It would feel completely awkward, and I would catch myself making all the mistakes that first-timers to that move make, since I hadn’t already trained it into muscle memory. Then when I taught a class, I would be prepared with what mistakes to look for, and already thought of ways to explain how to correct it.
As another example, in a Math Education course I took, they taught us how to do basic arithmetic in different bases (i.e. binary or hexxadecimal) in order to get rid of our intuitive understanding of those operations. That way, we could learn and explain it from a fundamental level, and we would remember how difficult it was at first, to learn.
Ooh! That’s actually quite good. This might even make for a good post. Have you thought about writing one up? Even just putting this comment in a post would be good I think.
I wonder if it would be useful to do this with a bunch of skills that you’ve already mastered (handwriting with non dominant hand, etc.). It would be neat to make a list of ways to negate previous knowledge and training.
This is an awesome strategy!
One of the things I do to figure out how people can do stuff wrong (i.e. in swimming, which isn’t something you can try doing in your non-dominant direction) is to break down the motion into tiny parts and do that tiny part while watching them, to figure out if that tiny part is the one they’re getting wrong.
I also do a lot of trial and error, because sometimes someone’s stroke will look intuitively wrong to me in a way I can’t really explain to myself, so I make a guess, teach them how to correct that, and then watch again and see if my intuition is any happier with it.