tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post7954844976930121218..comments2024-03-28T18:32:05.933-04:00Comments on bensozia: The Illusion of Explanatory DepthJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-3384076550765788722019-07-11T15:27:04.369-04:002019-07-11T15:27:04.369-04:00I'm curious if this paper looked at only "...I'm curious if this paper looked at only "average" people, or if it also looked at trained teachers and educators.<br /><br />Teaching is a learned and practiced skill. The way we speak and interact in our normal day to day life is not the ideal way teach or train someone, it's just the easiest and most comfortable way to speak and think.<br /><br />Most of us explain things on the fly, as we are just starting to think about them; and we re-explain things as holes in our first explanation become apparent, and as our thoughts are given time to coalesce into greater clarity and coherence.<br /><br />If you want to be good at explaining things on the first try, rather than having to go back and explain it again in a slightly different manner immediately afterward, then you need to have developed your ability to organize information before delivering it.<br /><br />You need the ability to prepare an effective lesson in your head, adjusted as much as feasible to suit the needs of the student, and focusing on delivering the salient and necessary points of information in a method that is both comprehensible and easily retained, before you ever even attempt to deliver it. And most of us simply have never truly trained in that ability, or are at best self-taught amateurs.<br /><br />I imagine we tend to overestimate our ability to explain things in large part because we believe that understanding something is all that is necessary to able to share that understanding with others. But the reality is that information alone does not make you an effective teacher - you also need teaching ability, which we tend to overlook unless we've already made fostering such ability a primary concern.G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.com