Page 142 - Making Instruction Work

chap 12 3/11/97 5:03 PM Page 128

128 making instruction work

All right, so maybe I lost my head to make a point, but the
fact is that many things simply cannot be done without the
“right stuff.” And the right kind of practice is one of the most
important “stuff” of all. After all, you can’t practice making an
elephant come out of a hat if you don’t have a hat. Similarly,
you can’t practice the tuba if you don’t have one, nor practice
your golf if you don’t have the balls for it.
Of course, most instructors know that practice makes per-
fect. They know that one learns to play the piano by practicing
on the piano, rather than by talking about the piano or by
answering multiple-choice questions about music. They know
that the way to learn to interview or solve problems or to
dance is to practice interviewing, problem-solving, or dancing.
They know that practice is one of the powerful activities that
makes their instruction work.
Less well understood is that the nature of that practice influ-
ences its usefulness.

Practice Makes Perfect, But . . .

Practice is a powerful way to develop skill, and a key com-
ponent to making instruction work. But practice by itself is
not enough! Practice without information (feedback) to the
student about the quality of the practice can be worse than no
practice at all. You already know why. Because students may
spend a great deal of effort practicing and learning and getting
better at the wrong thing. Therefore it is an instructional error
(some call it fraud) (1) to withhold practice opportunities and
(2) to allow students to practice without a suitable source of
feedback.

Sources of Feedback

Feedback can be provided either by external or internal
sources. Either you can build into the students’ heads the