Epiphanies in Training

"Prior knowledge is the most important determinant for new learning." When I read in the Developmental Perspective chapter of Pratt's Five Perspective's on teaching, it made sense. I agreed with it. But it wasn't until I read the analogy and pm the next page that I truly understood the power of what Pratt was describing. The analogy is:

"The whole procedure is basically quite simple. First, the units are distributed in different categories. One single category may of course be sufficient if you do not have too much to work with. If one has to leave for another place, because of a lack of resources, this is the next step; if not preparation is now completed. It is of vital importance not to over-commit oneself. This means in this context that it is preferable to do a few things at once than to let things pile up. In a short time perspective, this may not seem important, but complications may easily emerge. Mistakes may be expensive. In the beginning, the procedure may appear as complex. But soon it is only a detail among others in our everyday life. It is difficult to foresee an end to this activity in the near future, but we know very little about such things. When the procedure is completed you allocate the material in different groups anew. Thereafter, they can be brought back to their respective places. Soon they will be used again and the whole cycle has to be repeated anew. But on the other hand, this is only part of our lives" (p. 137)

Coming on the heels of a passage on a fuel injector for marine engines, this passage seemed just as foreign until the text tells us to put the passage above in the context of clothes washing. When reading with that understanding the entire passage opens up and suddenly I could see the passage based on my previous experience and prior knowledge.

The epiphany was similar to a technique I used in a training I provided for our field technicians in refineries. Usually, and understandably, coming to my skills training was not greeted with excitement or fanfare. I was a corporate "suit" who knew nothing about fieldwork and would not be able to teach them anything they didn't already know. Or, worse, there was defensiveness that I might try to show them how little they actually knew. Whenever I came to a training there was a palpable air of hostility when the training began. I would start by showing a tic-tac-toe style grid with a series of seemingly random numbers of all shapes and sizes and orientations sprinkled throughout. I asked the class to find as many numbers as possible from 1 to 45 starting at one and stay in order. They had 30 seconds. Invariably no one could find more than 10. Then I told them to start at the top left for the first number, moved to the left for the next, then the next over for the third number, then down a row for the next and so on. Imagine a tic-tac-toe frame superimposed on the image below, start at the top left looking for the first number and move right and down for each subsequent number. It’s easy once you know that framework. I gave them 30 seconds again. The second time around people found far more than 10. I always framed it as helping them through challenges. The washing machine passage above was even more revealing because it requires us to call on previous knowledge that we must have. 

A second epiphany regarding the passage and that last sentence I just wrote, comes in the form of my sons and washing machines. I am just now teaching my 10-year-old how to wash clothes. He doesn't get it. Every time I show him I have to show him the same thing each time. It's just not really sticking. I chalk it up to his not caring, I'm wondering now if it may have more to do with his having no prior knowledge to lean on. My 13-year-old is the same way. It occurred to me that as revelatory as I find the washing machine analogy above, if I told that same passage to either of them and at the end revealed that they should apply it to their knowledge of clothes washing I would be greeted with completely blank and vacant stares in return. They have no prior knowledge to speak of.

Finally, I enjoy the fact in the chapter about the Developmental Perspective, where Pratt is helping us understand what it means to help students further develop, think, and analyze subjects by themselves, that he provides a representative sample in this analogy that no only illustrates the point but helps us as readers develop our own understanding.

•  I wonder do any others of you use analogies like the above, or have you been exposed to any that you found worthwhile or worth sharing?
• Do you find them as intriguing and do they spark the same "ah-ha" moments in you as they do in me?

Pratt, D. D. (1998). Five Perspectives on Teaching in Adult and Higher Education. Krieger.