When we have to repeat a task

A few days ago I watched a TED talk by an enthusiastic, if somewhat eccentric chap by the name of Clifford Stoll.

He reminded me so much of some of the gifted kids I have met over the years – constantly in motion, his mind darting from one idea to another, his rapid fire speech peppered with, what is known in our house, as ‘random facts’ – snippets that wouldn’t normally be part of conversation.

Sadly the resemblance to most gifted adults was much weaker. Somewhere along the way, for many, the enthusiasm, passion and energy fades away.

He did make an interesting comment which might shed some light on that. In his opinion

The first time you do something, you are a scientist.

The second time you do something, you are an engineer.

The third time you do something, you are just a technician.

Or put another way, the more you have to do something, the more the wonder fades.

The initial need to think, question, hypothesise and test ideas and skills makes way for a focus on details and tidying things up. Eventually little real attention is needed to complete the task which we can execute with much less effort. The motivation for the task has faded along with the practice.

Research has shown that repeated practice for gifted students can reduce their performance over time, particularly in subjects like mathematics (** more on this  along with a reference below) Not only does having to repeatedly practice something you have already mastered take the initial shine off the achievement, a degree of boredom often follows, which can in turn lead to a lack of attention to the task at hand and so to careless errors. Students who have ‘tuned out’ and whose brain is partially occupying itself with other things may then miss important new material when it is introduced.

I am sure you can think of examples of musical performances which had been practiced until they were technically excellent but lacking in passion. School assembly or concert items sometimes also fall into this category when they have been practiced to the point of predictability and the excitement is extinguished. The buzz of the discovery, the excitement of that ‘ah ha’ moment when we discover we can do something has faded.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t practice things, but perhaps moving on to build on a skill as soon as we are able is a way to keep the enthusiasm flowing and avoid a ‘discovery’ becoming routine task. Remaining in the scientist mindset is a sure way to push boundaries and make new discoveries and well as new learning. 

•  G&T students are significantly more likely to retain science, mathematics, foreign language content accurately when taught 2-3 times faster than ‘normal’ class pace
• G&T students are significantly more likely to forget or mislearn science, mathematics, foreign language content when they must drill and review it more than 2-3 times after mastery

Reserach Based Best Practices in Gifted Education. Conference presentation by Prof Karent Rogers at the 2006 AAEGT National Conference in Fremantle. If you would like to have a look at the PowerPoint of this presentation, please email me.