Why do so many beginners, both children and adults, fail to master chosen skills? The Elements of Skill was inspired by—and addresses—that question with a program based on proven techniques. The book, written by a renowned practitioner of the Alexander Technique, outlines an educational system that makes the process of learning a performance or athletic skill more conscious, and therefore more successful. Its principles include breaking down a skill into manageable parts, setting realistic goals, observing mind/body processes, overcoming blocks, controlling habits, and achieving heightened awareness and self-mastery. Included are inspiring examples of people who have benefited from the method.
The issue of the transfer of learning from one domain to another is a classic problem in psychology and an educational question of great importance, which this book sets out to solve through a theory of transfer based on a comprehensive theory of skill acquisition.
"This book provides guidelines--via 40 practical tips and processes--to fulfill anyone's natural ability. It's about becoming the master of your own fate, your own skills and your own success. Greatness is not a natural gift... It is something achieved through hard work and diligent practice--not from dreaming, but from working. Commit to becoming the best: work hard, have a positive mindset, and practice, practice, practice."--Back cover.
School improvement begins with self-examination and honest dialogue about socialization, bias, discrimination, and cultural insensitivity. The authors acknowledge both the structural and sociological issues that contribute to low-performing schools and offer multiple tools and strategies to assess and improve classroom management, increase literacy, establish academic vocabulary, and contribute to a healthier school culture.
This book presents a review of research on reaction processes and attention as it has evolved over the last 40 years in the context of the information processing tradition in cognitive psychology. It is argued and demonstrated that issues of reaction processes and attention are closely interconnected. Their common conceptualization can be seen in terms of limited processing capacity on the one hand, and stage analysis on the other. This volume concludes that, at present, a stage analysis metaphor offers better prospects as a conceptual starting point; the limited capacity metaphor was strongly tied to the digital computers of the 60s. The emphasis of the book is on behavioral research, but summaries of related findings on evoked potentials and other psychophysiological variables are included as well. From this perspective, it may be of interest to neuropsychologists who want to learn about the present state of cognitive experimental paradigms. Elements of Human Performance also addresses the question of the relationship between basic research and applications in the said areas. This is particularly urgent in view of the now common notion that the results of many simplified laboratory tasks may be artifactual and of little applied value. A back-to-back research strategy is outlined to assess the validity of basic research results for real-life tasks.
Forget the 10,000 hour rule— what if it’s possible to learn the basics of any new skill in 20 hours or less? Take a moment to consider how many things you want to learn to do. What’s on your list? What’s holding you back from getting started? Are you worried about the time and effort it takes to acquire new skills—time you don’t have and effort you can’t spare? Research suggests it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill. In this nonstop world when will you ever find that much time and energy? To make matters worse, the early hours of practicing something new are always the most frustrating. That’s why it’s difficult to learn how to speak a new language, play an instrument, hit a golf ball, or shoot great photos. It’s so much easier to watch TV or surf the web . . . In The First 20 Hours, Josh Kaufman offers a systematic approach to rapid skill acquisition— how to learn any new skill as quickly as possible. His method shows you how to deconstruct complex skills, maximize productive practice, and remove common learning barriers. By completing just 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice you’ll go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well. Kaufman personally field-tested the methods in this book. You’ll have a front row seat as he develops a personal yoga practice, writes his own web-based computer programs, teaches himself to touch type on a nonstandard keyboard, explores the oldest and most complex board game in history, picks up the ukulele, and learns how to windsurf. Here are a few of the simple techniques he teaches: Define your target performance level: Figure out what your desired level of skill looks like, what you’re trying to achieve, and what you’ll be able to do when you’re done. The more specific, the better. Deconstruct the skill: Most of the things we think of as skills are actually bundles of smaller subskills. If you break down the subcomponents, it’s easier to figure out which ones are most important and practice those first. Eliminate barriers to practice: Removing common distractions and unnecessary effort makes it much easier to sit down and focus on deliberate practice. Create fast feedback loops: Getting accurate, real-time information about how well you’re performing during practice makes it much easier to improve. Whether you want to paint a portrait, launch a start-up, fly an airplane, or juggle flaming chainsaws, The First 20 Hours will help you pick up the basics of any skill in record time . . . and have more fun along the way.
What is the secret of talent? How do we unlock it? This groundbreaking work provides readers with tools they can use to maximize potential in themselves and others. Whether you’re coaching soccer or teaching a child to play the piano, writing a novel or trying to improve your golf swing, this revolutionary book shows you how to grow talent by tapping into a newly discovered brain mechanism. Drawing on cutting-edge neurology and firsthand research gathered on journeys to nine of the world’s talent hotbeds—from the baseball fields of the Caribbean to a classical-music academy in upstate New York—Coyle identifies the three key elements that will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance in sports, art, music, math, or just about anything. • Deep Practice Everyone knows that practice is a key to success. What everyone doesn’t know is that specific kinds of practice can increase skill up to ten times faster than conventional practice. • Ignition We all need a little motivation to get started. But what separates truly high achievers from the rest of the pack? A higher level of commitment—call it passion—born out of our deepest unconscious desires and triggered by certain primal cues. Understanding how these signals work can help you ignite passion and catalyze skill development. • Master Coaching What are the secrets of the world’s most effective teachers, trainers, and coaches? Discover the four virtues that enable these “talent whisperers” to fuel passion, inspire deep practice, and bring out the best in their students. These three elements work together within your brain to form myelin, a microscopic neural substance that adds vast amounts of speed and accuracy to your movements and thoughts. Scientists have discovered that myelin might just be the holy grail: the foundation of all forms of greatness, from Michelangelo’s to Michael Jordan’s. The good news about myelin is that it isn’t fixed at birth; to the contrary, it grows, and like anything that grows, it can be cultivated and nourished. Combining revelatory analysis with illuminating examples of regular people who have achieved greatness, this book will not only change the way you think about talent, but equip you to reach your own highest potential.
By analyzing the results of experiments that use a wide variety of training tasks including those that were predominantly perceptual, cognitive, or motoric, this volume answers such questions as: Why do some people forget certain skills faster than others? What kind of training helps people retain new skills longer? Inspired by the work of Harry Bahrick and the concept of "permastore," the contributors explore the Stroop effect, mental calculation, vocabulary retention, contextual interference effects, autobiographical memory, and target detection. They also summarize an investigation on specificity and transfer in choice reaction time tasks. In each chapter, the authors explore how the degree to which reinstatement of training procedures during retention and transfer tests accounts for both durability and specificity of training. Researchers and administrators in education and training will find important implications in this book for enhancing the retention of knowledge of skills. "You have to read this book. Anyone interested in training will want to read it. This book provides the theoretical bases of the acquisition of durable skills for the next decade. It advances and demonstrates a new principle of skill learning that will prove to be as important as the encoding specificity principle and its corollary, the principle of transfer appropriate processing. This new principle is that highly practiced skill learning will be durable when the retention test embodies the procedures employed during acquisition. This principle, and the other important findings reported in this text, will have a great impact on the evolution of memory theory and on the wide range of applications." --Douglas Hermann, University of Maryland
In Seven Skills of Media Literacy, best-selling author and renowned scholar W. James Potter provides readers with the practical guidance they need to make substantial improvements on seven major skills required to increase their media literacy. For each of these seven skills, Potter provides easy-to-follow algorithms and heuristics that structure the process of using the skill. Chapters also offer many exercises to help readers practice using these algorithms and heuristics while avoiding traps in thinking. The book is organized to guide readers progressively through the sequence of media literacy skills, starting with the most fundamental and building to the more complex skills. This book is a must read for those people serious about becoming more strategic in using the media to satisfy their own needs for information and entertainment and thereby avoid being exploited by media messages.
This book is part of the Teach, Coach, Play series, emphasizing a systematic learning approach to sports and activities. Both visual and verbal information are presented so that readers can easily understand the material and improve performance. Built-in learning aids help readers master each skill in a step-by-step manner. Using the cues, summaries, skills, drills, and illustrations will help build a solid foundation for safe and effective participation now and in the future. The basic approach in all of the Teach, Coach, Play activity titles is to help readers improve their skills and performance by building mastery from simple to increasingly complex levels. The books strive to illustrate correct techniques and demonstrate how to achieve optimal results. The basic organization in each book is as follows: Section 1 overviews history, organizations and publications, conditioning activities, safety, warm up suggestions, and equipment. Section 2 covers exercise or skills, participants, action involved, rules, facility or field, scoring, and etiquette. Section 3 focuses on skills and drills or program design. Section 4 addresses a broad range of strategies specifically designed to improve performance now and in the future. Section 5 provides a convenient glossary of terms.
