Experts, novices, and tennis

When we moved to Australia from the UK in 2017 I decided to take a career break.  Moving continents is an expensive business, but my husband had a job and there was plenty of new-life-down-under-type admin that would keep me busy for a few months. 

So I decided to learn to play tennis.  I’d always admired the sleek athleticism of tennis players; I imagined myself slicing a serve down the centre line, or diving for a drop shot which miraculously made its way (just!) back over the net. 

After a few one-to-one lessons it was clear that any slicing of serves was a long way off.  My coach offered an alternative: why didn’t I get straight into a real game of tennis?  Every Thursday morning, a friendly local bunch got together for a few low stakes doubles matches.  I would find it easier to pick up the basics, apparently.  And it would be ‘much more enjoyable’ to experience a proper game.  She had a point; so far, my feeble attempts at a forehand bore no resemblance to tennis, more like 30 minutes of apologising as I swiped into thin air. As I signed up for the group session, I think we both felt relieved.

Sadly, this was not good news for the Thursday morning crew.  Still swiping into thin air, missing the shots that were clearly mine and baffled by the arc needed for the backhand, I was now apologising to three people rather than one.  I certainly wasn’t getting any better at tennis.  To make matters worse, when we ‘added a bit more fun’ by making whoever missed a point sit out until the next point was lost, I spent most of the session leaning against the fence.  On reflection I see what they were doing: I wouldn’t want to play with me either.  Even the tennis club seniors had better court control than I did.

The racquet is now in the closet and my club membership has lapsed.  It’s an enticing idea that immersing yourself in ‘real world’ scenarios is the best way to learn.  But our intuition about learning is frequently wrong. I stood a better chance of mastering the backhand with my tennis coach than I did in my live action match. Simply ‘doing’ tennis didn’t help me learn it.

Similarly, inviting students to ‘do History’ misses out the crucial building blocks of ‘learning History’.  Perhaps we are drawn to this idea because despite our own passion for the subject, we think we can’t engage young people unless we skip past anything that looks like actual learning.  We take a shortcut when we assign the task but fail to teach the knowledge; instructing students to conduct research is not the same as helping them understand the product of their internet searches. 

Reading – and research – are both complex skills.  And as Daisy Christodoulou explains, complex skills cannot be taught directly. They are made up of constituent parts, building blocks of knowledge, which, when mastered individually, result in the final product – the skill.  This allows us to ask an important question: what are the building blocks that sit underneath each long-term goal? And are we teaching them explicitly, or hoping students will pick them up along the way?

Breaking down these complex skills into their component parts means more, not less engaged students.  Being thrown into the tennis match didn’t motivate me.  It was frustrating and confusing as a novice to be assigned the activities of the expert.  I avoided the difficult shots just like students often dismiss the challenging sources and complex ideas they encounter on their own. This leaves learning to chance; sometimes they work it out, but often they don’t.

In contrast, knowledge explicitly taught and explored together, concepts fully unpacked and dissected, individual parts practised and mastered brings success within reach at every stage. As Peps McCrae reminds us, achievement leads to motivation, and mastering each step is a much more enjoyable – and empowering – process than floundering on your own.

So – who knows, one day I might dust off the racquet and give tennis another go.  But this time I’ll insist on being a learner and enjoy the small steps to success.