strict female teacher with book pointing at scribbled blackboard
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Learning: Should you give a concrete example or an abstract one?

I was just thinking about something I recently read and thought, “Damn it, I should put this on my blog so I’ve got a record”, so here I am.

So, what was I thinking? Well, as usual, it’s a long story, so I’ll try to break it down into something short. 🙂 If you’ve read any of my other posts, you’ll probably already be laughing.

So anyway, here goes. The topic here is learning. I read the BBC Focus magazine—I can’t recommend it highly enough if you’re into the science behind life in readable form—and I saw a little snippet in there that said a study had found that people were better at applying abstract concepts if they had been taught these concepts in an abstract way rather than using a real-life example. The study focused on maths concepts, and it’s a fascinating way of looking at things.

That’s what I was thinking about briefly, and since I read that every now and then, I’ve been wondering how true it is. Not to say it’s not true at all, but maybe putting it that way is a misunderstanding of the way most of us learn. I’ve taught myself and lots of others many things, and I feel both ways work abstract and real life. It just depends on the person and their experience or way of working.

I just now realised that a similar concept was taught to me many years ago during my A-level PE. It was in the Psychology aspect when we were looking at teaching methods. They termed it distributed practice and blocked practice, and I think a couple of other terms, like varied practice and specific practice, also applied.

The first two would focus on how long you spend on specific skills. Blocked practice involved spending a specific chunk of time on one skill, e.g., serving for 15 minutes. Distributed practice involved mixing in a few different skills, like serving, volleying, and hitting a smash all in one. The time taken would be, say, 45 minutes (3 x 15 minutes), matching the time given for blocked practice.

The last two focus on what is learned during each period. Varied means, for example, two or three skills are worked on during a session, while specific means just one is focused on.

This is all a bit complicated because, in real life, I find it’s best to think about what is really going to happen and what is going to be asked of the student. For example, in teaching tennis, I like to get people serving in their first or second session (I’m talking about the simplest dolly serve you can think of) because who has ever heard of playing a round of tennis without serving?

So, the serve is the single most important shot because it starts at every rally in every game. Therefore, while it’s an advanced skill when done well. I like to start people early on to help their motor pathways get up to speed. Anyway, that’s a bit off track.

What I learnt from my A level was that you could mix the concepts laid out above in any way you like. Still, they found that specific blocked practice (spending 15 -30 minutes practising one skill only) made you better at that specific skill when performing it in the same manner as you practised it. That is better than someone who’s been playing short rallies designed to develop more than one skill. When you test in this specific (closed) manner, you’ll find that the person being taught one skill will do better.

However, as soon as you throw them in a game, you’ll generally find that the person who learnt in a more random (open) fashion will generally do better. I feel this happens mainly because sport is about doing what is necessary at that point in time. Every shot and situation will be unique, under pressure you generally follow what your training has taught you.

Therefore, those trained in highly controlled environments aren’t used to these rapidly changing, unique contexts. They’re exceptional when everything is just right but not so good when things are a little different.

On the other hand, those used to variation and uniqueness in their training are far more comfortable when they play a normal game and the pressure is on because this is very much what they’ve been training for.

They don’t have so many specific situations that they excel at because they haven’t spent the time on this. What they do have is a breadth of knowledge and experience of what solution to apply for each challenge they face.

Now, bringing it back to the study I started this post with. I would compare the blocked-specific training to presenting a maths problem in a real-life context. I know at first that may sound strange, but what is happening is that just one example is presented for a specific amount of time; the abstract example focuses more on general experience and understanding, the concept behind the example.

This relates more to the varied distributed practice, which focuses on the abstract concept that every situation in tennis is unique to that time and place. Some are more familiar than others but the skill to learn is the best solution for the situation.

So what do I take from this? Yep, I really just think about these things because I want to find an answer that fits what I know and can still explain what’s being said. It was putting me off giving specific real-life examples, but something inside me was saying, “There’ll be a way to get around this; don’t you worry.” Hopefully, now I’ve explained it.

But I probably really need to nail it. What I’m saying is that to get someone to understand a concept, it’s perfectly fine to use a real-life example. The thing is, they will probably find it difficult to extrapolate this to other situations unless they’re really used to doing so. Therefore, if the concept and not the example itself are key, then you absolutely must use more than one real-life example to teach the concept.

It also helps if the examples are sufficiently different. If I taught a concept about tennis, say footwork and how it helps you with balance then football or rugby would be better as another example than badminton or squash because the former are not racquet sports between two or four people, they are team sports with completely different rules and objectives. By doing this you really show how the same concept can applied in completely different situations. 

The student may not fully understand things at this point; some people need to mull it over themselves a little, outside of the pressure of their classroom, before they truly understand things.

The point is that you’ve given them enough food for thought. By having two, three or more good simple examples, they have to make them all work in their heads and, in doing so, get to practice and, therefore, learn the concept fully.

Phew. There we go. I think I’m getting quicker at getting to the point. Anyway, I hope that makes sense. I’ll get some comments anyway if it doesn’t

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