I was particularly drawn to chapter 2 ("How Experts Differ From Novices") in How People Learn. Early on in this chapter, the authors note that “Research shows that it is not simply general abilities, such as memory or intelligence, nor the use of general strategies that differentiate experts from novices. Instead, experts have acquired extensive knowledge that affects what they notice and how they organize, represent, and interpret information in their environment. This, in turn, affects their abilities to remember, reason, and solve problems” (31). In an attempt to understand this concept, I wound up reflecting on a moment when I got to be a "hero" husband due to my expertise.
One night while my wife and I were lounging around watching TV, my wife noticed a recent Facebook post by her friend. Since people post about everything on Facebook, I shouldn't have been surprised that her friend's status was something along the lines of "stranded on the side of the road." Her friend was moving from South Florida to Georgia and was making a trip back to Georgia. She had broken down on the side of the road in the middle of the night. When my wife called, and we Google mapped her friend's location, we realized she was quite far away for my wife or I to go get her.
When I asked my wife what was wrong, she said her friend had said something was wrong with the transmission. Although I am not an expert on cars, I do know a decent amount about both manual and automatic transmissions. I asked my wife to call her friend back and then talked to her friend, asking what specifically had happened. Her friend mentioned how when the car reached 12 mph, it would start lurching and acting up.
Reflecting on this scenario, I quickly told my wife's friend to try something. As best as I could, I explained a concept to her (I'll get into that shortly) and a possible solution to the problem. Essentially, I asked her if her car's automatic transmission had a slot with the number 3 on it. When she verified this, I told her to start the car, slide the transmission into 3, and proceed to drive (noting to watch the RPM gauge so that it didn't go into the red). As she did so, she immediately became giddy with excitement as her car miraculously worked! I instructed her to get to safety from there, always cautious of not going into the red on the gauge.
Aside from feeding my ego, there is a point to this story, which comes when my wife asked the question you may already be thinking (if you haven't figured out why the solution could work already): "How did you know to do that?" My answer was quite complex, but I hadn't thought it through with the same degree of complexity I will now elaborate on.
An automatic transmission is, well, automatic; it shifts gears for you. When my wife's friend noted that the car lurched at 12 mph, from my extensive knowledge of manual transmissions (having driven one for years and having worked as a valet for 4 years), I quickly surmised that this would be the point where the automatic transmission would want to shift from 1st to 2nd gear (on a manual, you usually want to shift from 1st to 2nd between 10 to 20 mph, depending on make, model, and desired performance). Thus, the slippage was occurring between those two gears; however, this did not mean that every gear in the car was not functional. With a manual transmission, if you lose the ability for one gear to function, in a pinch, you can shift around that gear.
Thus, my hypothesis went like this: the car is unable to transition from 1st to 2nd. If you bypass this transition, it still may function. Knowing my wife's friend's car to be older, I figured it would have the feature of using lower gears on the automatic transmission console.
Intriguingly, it was only when my wife asked me how I had come upon this solution that I actually understood how I had come upon this solution! My initial thought process was actually quite instinctual, clustering information (i.e. 12 mph equals a glitch going from 1st to 2nd, gears can be bypassed on a manual so this could work on an automatic, etc.) and looking for patterns to arrive at a solution. It wasn't until I articulated the process that the full extent of my thoughts became apparent.
This story is also illustrative of another concept underlying expertise: “Expertise in a particular domain
does not guarantee that one is good at helping others
learn it. In fact, expertise can sometimes hurt teaching because many experts
forget what is easy and what is difficult for students” (44). I was able to make sure to communicate to my wife's friend to not let the RPM gauge go into the red (which would overrev the engine); I knew that a novice might not know this and would be in danger of "red-lining."
However, later, I derived a solution (I won't get into this technically) to possibly bring the car the rest of the way (6 hours) home. Essentially, using 3rd and Drive, it is theoretically possible to "shift" an automatic transmission. Yet, my attempts to explain how to do this to my wife's friend failed. This was either due to something wrong with the car or from my inability to articulate the concept to her (I imagine it was this). If I could have operated the car, theoretically, I could have driven it all the way back. But explaining how to avoid 1st and 2nd gear with an automatic proved rather difficult. I was able to aid my wife's friend in getting to safety, but I failed to teach her a potential way to get her car all the way home.
Staying with driving metaphors, I latched on to the GPS/map example (on page 177) cited in Yancey et. al's chapter "Reflection, ePortfolios, and WEPO," which she cites from a forthcoming book. I found the metaphor of the GPS not only rather useful for my continued thinking on agency but also hauntingly familiar. Then it dawned on me!
When I visited FSU before applying, Dr. Yancey was in New Zealand. As a result, the first time I met her in person was when I had already moved to Tallahassee. Finding her quite personable during our first meeting (sycophant alert!), we began talking about Tallahassee. I mentioned to her how I had been aided in comprehending the lay of the land here by an, at the time, unfortunate circumstance. After moving, I had to take my friend who had helped me move to the Tallahassee airport. Since my wife was still with her family in SC, I had our junky, old GPS, which subsequently broke. Until my wife arrived a week later, I had to navigate around Tallahassee using Google Maps for directions. Since it provided a visual map, I began to understand the layout of the city much better than if I had had a GPS!
Dr. Yancey and I discussed this phenomenon. I noted how I was using FSU as a compass point and how I had begun to see Monroe and Tennessee as grid points; Dr. Yancey, I believe, mentioned how she uses Monroe and Thomasville (I could be wrong though). Both being from Charlotte, we even discussed how we visually divided up that city as well.
After reading the GPS/map metaphor, I had reflected on how I needed to ask Dr. Yancey if I could "borrow" it for my dissertation. However, remembering this conversation, I realized that our conversation might have been the inspiration for it (or Dr. Yancey has been playing with this metaphor for years). I wondered whether consciously or unconsciously our conversation had influenced her development of this metaphor. Regardless, it is an awesome metaphor!
Random musings aside, these thoughts led me to understand what I believe to be the primary function of reflection and allowed me to begin to terse out the connection between reflection and student agency (the primary reason I wanted to do a DIS on reflection!). For me, reflection is intrinsically woven with metacognition; essentially, reflective writing enables us to articulate our thought processes. Once articulated, we can examine how we are thinking to improve our methods. In the case of a novice, they can begin to see how they think and develop more sophisticated methods that mirror an expert (or possibly see that their thinking is more complex and expert like than they thought).
Our thought processes are oftentimes rather unconscious; reflection forces us to bring them towards consciousness, allowing us to examine them for improvement, benefits/drawbacks, etc. Drawing on Dr. Yancey's GPS metaphor, we oftentimes learn how to get from point A to point B (I especially concur with her that writing is frequently taught this way) when composing, yet we do not have any idea how we learned it. Reflection enables us to not only understand our methods to get from point A to point B but also to see how those methods connect to the rest of the "map," granting us agency in finding solutions in the future since we can understand not only how to get from point A to point B but also see how point A and point B connect with the larger scheme of things. Thus, the next time we might take an alternative route, one that we had never seen before. Even if we stay with the same route, at least we know there are other options available to us and how that particular route fits into the grander scheme of a long-term journey!
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