Master

Masters, such as many teachers, counselors, and managers, understand and use phases from their experience. They may not use the same terminology, but they do use master principles based on their own observations.

Organizations collect data on what their members do. When they distinguish levels of complexity and record how often each level occurs, their summaries look like the rating totals for online merchants. Few organizations take the next step to plot these totals over time to make phase charts. Such charts can help to identify learner development, design programs, and provide feedback.

A phase chart can be made for one or several goals. Charts for a single goal refer just to the modes for that goal. Because phases are distinguished by increasing complexity, we combine modes for severlal goals by calculating the median phase. Whether for a single goal or multiple goals, the phase chart gives the percentage use of each phase at regular time points. Typically, the beginning phase starts high and declines in percentage as the students move to the explore phase. That phase starts low and grows rapidly. Each more complex phase starts progressively lower and grows slowly but suppresses the growth of the simpler phases enough to surpass their percentage use.

Those interested in applying the scientific method to the study of expertise and knowledge development will find the Inspire page interesting.

Master Principles

  1. The process principle is that when masters plan to help learners acquire a particular mode, they observe an important difference before they decide on the process. Either the learners are still relying on a simpler, less effective approach or they are already using the more complex mode. In the first case, they will focus on transformative learning while in the second case, they choose to focus on habit formation. They know that discussions will help transformative learning while rehearsal with feedback is more useful for habit formation.

  2. The learning-zone principle refers to learners recognizing two modes above the one they customarily use at but having great difficulty learning if they try to skip the intervening mode. They may not even be able to recognize or understand three modes above where they are now performing. For some examples, younger children in a family learn language faster than first-borns because they can rely on sibling rather than adult language. Also, the one-room schoolhouse worked, as does providing graduate student mentors to undergraduates.

  3. The modular principle refers to distinguishing modes by their onset and performance times. A mode that has a late onset and long performance time will require high motivation and opportunity to acquire, while one with an early onset and short performance time may interfere with more complex learning.

Phase Charts

Teaching, feedback, and program design do not require precise values of the percentage use of each phase. But knowing such values are possible for each goal, helps masters observe, plan, and give feedback. Organizations often collect such values to improve their programs.

At each point in time, one mode will be the most popular. We calculate its performance onset as the crossover point where its usage first exceeds the other modes. Before that point learners use transformative learning to acquire the mode and after that point they use habit formation to improve their speed and accuracy of performance. The performing time of the modes is the span from its onset to the onset of its successor mode.

The phase chart at the left provides an example. For 9 years Soundscapes of Newport News, VA provided more than 2,500 calibrated performance ratings with 41% of children from families earning more than low income. They rated the modes for 9 goals, 4 musical, 4 social, and 1 combined. The shows phases of musical development based on the median musical ratings of the musical modes (including the comined goal). .

They called the exploring phase “fundamental” and the sustaining phase “intermediate” to match current language relating to music complexity. The crossover from beginning to fundamental (green to gold) actually occurred before the first ratings were made. The performance onset for intermediate occurred at 2.8 years and lasted 3.5 years. The performance onset for master (the crossover from grey to blue), therefore, began at 6.3 years.

It helps masters to understand the factors that determine how learners use the phases. Four factors are most important. The baseline is the percentage use of a phase at the first time point. Its growth rate is its usability. How much it surpresses the other phases is its motivation. There is also a typical amount of time that learners will devote to a particular phase of each goal, which we call the learning opportunity.