The practice gap
What happens when we confuse knowledge with skill
I study learning. This can be a frustrating topic, in part because so many of the concepts appear self-evident.
Consider this phrase from a recent text I read: “the intent to bring about learning is a consistent characteristic of teaching”(1). This sounds so ear-splittingly obvious! Of course teaching intends to bring about learning. But if you ask somebody to perform the task of teaching for you — or to “bring about learning” — what follows is no longer obvious. In fact, the meaning behind the statement becomes significantly more challenging to grasp.
Anyone who’s taken an acting class knows the importance of doing. While a director may want an actor to “be very angry,” this cue will only lead to stereotype: clenched fists, stomping foot, frowny facial expressions. If the actor is instead given something to do (such as tearing up a letter from a former lover, or tossing clothes in a suitcase), the anger will emerge naturally from the task at hand. We are not so much human beings as human doings.
In the class I’m teaching right now, which is (confusingly) a class on teaching, we are exploring many topics that seem self-evident: listening, presence, risk-taking. I remember when I began graduate school and was given an article on listening. I thought it was so absurd! Of course I know how to listen. Everyone listens. And that’s true — sort of.
It’s also a cognitive fallacy; it confuses the knowledge of what a thing is with the skill of how to do it. We assume that because we’ve mastered the definition, we’ve also mastered the practice. This is where I rely on my acting training in my teaching. Because words can give us a false sense of security. Last night we were talking about “discovery.” That sounds comprehensible enough. Next! But can you recall what it felt like in your bones the last time you discovered something? How it happened? What you did? When and under what circumstances you might again experience this sensation?
We don’t always think this way. Nobody gets in an airplane and assumes that they know how to pilot the plane because they can tell you what a pilot is. It tends to happen with things that we take for granted, that we hold as obvious features of a shared human experience. But when your job is to make room for such experiences — as is the job of the teacher, the therapist, the leader, the coach — well, this becomes a big problem.
“Risk-taking is important for learning!” That’s a phrase I hear a lot, and who would disagree? But these words are a facade: they assume that there’s some thing called “risk” that we can somehow summon into a learning experience. Truthfully, I have no idea what is risky for my students most days. Often even they don’t know. It’s only in the doing that the experience can take on the quality of risk. Only in looking back can we go, “ah yes, there it was.” Dorothy Heathcote, one of my all-time favorite drama education heroes, has a quote about thinking “from within” instead of “talking coolly about” (2). But most of us would rather talk coolly.
This is why I believe in practice. We have to try things, and we have to convince our students that these things are worth trying: things that seem obvious, things that seem pointless, things that seem so completely not worth our time. Often resistance is just information in disguise.
That game you don’t want to play? The ritual that seems silly? These practices contain lessons that we’ve learned to dismiss. We put up the smokescreen of knowing: “I already know how to do that.” But have you done it here? Now? With your today-body?
Maybe then, if we are paying enough attention, we will realize there’s more to mastery than meets the eye.
(1) Stolz, S. (2015). Embodied Learning. In Educational Philosophy and Theory.
(2) Heathcote, D. (1995). Drama as a Process for Change. In Drain, R. Twentieth-century theatre : A sourcebook. New York: Routledge.
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