What I Learned about Expertise

I just had the opportunity to attend a Marzano Research Laboratory training that focused on three areas: supervision of instruction, assessment, and building background knowledge.  I will post some thoughts on each as I have a chance to reflect - but I was really struck by Dr. Marzano's discussion about building expertise.  Research was cited by that we are all truly satisfied in our jobs when 3 conditions exist:

1. We pick something difficult and get really good at it. 
2. The thing that we pick affects people in a positive way.
3. People need some autonomy about their job.

It seems that the teaching profession fits the bill on all three criteria - teaching is a complex process that takes years to really get good at, we do affect people in a positive way, and by in large teachers have autonomy in their job. 

Dr. Marzano went on to state that it really takes 10 years to become an expert - this is also supported by Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hour rule" from the book Outliers.  Gladwell asserts that to gain true expertise, one has to put in about 10,000 hours of practice to hone their skills.

Interestingly enough, if you consider a typical teaching day as 6 hours, with 180 school days in a year; at the end of 10 years a teacher has put in 10,800 hours.

What this does for me is beg the question; why do we expect all teachers to be expert when they first begin?  Why are we not providing relevant feedback over the course of a teacher's career that assumes people won't be expert, but will improve? 

I learned that teaching is a complex job that is difficult to quantify into checklists.

I learned that the supervision of instruction with quality feedback is imperative to improving student achievement.

I learned that we need a growth model for teachers that assumes they will be novices when they begin, but will grow and improve over time. 

Toby