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Experts lose their basic skills

May 1, 20216

The good

I recently visited two events related to innovation in education. The first one (organized by the Royal Flemish Academy of Science) on ‘digital learning’ and the second one (organized by a university) on ‘using rubrics for scoring and giving feedback on academic writing’.

The bad

They both had quite a number of things in common:

  • The audience visiting the events was well populated and consisted of people willing to listen to the expertise offered.
  • It was an ex-cathedra lecture.
  • At times the speaker was hard to understand.
  • The slides were almost unreadable.

And the ugly

The latter is so appalling, that I could no longer concentrate on the content the speaker was trying to convey. Honestly? It made me very upset.

Teachers on all levels are urged by educational experts to modernize and improve their teaching, yet still the experts don’t manage to master teaching at the simplest level, i.e. an ex-cathedra lecture with decent auxiliary material.

Memories

My finest educational memories are interactive lectures by who I consider to be the best of the best. Probably the names will not ring a bell to you: Jan Trommelmans, P.E.M. Van den Wyngaert, Paul Levrie. Are these very famous people? No. Still, they understood their job of lecturer. Not by studying very hard on educational foundations, but by using their natural talent and itch for polishing that skill, year after year. There is more to gain with people with a passion for their job, than there is to gain with people with a degree in educational science. Let’s not forget that.

Conclusion

Is losing attention for the basics typical for educational experts? No. I think many experts suffer this kind of flaw. They excel in their niche, but grossly neglect the basics of their profession. Therefore, two conclusions of this rant would make sense to me: (1) please, pay attention to the basics and (2) let’s foster new talent in teaching and give them time to polish their passion and their skills, rather than to kill them with the science of education.

Does this mean that educational science is to be abolished? No. It should be a science that is offered on request and only offered to people with a passion for their job.