Reflecting on Expert Blind Spots to Improve Skills-Based Teaching

As Jessamyn Neuhaus explains in Geeky Pedagogy, truly effective teaching centers on sharing knowledge enthusiastically. However, sometimes instructors get so enthusiastic about conveying knowledge that they skip foundational steps, leaving students feeling frustrated or behind. Navigating an expert blind spot can be a challenge for both novice and experienced educators, but doing so thoughtfully can result in stronger lessons for your course and a higher student success rate. Recently, I had the privilege of chatting with an interdisciplinary group of IU STEM faculty about a common instructor blind spot that students tend to struggle with: problem-solving. The faculty group shared with one another how they strategically identified and addressed this challenge in their classrooms. The conversation inspired this post and was an excellent demonstration of passionate educators collaboratively navigating their own expert blind spots.

Identifying expert blind spots.

As defined in Mitchell Nathan’s, Kenneth Koedinger’s, and Martha Alibali’s 2001 study, an expert blind spot is “the inability to perceive the difficulties that novices will experience as they approach a new domain of knowledge.” While being an expert in our subject matter helps us retain and explain specific topics, it can also distance us from our students who are often experiencing our content for the first time with diverse experiences and judgements. Exploring potential blind spots in your course content can be a challenge; if you’re unsure of where to start, consider some of the following strategies:

• Think through what students typically struggle with. Is there a particular assignment that students consistently score low on? A trend in your end-of-semester feedback? What questions do you find yourself answering again and again? These student struggles can be an indicator of a missed step, lapse in important connections, or underestimation of time to completion.
• Explore pedagogical literature specific to your field. What pedagogical topics are being written about in your field? Does your discipline focus heavily on primary source analysis, visual literacy, critical reading, or writing? What research have other scholars done to work with students on these crucial skills? If you’re unsure of where to start, you may consider consulting Kennesaw State’s Teaching Journals Directory and sorting by discipline.
• Enlist the help of an advanced novice. Advanced novices are those with knowledge of your field, but who may be closer to the earlier stages of learning. This can include undergraduate teaching assistants, graduate students, or someone in an adjacent field. Advanced novices can help you pinpoint challenging areas of your topic and provide suggestions on clear instruction.

The faculty group of STEM instructors used a combination of these strategies to look for similarities and differences in how their students approached problem-solving. All three disciplines represented (Biology, Chemistry, and Physics) relied on problem sets in their work, and instructors in all three fields noticed students struggling to complete these sets successfully. They each outlined the purpose of the problem-sets and their goals for having students complete them: to serve as a basis for future skills, to help students prepare for class, and to emphasize critical thinking and collaboration skills.

Addressing the blind spots.

After identifying potential blind spots in your classes, reflect on how you could incorporate appropriate skills into your lessons to foster student success. You might:

• Build in extra practice time. Devoting a class period, or even small segments of multiple classes, to allow students to practice discipline-specific skills can have a significant impact on student success. Providing students with guided practice supplements their out-of-class learning and allows them to replicate the experience with their homework. You might even consider a flipped classroom approach, which exposes students to material outside of class and asks them to practice during class.
• Demystify your mastery. Thinking back and articulating your own challenges to students encourages a growth mindset by testifying to the ability to master content and achieve an expert status. Walking students through your ideas step-by-step allows students to see all the thinking behind the academic work.
• Utilize peer-to-peer instruction. Sometimes, the best help for a student struggling is another student who is learning the material alongside them. You might encourage students to set up study groups, or ask recent students to provide tips and strategies for common challenges.

Our STEM faculty group worked collaboratively after identifying the problem-solving blind spot. The instructors shared resources and classroom practices they had implemented to help introductory students work through challenges. For this particular group of faculty, addressing problem-solving involved experimenting with a flipped classroom, modeling how to break down a problem, and using peer-to-peer instruction in their respective courses. They candidly discussed what worked and what didn’t, and they brainstormed ways to incorporate different methods into their own courses.

As someone who needed a lot (and I do mean a lot) of extra help and studying to pass my undergraduate GenEd STEM courses, it was both enlightening and energizing to listen to this talented group of instructors discuss their own expert blind spots in a way centered on student success. If you notice students struggling in your course, take time to identify your own expert blind spots. Then, use those reflections to reframe your lesson plans. If you want to hear more about how this faculty group handles problem-solving in more detail, be sure to join them on April 12 for a panel discussion about teaching problem-solving in STEM courses. For even more information about STEM courses, specifically about how these courses can impact marginalized students, join us on April 11 for a discussion with Dr. Josie Nardo.

 

Further reading:

Ambrose, Susan A et al. How Learning Works: Seven Research-based Principles for Smart Teaching.  San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010. (Specifically, Chapter 4: “How do students develop mastery.”)

Nathan, Mitchell J. et al. “Expert Blind Spot: When Content Knowledge Eclipses Pedagogical Content Knowledge.” (2001).

Neuhaus, Jessamyn. Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers. First edition. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2019.