Go, teaching and mindsets
Adewale Oshineye
Have you seen this article:
http://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2009-10-20/high_anxiety.md#readme
It's about the author's difficulty learning Go because he expects to
be a great player instantly and the traumatic levels of anxiety he
experiences when this turns out to be untrue.
I'm sharing it with you for two reasons:
- It shows why it's important to have good teachers. At this
weekend's BarCamp London 7 I taught roughly a dozen people the basics
of Go. They came away enthused and looking to learn more. I didn't
play a single game of Go with any of them. Instead I taught them the
rules and then went through some simple exercises (try to make 2 eyes
whilst the other learner tries to stop you. Do this while moving
quickly and without thought. Explain your reasoning as you play.) The
author of that blog post had the misfortune of finding teachers who
believe that they can teach someone in a competitive environment and
that the best way to teach something is 'on the job' rather than
through deliberate structured practice.
- it shows what can happen when a smart person approaches a problem
with what Carol Dweck calls a "fixed" mindset:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck To quote that Wikipedia page
"Fixed-mindset individuals dread failure because it is a negative
statement on their basic abilities, while growth mindset individuals
don't mind failure as much because they realize their performance can
be improved."
The parallels with software craftsmanship seem very strong but what I
find truly fascinating is the way someone who usually has a growth
mindset in other aspects of his life doesn't transfer his successful
learning approach to this new domain.