"Errorless Learning" leads to telling Dr. Bjrok to "stay in his own lane"

 

(Creative Commons, 2021)

To be honest, I am struggling writing this blog post because although Dr. Bjork has obviously spent his career proving his work around “desirable difficulties” (Bjork, 1994), I find myself frustrated at his hubris on a few key arguments he made during his lecture (not to mention the multiple grammatical errors on his slides and him reading directly off his slides during his ‘Lecturer of the Year’ lecture). Because I am so triggered by some of his statements, I feel a need to use this blog post to do exactly what Seth Godin says a blog should be used for: “respond out loud” and show the “metacognition of thinking about what” I have been struggling with since watching the lecture earlier this week. Obviously, I need to answer the prompt, but I might get there in a nonconventional way. And, in not answering the prompt directly, I am changing a behavior of my own.

 Dr. Bjork has proven that varying the conditions of learning allows the learner/learners to optimize the “desirable difficulties” necessary for learning. He states, “conditions of instruction that appear to create difficulties for the learner, slowing the rate of apparent learning, often optimize long-term retention and transfer” (Bjork, 2016). In his famous beanbag toss study (which we have read about now in both books and the chapter from Bjork’s book cowritten with his wife), he proved how varying conditions of learning improve “long-term retention and transfer”, similar to muscle memory. I agree with his findings and believe that we should vary the conditions of how students study because they will not be taking tests in the same location with the same environmental distractions all the time.

 However, in Dr. Bjork’s lecture, he continues to pat himself on the back as the all knowing in all areas of learning, including on the basketball court. He speaks about an instant while watching the then Los Angeles Laker, Shaquille O’Neal, where he thought of writing to the coach on how to solve Shaq’s low free-throw shooting ability. Bjork’s answer was for Shaq to take shots closer inside the key, moving back and forth in varying ranges from the basketball hoop. In his lecture, he laughs at how he almost drafted a letter to then head coach, Phil Jackson, about his suggestion and Bjork later was quoted in an article for Time magazine about this incident. For anyone who watched Shaq in the 90s play basketball, we know his free-throw shooting was not what made him a legend and although free-throws are an extremely important skill, for whatever reason, the 7’1” giant could never break sixty percent at the free-throw line. That is quite embarrassing for a professional basketball player, but sadly was the best he could do.

 My argument with Bjork comes from being a basketball player for a good portion of my life, not just from being a fan of Shaq’s and feeling a need to defend him – quite frankly I will not defend Shaq – they were FREE THROWS, it is in the name: free! Bjork is not on par with his comparison between the bean bag test and applying the same theory to basketball. Yes, players should vary their practicing of their free-throws on a variety of courts (home gym, rec center, outdoors), in a variety of elements (bright lights, dim lights, cold, overbearing heat), with a variety of spectators (loud and screaming, or completely silent). When it comes to free-throws, unlike a jump shot, the location never changes. Free-throws are always fifteen feet from the basket and never have direct interference from the opposing team. Being that I am a glorified has-been of the basketball world – four year starting high school varsity point guard, All-State 3-point shooter, full-ride recipient to play college at Regis University – I questioned for a hot second if I might be incorrect in questioning The Dr. Bjork’s conclusion of how to shoot a better and more consistent free-throw. My basketball IQ includes not only playing with some of the top players in the country, but also spending hundreds of hours on various courts, attending camps by some of the best coaches in the country, and spending two summers in a classroom learning how to be a better and smarter point-guard. Since I am a student of the game, I researched what coaches say about how to improve the free-throw. Not to my surprise, they all disagree vehemently with Dr. Bjork: the only way to improve free-throws is take them from the free-throw line over and over and over again. They did say that players should vary when they take them - after running a drill, in game like situations, after running suicides – but never from varying distances in the key. Free-throws should always be taken on the free-throw line, fifteen feet from the basket. There is even a nail in the middle of the line that proves it is exactly fifteen feet and it is always correct. In this case, Dr. Bjork needs to stay in his own lane and Shaq needed to take more free-throws.

The second major frustration I have with Dr. Bjork’s lecture is in response to his slide on: “Why is the judgement that blocking enhances inductive learning so difficult to overcome?” (Bjork, 2016). This particular slide suggests (possibly blames) K-12 educators for why students are conditioned to believe that blocking is better for learning. The slide states that “blocking provides a sense of fluency”, particularly in how teachers provide organized instruction in their classes. According to Bjork, although teachers are trained that consistency and organization will aid in their students’ learning, they are in fact only giving students a “sense” of this learning by teaching blocked units and not interleaving. If teachers interleaved their material, students would be able to experience a stronger form of learning and not be blinded by their own intuitions (which we apparently taught them by being too organized). Understandably, Bjork makes a strong argument that instruction should be interleaved with vocabulary, content, and application. This I am not arguing with. What I question is how he would encourage teachers to restructure their unit or syllabuses? As a 6-12 English/Language Arts teacher in an inner-city school district, being organized and giving students a clear path on how to reach their learning successes is paramount especially for our ELA students. When teachers interleave too much, our non-proficient English speakers get confused and shut down. Similarly, our students come from inconsistent environments, not ever having a “sense of fluency” in their worlds. When they come to school, they seek consistency and if they get too confused or find something too difficult, they give up. I believe they need to meet challenges and gain skills to overcome them, and sometimes having blocked instruction is how this can be achieved. However, I do believe that interleaving material is a stronger way for students to learn, but I push back on Bjork’s belief that teachers are the root cause of this intuition in the world of learning.

 In writing out my frustrations, I am come to my faulty intuition and made an attempt to overcome it. Much like my students, I have had a fear of failing, or as Dr. Bjork calls it: “The ‘errorless learning’ approach (Bjork, 2016). Before earning my undergrad, I was the definition of a perfectionist in all areas of my life. My two greatest fears during my adolescence included my dad not being able to walk me down the aisle when I got married (he was an undercover narcotics detective for the Denver Police Department), and failure. I was afraid of failing academically, in basketball, and in life. To combat my extremely intense and very irrational fear, I spent hours studying for exams, making presentations and posters perfect, and coloring every inch of papers so they looked neat and, well, perfect. In basketball, I was a gym rat: first one to practice, last one to leave, spending hours during in hundred-degree heat on my neighborhood court practicing dribbling, passing, and shooting drills with my dad or teammates who wanted to keep up. In life, I became a people pleaser, avoiding conflict and often times being the person hurt because I did not want to make a mistake or do something that would make be seem like a bad person. I would cry if I failed a test, beat myself up if I had more than four turnovers in a game, and berate myself how horrible a daughter I was if I displeased my parents with normal teenage rebellion or talking back. Living a life “error free” did not teach me anything and instead made me less willing to take risks that could lead to learning and better experiences. I was lucky enough that during undergrad, I was forced to take risks, especially as a student of teaching and in my English classes, where I made huge errors and learned how I needed to learn in order to become a better teacher, student, and human. Once I started trying to take risks with my writing, I learned that I could not write an essay the night before it was due, and instead found my style was to meet with the professor multiple times, going through multiple revisions before finding the appropriate and strong writing style. With teaching, I have had to take big risks with my lessons and instructions to experience optimal teaching situations where my students can be provided the best instruction. Over the last thirteen years, these risks have come with lots of errors and failures. However, through strong reflection and regrouping, I have learned from the experiences and have become a better teacher because of the errors.

 Openly criticizing Dr. Bjork is my personal attempt at continuing to change my previous learning style of being “errorless”. A people pleaser-perfectionist does not question the expert in the field, but instead finds some way to agree with them, hoping their conformity earns them the passing grade. I have come a long way from that person and knew my former basketball self and current teacher self could not let Bjork be unquestioned.