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Practice is extremely important, and I don't think its importance is exaggerated at all. I would expect students in an environment with a typically high studen

Practice is extremely important, and I don't think its importance is exaggerated at all. I would expect students in an environment with a typically high student-to-teacher ratio, but who actually practice what they're being taught, will significantly outperform students who are taught one-on-one by a personal tutor but rarely actually perform the thing that they're trying to learn. Obviously, "¿Por Qué No Los Dos?" - doing both is even better. But tutoring isn't obviously superior to practice. As a personal anecdote (not to replace the above general arguments), I've gotten several hundred hours of one-on-one tutoring in an advanced field of physics from a number of experts, and yet I learned significantly less than I have from significantly fewer hours studying a separate (but no less difficult) field of math when I actually worked the problems.

jonahx 1y ago
> But tutoring isn't obviously superior to practice. Good tutoring will essentially be practice and worked problems with instant feedback -- not an individual "lecture". While there is value to being in the forest entirely alone, I think for a motivated student good tutoring will outperform working problems on your own in speed of overall learning. Both are good though, and I agree working the problems out, and working a lot of problems, is the main thing.
- throw10920 1y ago
  > Good tutoring will essentially be practice and worked problems with instant feedback Yes, but then we're conflating the two things we're trying to separate - one-on-one instruction, and worked practice. I was using "tutoring" to mean specifically one-on-ones. I completely agree that a good tutor will have you practice what you're learning, and that's definitely much closer to optimal than the educational mess we're currently in.
  - graemep 1y ago
    They are related. They are both individual learning. One thing I have observed in my own experience (my own, and my, mostly home educated, kids) is that both one to one teaching AND learning on one's own (the amount of it being practice varying with subject) are better than classroom/lecture learning. This is not a statistical sample or a study, but it is three people across multiple subjects, at a pretty full range of levels (from primary school level to postgrad). Maybe much learning is an individual activity and learning in groups is just ineffective?
    - jonahx 1y ago
      > Maybe much learning is an individual activity and learning in groups is just ineffective? Learning in groups is wildly ineffective from the perspective of gaining functional mastery over some subject (whether writing well, solving algebra problems, etc). However, it does have a lot of unrelated benefits, arguably more important: learning to collaborate with others, understanding how others think and learn, understanding your own skill level by direct comparison with others, competition as a motivator for learning, and more.
      - graemep 1y ago
        I am not convinced that those are realised in real life. The joy of learning is a better and more sustainable motivator than competition. Learning to collaborate with others is an important skill, but I am not sure it is particular often promoted within classroom learning. There are lots of things you can do (sports, hobbies, anything that aims at an end in a group) that are better at teaching collaboration. Spending less time on learning frees up time for other, IMO better, ways of learning all those skill.s
      - inglor_cz 1y ago
        Learning in groups is not the same as learning in a classroom. When I was a freshman, we created an impromptu "Calculus Brotherhood", met in 4-6 people and attacked problems together. It worked freakingly well.
    - milesvp 1y ago
      I would argue that learning in groups is potentially exponentially more effective. There is a lot of individual interactions that go on when people are all learning something at the same time. Tidbits that they each share with one another. And emotion that social interactions evoke is a powerful motivator for mental rewiring. But I don’t want to dismiss your insights. I’m curious what the difference is that I’ve experienced. Certainly just putting random people together isn’t nearly as beneficial as grouping by ability, or motivation to learn the topic is useful. Maybe that is a necessary requirement for effective group learning?
atoav 1y ago
As a university level educator that also has assistants that learn through practise I must say I find the question: "Is tutoring better than practise?" useless. Better at what? In which field?Thst surely highly depends at what the goal, the subject, the individual students character, the available time and teaching resources are. That means the question is so context-dependent that any potential answer would only bring insight with that specific context in mind. That being said, I am a huge fan of practise paired with theory (this is what a good tutor would do). Many people only start to care about theory once they have encountered the problems theory helps with have been encountered in the wild. And getting people to care is one of the first things any educator has to achieve. There are many who start with the base assumption that theory is worthless, but I'd argue having accurate mental models will greatly improve the speed and quality of the work. Additionally this helps to learn faster, as the question why aomething went wrong in practise can be answered faster and more accurately.
- throw10920 1y ago
  > I find the question: "Is tutoring better than practise?" useless. Yes, on further reflection, you're right. My statement was spurred by the claim that practice had "exaggerated significance" in the article relative to practice, which is kind of a hard thing to quantify and argue about. And I definitely wasn't trying to say that theory isn't important! I love theory - I don't actually like working the problems - and think that it's important, it's just that I've realized that lots of theory is much less effective without practice, even in a highly abstract field like math. The interplay between abstract (abstract explanation; theory) and concrete (concrete examples in the course of explanation; practice) is fascinating to me. Based on your experience, do you have any insight for whether, in the course of verbal/written instruction, it's better to start with concrete instances of a concept, and then give the abstract concept itself, or vice versa?
  - jonahx 1y ago
    > Based on your experience, do you have any insight for whether, in the course of verbal/written instruction, it's better to start with concrete instances of a concept, and then give the abstract concept itself, or vice versa? The abstract concept is meaningless without the concrete examples. It is only mathematicians, who are accustomed to the abstract theorem being the final goal, who get confused about this. It's only possible to consider the "theorem first" approach as reasonable to the extent that you, or the students, already have the requisite concrete foundations to understand it. Which is to say: to the extent that it is not really "new".
seer 1y ago
Practicing and getting constant feedback is so important (and sadly underrated in school). It still strange to me how we empathise rote learning in school and have the experimentation away from experts (homework). For example in orbital mechanics it was experimentation that got me to actually understand all the retrograde burns, plane changes and Hohmann transfers, almost exactly like the xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/1356/ https://xkcd.com/1356/ (though without the job at NASA part of course)
- andsoitis 1y ago
  > getting constant feedback Concur. However, how many teachers and students are willing to engage in candid critique of the student’s work?

jonahx 1y ago

> But tutoring isn't obviously superior to practice. Good tutoring will essentially be practice and worked problems with instant feedback -- not an individual "lecture". While there is value to being in the forest entirely alone, I think for a motivated student good tutoring will outperform working problems on your own in speed of overall learning. Both are good though, and I agree working the problems out, and working a lot of problems, is the main thing.

throw10920 1y ago
> Good tutoring will essentially be practice and worked problems with instant feedback Yes, but then we're conflating the two things we're trying to separate - one-on-one instruction, and worked practice. I was using "tutoring" to mean specifically one-on-ones. I completely agree that a good tutor will have you practice what you're learning, and that's definitely much closer to optimal than the educational mess we're currently in.
- graemep 1y ago
  They are related. They are both individual learning. One thing I have observed in my own experience (my own, and my, mostly home educated, kids) is that both one to one teaching AND learning on one's own (the amount of it being practice varying with subject) are better than classroom/lecture learning. This is not a statistical sample or a study, but it is three people across multiple subjects, at a pretty full range of levels (from primary school level to postgrad). Maybe much learning is an individual activity and learning in groups is just ineffective?
  - jonahx 1y ago
    > Maybe much learning is an individual activity and learning in groups is just ineffective? Learning in groups is wildly ineffective from the perspective of gaining functional mastery over some subject (whether writing well, solving algebra problems, etc). However, it does have a lot of unrelated benefits, arguably more important: learning to collaborate with others, understanding how others think and learn, understanding your own skill level by direct comparison with others, competition as a motivator for learning, and more.
    - graemep 1y ago
      I am not convinced that those are realised in real life. The joy of learning is a better and more sustainable motivator than competition. Learning to collaborate with others is an important skill, but I am not sure it is particular often promoted within classroom learning. There are lots of things you can do (sports, hobbies, anything that aims at an end in a group) that are better at teaching collaboration. Spending less time on learning frees up time for other, IMO better, ways of learning all those skill.s
    - inglor_cz 1y ago
      Learning in groups is not the same as learning in a classroom. When I was a freshman, we created an impromptu "Calculus Brotherhood", met in 4-6 people and attacked problems together. It worked freakingly well.
  - milesvp 1y ago
    I would argue that learning in groups is potentially exponentially more effective. There is a lot of individual interactions that go on when people are all learning something at the same time. Tidbits that they each share with one another. And emotion that social interactions evoke is a powerful motivator for mental rewiring. But I don’t want to dismiss your insights. I’m curious what the difference is that I’ve experienced. Certainly just putting random people together isn’t nearly as beneficial as grouping by ability, or motivation to learn the topic is useful. Maybe that is a necessary requirement for effective group learning?

atoav 1y ago

As a university level educator that also has assistants that learn through practise I must say I find the question: "Is tutoring better than practise?" useless. Better at what? In which field?Thst surely highly depends at what the goal, the subject, the individual students character, the available time and teaching resources are. That means the question is so context-dependent that any potential answer would only bring insight with that specific context in mind. That being said, I am a huge fan of practise paired with theory (this is what a good tutor would do). Many people only start to care about theory once they have encountered the problems theory helps with have been encountered in the wild. And getting people to care is one of the first things any educator has to achieve. There are many who start with the base assumption that theory is worthless, but I'd argue having accurate mental models will greatly improve the speed and quality of the work. Additionally this helps to learn faster, as the question why aomething went wrong in practise can be answered faster and more accurately.

throw10920 1y ago
> I find the question: "Is tutoring better than practise?" useless. Yes, on further reflection, you're right. My statement was spurred by the claim that practice had "exaggerated significance" in the article relative to practice, which is kind of a hard thing to quantify and argue about. And I definitely wasn't trying to say that theory isn't important! I love theory - I don't actually like working the problems - and think that it's important, it's just that I've realized that lots of theory is much less effective without practice, even in a highly abstract field like math. The interplay between abstract (abstract explanation; theory) and concrete (concrete examples in the course of explanation; practice) is fascinating to me. Based on your experience, do you have any insight for whether, in the course of verbal/written instruction, it's better to start with concrete instances of a concept, and then give the abstract concept itself, or vice versa?
- jonahx 1y ago
  > Based on your experience, do you have any insight for whether, in the course of verbal/written instruction, it's better to start with concrete instances of a concept, and then give the abstract concept itself, or vice versa? The abstract concept is meaningless without the concrete examples. It is only mathematicians, who are accustomed to the abstract theorem being the final goal, who get confused about this. It's only possible to consider the "theorem first" approach as reasonable to the extent that you, or the students, already have the requisite concrete foundations to understand it. Which is to say: to the extent that it is not really "new".

seer 1y ago

Practicing and getting constant feedback is so important (and sadly underrated in school). It still strange to me how we empathise rote learning in school and have the experimentation away from experts (homework). For example in orbital mechanics it was experimentation that got me to actually understand all the retrograde burns, plane changes and Hohmann transfers, almost exactly like the xkcd comic https://xkcd.com/1356/ https://xkcd.com/1356/ (though without the job at NASA part of course)

andsoitis 1y ago
> getting constant feedback Concur. However, how many teachers and students are willing to engage in candid critique of the student’s work?