Mastery refers to the attainment of a high degree of competence within a particular area. That area can be narrowly or broadly defined ranging from discrete skills (for example using a Bunsen burner) or content knowledge (for example knowing the names of all U.S. presidents) to extensive knowledge and skills within a complex disciplinary domain (for example French theater thermodynamics or game theory).
For students to achieve mastery within a domain whether narrowly or broadly conceived they need to develop a set of key component skills practice them to the point where they can be combined fluently and used with a fair degree of automaticity and know when and where to apply them appropriately.
Elements of Mastery
- KNOW WHEN TO APPLY Skills
- PRACTICE Integrating Skills
- ACQUIRE Component Skills
Stages in the Development of Mastery
UNCONSCIOUS Competence CONSCIOUS Competence CONSCIOUS Incompetence UNCONSCIOUS Incompetence
When expert instructors are blind to the learning needs of novice students it is known as expert blind spot (Nickerson 1999; Hinds 1999; Nathan & Koedinger 2000; Nathan & Petrosino 2003).
Another method to emerge in the research is to support some aspects of a complex task while students perform the entire task (Sweller & Cooper 1985). This result called the** worked-example effect** is one example of a process called scaffolding whereby instructors temporarily relieve some of the cognitive load so that students can focus on particular dimensions of learning.
To illustrate this distinction between extraneous and germane load consider engineering students who are having difficulty solving practice problems.
The application of skills (or knowledge strategies approaches or habits) learned in one context to a novel context is referred to as transfer. Transfer is said to be near if the learning context and transfer context are similar and far when the contexts are dissimilar.