Coaching practices for Expecting to Teach

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Expecting to Teach, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I read this stuff and it all feels familiar while I’m looking at it, but the second I close the book it’s gone
  • I think I understand something until I try to actually say it out loud to someone, and then I fall apart at the parts I’d glossed over
  • I taught it once, felt the rush of finally getting it, and stopped there
  • I can recite the what of this topic fine, but the moment I imagine a sharp beginner asking me why it works or what happens if you change one piece, I realize I have no answer
  • Whenever I hit something new I reach straight for the tutorial before I’ve even tried it myself, and I’m starting to wonder if grabbing the answer that fast is exactly why none of it ever sticks

Practices that may help

  1. Study with the expectation of teaching
    Tell yourself you will have to teach this — and watch how differently you read it.
    The Protege Effect: Learn It Better by Teaching It
  2. Explain the material to someone else — real or imagined
    Teaching forces you to process at the deepest level: organizing information coherently, identifying gaps, and translating to another person’s perspective.
    Levels of Processing: Why Depth of Encoding Determines What You Remember
  3. The Protege Effect: Learn It Better by Teaching It
    The protege effect is the finding that people learn material more deeply when they teach it — or even just prepare to teach it — than when they study it for themselves. Experiments support that expecting to teach, and then explaining to a real or stand-in learner, drives more organized, durable understanding, largely because teaching forces you to confront the gaps in your own knowledge.
  4. Use what you couldn’t teach as your study list
    The moments you fumbled while teaching are exactly what to go back and learn.
    The Protege Effect: Learn It Better by Teaching It
  5. Prepare for the questions a learner would ask
    Predict what would confuse a beginner and make sure you can answer it.
    The Protege Effect: Learn It Better by Teaching It
  6. Attempt before instruction
    Try to solve a new type of problem with your current knowledge before any formal teaching.
    Productive Failure: How Struggling First Makes Instruction More Effective
  7. Ask what the audience already knows before explaining
    Probe prior knowledge explicitly rather than assuming it.
    The Curse of Knowledge: Why Experts Struggle to Teach
  8. Teach it to a real person
    Explain the concept to an actual listener who can ask questions back.
    The Feynman Technique, Step by Step
  9. Work backwards from what the learner needs to do
    Start with the decision or action the learner must take, then trace back only to the knowledge that serves it.
    The Curse of Knowledge: Why Experts Struggle to Teach
  10. Explain it out loud to a real or imagined learner
    Actually say the explanation aloud, to a person, a pet, or an empty chair.
    The Protege Effect: Learn It Better by Teaching It

Related concerns

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