From Student to Expert: Breaking Down Disciplinary Tasks in the Classroom

REGISTRATION CLOSED

Dates for 2-Part Workshop: Tuesday, February 16 and Tuesday, February 23
Times: 2:00pm – 3:30pm both dates

Why are certain tasks harder to teach than others? What makes these tasks easy for us as experts while stumping our students? What creates these “bottlenecks” in students’ learning, and how can we help our students overcome them?

In this two-part workshop, we will leverage cross-disciplinary conversations to address how to identify and communicate the processes behind tasks in our disciplines. By applying methods from David Pace’s Decoding the Disciplines, we will work together to break down (or “decode”) such tasks and learn how to model them for our students. Through a series of interactive and reflective activities, we will learn how this decoding framework can help us teach complex skills to a wider range of students and to do so in an inclusive manner. We will also discuss the rewards and challenges of making the process of decoding tasks, processes, and curricula a long-term, regular pedagogical practice.