Educators help students build expertise. Despite their critical role in the overall process, many teachers are unaware of the research on how expertise is truly developed. Guided by the inaccurate folklore around innate talent, we unconsciously limit the aspirations of our students and ourselves and fail to align our schools and classrooms for optimal growth. You can promote expertise systematically and consistently, and research documents this.
During this session, Gene Kerns reviews the research on world class performance with the particular goal of distilling it for educators. Specific topics examined in this interactive forum include:
- Essential research covering the 100-year span of the study of expert performance
- How we might want to rethink giftedness
- The qualities of "deliberate practice," heralded as "the most powerful approach to learning that has yet been discovered"
- Practical ideas on implementing the "science of expertise" in our schools and classroom
- How Renaissance Learning's products and best-practices support the development of expertise.
Consistently and overwhelmingly, the evidence showed that experts are always mad, not born.
Source: (Ericsson and Pool, 2016)
Gene Kerns
About the speaker:
Gene M. Kerns, Ed. D., Chief Academic Officer, Renaissance
Gene is a third-generation educator with teaching experience from elementary through the university level and K-12 administrative experience. He currently serves as Vice President and Chief Academic Officer of Renaissance Learning.
With nearly 25 years of experience of leading staff development and speaking at national and international conferences, his former clients include administrators' associations across the US and UK and the Ministry of Education of Singapore.
Gene received his Bachelor's degree and Master's degree from Longwood College in Virginia, and also holds a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) from the University of Delaware with an emphasis in Education Leadership. He is the author of 3 books on educational topics.
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