March Newsletter
Scoping possibilities for micromastering patisserie and looking at getting good feedback and being able to adapt mental models when learning
Scoping the Possibility of micromastering Patisserie
We were basking in the warmth created by the winter sun being captured by the South facing window of the coffee shop. My wife and I began talking about her interest in patisserie and the ongoing difficulty in finding people who could make it. In her experience independent cafes and bakeries had often started making them but then soon reverted to a more limited offering found in ‘every day’ bakeries. (As we talked, and I researched later, it became apparent why – it can be a highly multistep and labour-intensive process.)
It also became clear that I had a lot of misconceptions about patisserie. I had always thought that it was about the sweet pastry. My wife explained that her interest was as much with the genoise cake-based patisserie and began deconstructing the way she thought the tiramisu that she was enjoying was made.
It occurred to me that it would be fun and interesting to learn how to make a tiramisu or similar cake and approach it via micromastery. Just purely for the pleasure we could both get from it and to see where it might lead – there is no intention to become a master ‘patissier’.
I know next to nothing about making cakes and thought I had better start by just learning to make a genoise sponge. Apparently, if I stick some jam and cream between two layers of sponge it counts as a cake, and I know some young people who would eat them, even if not perfect. (I’m not a great fan of sponge cakes myself but we have a potential payoff here.)
Some online research followed as I wanted to see if experienced people could describe the rub-pat barriers and offer advice on potential entry tricks and other support. There are plenty of videos online for reference and I viewed a reasonable sample to see what points emerged in common.
· The rub-pat barrier is similar to that of a souffle – maintaining the integrity of the bubbles while adding flour to the egg and sugar foam first mix. This is going to take practice of the ‘cutting and lifting motion’ and will likely lead to approximations to a sponge. Hopefully the youngsters won’t be too discriminating.
· Warming the mix could help as an entry trick at this stage. Also, for creating the foam, electric beaters could be more useful than untutored whisking by hand – we have one of them. Adding a bit of butter can strengthen the bubbles too and there is also a good description of how to tell when the foam is ready.
The plan is to micromaster the genoise sponge to an acceptable level and then similarly work my way through the subsequent steps – soaking the sponge in coffee, then working on the eggs, sugar and mascarpone cheese topping in small micromastery stages.
I was also interested in what have I learnt from this scoping activity.
Firstly, that there needn’t be a set sequence to the 6-part structure of a micromastery. For example, you can look for background support by effectively ‘asking the experts’ before starting the enterprise.
Also, I am becoming more consciously aware of the experience of linking small micromasteries into a larger project. I can see the need for this in developing other micromasteries in my interest in art and that will allow me interleave practicing different skills. Many of us have likely experienced this if involved in taught craft or sport activities or may be able to look back over better aspects of our formal education and identify this process.
I can also see that I have two different batches of micromasteries. One group that I want to develop more expertise in, and a second group that I take more lightly. The first group I am quite disciplined in allocating time to. The second group is more exploratory, and some are purely for the fun. In the second group I can ‘drop’ some if I feel that I am overloading myself. For example, I will drop cheesemaking and piemaking while I experiment with genoise cake. Whereas I make time for woodworking and art. If I get ‘stuck’ or feel on the plateau in any of these micromasteries, I can switch to one of the others. These two groups may well change over time.
Internal Barriers to Learning continued
1 Level of challenge, Confidence/Motivation and Assessing one’s success at tasks and progress continued….
Assessment
When looking at assessment we are considering competence of performance. There is a clear link with ‘mistakes’ and viewing the two together to modify one’s models is very useful. Some principles that have a good evidential base are as follows:
· It should be personal not a general statement about the ‘class’ if you are in one.
· Immediate or as timely as possible at the point of need particularly when mistakes are being made (this is known as formative assessment in the trade), though there are exceptions, as described below. It could include some praise – to keep the motivation. Feedback that praises effort, application or process and persistence rather is much more useful than praise of ability. Early inappropriate praise can lead to less useful ideas and dispositions within the learner such as perplexity or cynicism.
· At a certain point in time and certainly after some initial confidence has been established, and in some contexts, it can be useful to let someone make mistakes for a little longer as the emotional response can help the ‘lesson’ be more salient.
· Useful – so precise, explanatory (and narrative - This is what you did well, you could improve here…’), with hints or clear advice on how to improve. Overcoming observed errors is the way to increasing skills in all the contexts described in the last newsletter and a particular feature of deliberate practice. This needs a bit more detail when engaging with application and exploitation if one is consciously wishing to move towards greater expertise. First of all, one needs to avoid the ‘true but useless’ comments – for example ‘be more systematic.’ The action needs to be defined and, in some cases, explained and practiced. Sometimes, the feedback can end up to action that is different from what you were originally learning and may even involve a training plan with steps and progression. Assessment of application and Exploitation may well need some additional considerations. For example, knowing when mistakes are consequential and when they are not, becomes an important additional skill. Assessment needs to become a longer analytical consideration and discussion of mistakes. There is a very clear link with modifying models in this type of discussion (whether it is with yourself or with others) and this is developed at the end of the next section.) Where learning to connect or transfer knowledge, or chose from strategies, analysis of what didn’t work is really useful in increasing understanding and developing effective strategies.
· Formative – so ideally an intense encouragement to action. As well as the advice on how to improve, the tone it is given in needs to be encouraging, and time needs to be given to practice the advice, preferably as soon after it is given.
· Recorded – if more practice over time is needed, oral feedback can be forgotten.
These principles are becoming more widely known and are easily found online. But they are not always found in use – they can be difficult to scale up into formal education settings and mediocre feedback can be a barrier.
However, we are in the business of inquiring and trialling what we can do for ourselves with our own volition and in our own time. Thus, there are potentially lots of opportunities for removing barriers such as poor feedback when directing your own learning and beyond the stage of being a total novice there are opportunities for assessing your own work and learning to do so optimally with these principles. There is a good practical example of recording the process shown in the link below.
Experience of assessment in formal education may well have left extremely negative associations with the old language of assessment. (this links in with ‘reactance’ which is one of the things that we will explore in next newsletter Words such as test, testing and examination may not be useful and changing the definition may not come easily.
Feedback is used more commonly as a neutral term in the context being described here, though some have suggested ‘feedforward’ might be a better term. You may wish to invent your own language for this process.
Change in perception will more likely come when the ideas are put into practise.
Self-testing can take a lot of the sting out of the word and the realisation that testing can be a learning device in itself and alters what we remember and how we organise it in our mind in ways that can speed up learning. How one self tests can depend upon the subject and we will try and include this aspect when outlining future micromasteries and routes to mastery.
2 Modifying Mental models
There can be tension caused by developing more expertise – between how much you know and how much you are open to new possibilities. One can become over-confident and reject advice and feedback. There are a number of theories as to why we can be reluctant to change our mental models but I haven’t found any evidence yet that favours any particular one, other than that than they might all actually be variations of a ‘property interest’.
A little narrative digression that might add to our understanding. Years ago, I had a neighbour who was an academic researching how children learnt science. What they found was, that children around the ages of 6 or 7 needed a lot of ‘persuading’ to change their casual models, even when presented with experimental evidence that the scientific method presents. Two things struck me at the time. I was surprised by two things, firstly that this ‘ossification’ had started so young. Secondly that my neighbour and his colleagues didn’t even consider the possibility that us adults (including academics) might still be prone to the same problem.
A trivial example to illustrate this that is not too embarrassing for myself. Recently I was changing the air pressure of my car tyres and letting the pressure out first as I wanted to then pump them up to a lower pressure. Another man waiting and getting a bit frustrated at the time I was taking came over and told me that the machine would do all this. I wasn’t quite sure, didn’t believe him and carried on, “Naw, they can’t do that, can they mate?’’ He gave up trying to convince me and went off tutting. It was only on the way home that I realised that perhaps he was trying to teach me something useful as much as hurry me along and I went and researched the machines. Of course, they can extract air from your tyres to a given pressure. I have now, somewhat belatedly, updated my model!
What may work in overcoming any reluctance we may have in changing our models is to change how one views these models.
A useful starting point that may be useful for some is a more dynamic view that models work to a degree and can be temporary perspectives. And that they can be adapted by being expanded or by having a range of multiple models to choose from, to apply to a range of specific contexts. This latter suggestion is a theme that threads through these newsletters on internal barriers. There are other models of the mind and learning which can be useful to some of the barriers that are being described here. Two useful ones are the ‘multiple you’ or ‘multi-mind’ model and the ‘Primary and secondary learning’ model of David Geary. This newsletter is an overview of the barriers, and we would hope to return to practical application and developing micromasteries of some of these other models in more detail in the future.
How we name our models, ideas and beliefs can be helpful. There is an interesting quote by the physicist David Deutsch – ‘…theories ought to be renamed misconceptions, and that progress consists of moving from one misconception to a preferable misconception.’
Inventing your own name for your mental models and beliefs may help. Seeing part yourself as a detached scientist towards your learning may be another. That is detached from what you are experiencing and detached from the self that is doing the observing. (This is an example of the multi-mind model being used practically.) And a disposition where you are focussed on looking for holes in your models rather than defending them.
There is a clear link between being open to mistakes, assessment of progress and being able to change one’s models within all the contexts of learning described in last months newsletter. With mistakes and failure, you are looking out for ‘why didn’t that work?’ rather than an over emotional response. There is considerable overlap with the practical approaches developed by Professor Klein in the March 20th newsletter which described an active micromastery approach to developing intuition which would be well worth a revisit. It was all about getting or giving yourself clear unambiguous feedback with a focus on what actually happened.
In the next newsletter(s) we will look at some of the barriers that can hinder transfer of knowledge and skills to wider applications, and ‘reactance’ to learning. And of course, begin to outline potential ways of removing them. The final newsletter on internal barriers will look at attention, focus and distractions and flipping the whole approach to look at what a competent teacher or coach actually does and how much of that one could do for oneself.