Teach Your Son To Think Like An Expert

In a recent post, How To Think Like An Expert, I discussed some characteristics of how experts think when they solve problems, which was geared for adults.  So, how could this be applied to helping boys and young men with their academic work?

One of the most important skills students need, like experts, is the ability to conceptualize different scenarios or problems.  When we encounter a new set of information or “problem,” being able to get a mental picture of what that would “look” like is critical so we can break it down, understand its parts, or synthesize the parts in to an understandable whole.  Getting an accurate image of how things fit together is, essentially, conceptualizing how the whole comes together and how the parts are related to each other.  Not only is it a way of understanding the information (versus just memorizing), it helps us to remember in a way that can be later applied.

How might this fit a student’s academic work?  There are limitless ways, but think about this basic example just to get a feel for conceptualization:

Imagine your student has to understand, let’s say, a series of battles about the civil war, including names, dates, places, etc.  A logical way to organize this (conceptualize it) is with a timeline.  Once the basics of the dates and names of the battles are mapped on to it, you can add further information, and create what I think of as an annotated timeline.  Being able to transform a jumbled, unorganized mass of information in to a logical and graphical model will help enhance both his understanding and remembering.  Conceptualizing asks the question “so, what would that look like?”

Other ways to conceptualize are to have him create graphs, charts, tables, or other graphical ways to logically organize the information.  A simple way to remember associated information is to use a grid to group things together by association, and not by category.  Grouping together a name, date, and key facts that are all related to each other helps them to hang together in memory, instead of doing a list of, say names separately, which pulls apart the meaningful grouping.  Bear in mind he must do all of this himself to benefit most.  One study showed that student-created study materials are remembered better than those just given to them, such as study sheets.  You’ll both see the results almost immediately if he works to create his own logically organized study sheets using the methods above.

The bottom line on teaching your son how to think smarter is to have him transform vague scenarios in to well-defined attainable parts, and create organized frameworks that build his knowledge.  As he works with the parts and “solves” them to their necessary end, like many experts, he’s transforming the vague in to the concrete and building organized memories that will help him at test time.

Jeffrey Ludovici, M.A., operates Student Strategy 101®, a college planning and support program based in Pittsburgh, Pa.  For more information, please visit him at studentstrategy101.com or at his College Strategy Blog.

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