Chapter23

ThreeProblemsin TeachingGeneral Skills

John R. Hayes

We need educational practices that will help people to adapt to a rapidly
changingenvironment.Wewantstudentstoacquiregeneralskills—skillslikely
to transfer to the new situations that will face them. I was asked to consider
whether there are any general skills to be taught. I believe that there are, and I
also believe thatitwill notbe aseasy aswewould like to teachthem.
In this chapter, I discuss three problems that anyone who wants to teach
general skills must face. The first is that proficiency in some general skills may
requirevastbodiesofknowledge—knowledgethatcouldtakeyearstoacquire.
A second problem is that the task of teaching learning and thinking skills may
be complicated by their number. If there were just three or five candidate
strategies, it would be a relatively straightforward matter to set about evaluat-
ingthemandteachingtheusefulones.However,Iarguethatthereareactually
several hundredplausible strategieswemightteach.Finally,the third problem
with teaching general skills is that even after we identify a useful strategy and
teach it successfully in one application, students may and frequently do fail to
transferthatstrategy to otherapplications.

The Requirements for Knowledge

The work of DeGroot (1965), Simon and Chase (1973), and Simon and Gilmar-
tin (1973) has demonstrated clearly that skillful chess players employ an enor-
mous amount of knowledge of chess patterns. To acquire this knowledge, the
chess player must spend thousands of hours of preparation—playing chess,
readingchessmagazines,andstudyingchesspositions.SimonandChase(1973)
notethatitisveryrareforapersontoreachthegrandmasterlevelofskillwith
lessthan10years ofintensive study.
Idonotwanttoarguethatchessisanimportantgeneralskill.Itmaywellbe
that chess knowledge equips people to do little beyond playing chess. How-
ever, I do want to argue that there are valuable skills—specifically musical
composition, painting, and perhaps other skills—that like chess depend on
acquiring large bodies of knowledge. To explore this question in the area of
music,Iexamined the lives offamous composers.
I started my investigation with the incredibly precocious Mozart because
he is the composer who seems least likely to have required a long period of

From chapter 17 inThinking and Learning,Vol.2,ed.J.Segal,S.Chipman,andR.Glaser(Hillsdale,
NJ:Erlbaum,1985),391–405.Reprinted withpermission.