Practice is the bridge between knowing and doing. It’s how knowledge turns into skill and skill into mastery. But practice is also where learning most often goes wrong. We assume that practice, by its very nature, leads to improvement. It doesn’t. Repetition alone merely stabilises whatever already exists. Practice does not make perfect, it makes permanent, and therein lies the risk.
What is practice?
The late K. Anders Ericsson’s research on deliberate practice showed that expertise depends less on time spent than on how that time is used.1 Experts focus on specific weaknesses, practise with clear goals, and receive immediate feedback. The same principle should hold true in school. Effective practice targets the right thing at the right level of challenge and repeats it under conditions that make skilled performance inevitable.
Writing provides a perfect example. Students must juggle ideas, vocabulary, syntax, punctuation, and spelling simultaneously, an unnatural cognitive load. Unless…
