NECC 09 Keynote: Malcolm Gladwell

One of my favorite parts of the NECC experience is the outstanding lineup of keynote speakers they have each year. Five years ago I was introduced to Malcolm Gladwell at the NECC in New Orleans and to my delight he was our speaker again last night.

Gladwell has a unique gift of weaving together data from various case studies and sharing it to people in a down to earth and fun way. Last night he discussed the idea of learning theory in relation to the band Fleetwood Mac. What?! I know it seems like kind of a weird stretch, but the main idea of his message was that genius doesn't happen overnight. Even though Fleetwood Mac may have seemed like an instant success, they actually toiled in anonymity for years before they came out with the album Rumors.


So, how does this relate to teaching and students? Too often we think that something has got to work the first time we try it. In reality experts hone their craft over a long period of trial and error. The average expert in any field has generally invested over 10,000 hours or approximately 10 years of time to get to that level. Mozart started composing at age 9, but his first noted symphony didn’t happen until he was 23. Mark Twain took 9 years to finish the novel Huck Finn.

An interesting part of his message was the difference between Compensation and Capitalization learning theory and how it relates to our students. Too often we look at students and try to help them focus on their strengths when it comes to learning. The problem is we generally learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes. Perhaps we should help our students recognize their weaknesses and provide them with opportunities to compensate for those areas by learning how to overcome their challenges.

It was a great keynote and a fun evening. After the keynote we went out to dinner and tried to get Ross to eat some Chinese food from Chinatown and well, he did eat some white rice. Still, it was neat to walk (and walk and walk) around town to see some of the interesting sites. Even if we didn’t actually get to the parts of the National Mall we wanted to see, we were able to work off our dinner.