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How skills are learned

The learning of skills is completely different from university learning.

Trainees are not asked to write about the subject matter of their study – as they would have been with academic knowledge and university study; they are, instead, charged with performing a skill in demonstration of competence in both understanding and 'ability to do'.

Many of the skills that trainees will learn on the PLSC are based on life-skills – writing, asking questions, advancing an argument based on certain types of reasoning – but, on the PLSC, trainees learn to perform these skills in a new and specialised way, so that they are effective to accomplish certain outcomes.

The techniques required to learn skills of this nature are different to those required of academic study.

To learn these new skills, one often must start from a position of not recognising anything deficient with one’s current practice and move to understanding the goals and rationales for a new approach and the techniques required to be employed to achieve those outcomes.

Then, to demonstrate competence, one must have a go at doing the task, with that new insight, and using those new techniques.

The process of developing competence in performance generally requires several cycles of attempt, feedback from knowledgeable expert, reflection, and re-attempt.

That process is described in this sequence of diagrams.

This is quite a different type of learning to academic learning undertaken at university, and trainees can expect the experience to feel and be different.