I disagree with this assessment. (Or, more accurately, I’d like to see a more comprehensive counter argument).
The article you link to is essentially a response to 2 pages in the book, where Hoffman et al mention, almost in passing, that CLT is a silly theory when you want to train for real world scenarios (the intuition is that if you’re training marine fire squad commanders to plan on the battlefield, perhaps it helps to simulate shooting at them during training?) Hoffman et al use this as an example of a learning theory that doesn’t seem to map to real world requirements.
This reads like a disagreement over one particular dismissal in the book, perhaps because CLT is a pet theory of the article’s authors. The problem: this argument is not core to the book!
The article does not, for instance,
a) Deal with the many examples of successful real world accelerated training programs with no curriculum design (as is commonly understood; ordering of simulations isn’t really designing a syllabus) in Chapter 9 (some of which were designed by some of the authors)
b) Have a rejoinder to the two learning theories presented in Chapter 11 that the authors claim underpins their training approach (if there were something to attack, this would be it!)
c) Nor have a rejoinder to a more central claim in the book, (and to my mind a more controversial claim) that atomisation of concepts impedes rapidised training.
And, perhaps most surprisingly to me, your claim that
> Reading it I got the distinct impression that the authors did not understand a great deal of the research they cited, either when supporting or dismissing it.
is remarkable, given that one of the authors of Accelerated Expertise is Paul J Feltovich, one of the founders of the field of expertise research, and a contemporary of Ericsson’s.
The article you link to is essentially a response to 2 pages in the book, where Hoffman et al mention, almost in passing, that CLT is a silly theory when you want to train for real world scenarios (the intuition is that if you’re training marine fire squad commanders to plan on the battlefield, perhaps it helps to simulate shooting at them during training?) Hoffman et al use this as an example of a learning theory that doesn’t seem to map to real world requirements.
This reads like a disagreement over one particular dismissal in the book, perhaps because CLT is a pet theory of the article’s authors. The problem: this argument is not core to the book!
The article does not, for instance,
a) Deal with the many examples of successful real world accelerated training programs with no curriculum design (as is commonly understood; ordering of simulations isn’t really designing a syllabus) in Chapter 9 (some of which were designed by some of the authors)
b) Have a rejoinder to the two learning theories presented in Chapter 11 that the authors claim underpins their training approach (if there were something to attack, this would be it!)
c) Nor have a rejoinder to a more central claim in the book, (and to my mind a more controversial claim) that atomisation of concepts impedes rapidised training.
And, perhaps most surprisingly to me, your claim that
> Reading it I got the distinct impression that the authors did not understand a great deal of the research they cited, either when supporting or dismissing it.
is remarkable, given that one of the authors of Accelerated Expertise is Paul J Feltovich, one of the founders of the field of expertise research, and a contemporary of Ericsson’s.