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Or at least, effective teaching is.
Knowing the subject is one thing, but getting someone else into the "mindset" where they can start to be competent in it is another altogether.
I have been "competent" at development since pretty much the start of my career, and I couldn't understand why others had problems learning to do what I did.
Then I went on a (very short) Teacher Training course and it opened my eyes to what I was doing wrong.
The main thing I learned was that learning any new skill goes through 4 stages:
1) Unconscious Incompetence - "How the heck did you do that?"
2) Conscious Incompetence - "Oh elephant, I can't do it"
3) Conscious Competence - "Oh, hang on, maybe I can"
4) Unconscious Competence - "But it's so easy - why can't you do it?"
And the major problem is that people in stage four (us lot) have forgotten what stage 1 is like (scared or lazy students)
So you have to change your mindset in order to pass on knowledge as well as changing the student's mindset to accommodate the new skill - and that's really quite difficult.
The other biggie is to accept that you don't learn skills by reading about them, or watching them being done, or looking at the final results: you can watch the Tour de France all you like, but you will still fall off a lot when you first get on a bicycle! Training wheels can reduce the pain, but eventually they have to come off as well if you are going to enter the race yourself. Just looking at good code won't make you capable of writing it because it doesn't have the background of why it's like that instead of using this, or that, or perhaps one of those. The code "just is" because it's the product of Stage 4 skill, and that doesn;t help with Stage 1 problems.
It's also important to remember that moving between stages is scary, or painful, or difficult, or just requires effort - so you may have to revisit and reexplain stuff in order to get people through.
Since then, my teaching skill has been improving - I think - and I'm now fairly good at explaining Stage 4 stuff to Stage 1 people. Sometimes ... 
Ineffective teaching? That's easy: indoor work with long holidays and no heavy lifting ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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This is spot on! I taught at a local college for 5 years. My course was a 200-level development course required for certain degrees in the business program. I loved teaching it. I loved interacting with enthusiastic students. I hated that the course was a requirement at all. I kept in contact with many of my students, with 5 years of data, ONE student went into development. Most of the others are BAs. I regularly butt heads with the administration to remove the course. Unfortunately it's still there.
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Quote: 4) Unconscious Competence - "But it's so easy - why can't you do it?"
#4 reminds me, many moons ago I tried to help a friend of mine who wanted to learn algebra, within a hour I wanted to strangle him, never tried again. Fast forward many years, I tried 'helping' my son with math, sadly it ended similarly, I am still NOT cut out for teaching... 
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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OriginalGriff wrote: Since then, my teaching skill has been improving
I particularly like the Winnie the Pooh examples in QA!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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Success of teaching not only depends on the "Teacher" but on the Student too.
In a previous company I trained several newbies once I got my Senior role, the first one became so good that was taken away from my team after a while and started doing projects on his own and backing me up when I had to jump into any burning project elsewhere or I had vacation (my main clientt was very important for the company), eventually he started jumping into burning projects too.
Most of the others got good enough to do small things alone or to help another experienced programmers in big projects.
One of them learned really bad, but at least he managed to make some kind of demanding tasks.
The last one was so bad... I spent more than 4 hours in a couple of sesions explaining him why the code was using an array of piece[0-14] but in the panel was piece[1-15] for the operator, so that the start address in panel had to be piece[(selection-1)*sizeof(piece)], he didn't understood it. First Project solo, he spent over 1,5 months and the maschine was not moving at all, nothing. I got a call to take over the project... when I saw what he had done in the time he had been there, I almost cried. Not only it was very few code, there were so many basic concepts being used so wrong. I started over from scratch and got further than him in my second day of the project, done in 6 days.
If I were the boss, I would had fired him on the spot. BUT...
My boss put him into another big client to make really easy things, and he got a rise because the big OEM told he could not earn lower than the rookies at the production band or the workers council would complain...
When I heard about it, I started to look for another job (there were a couple of reasons more, but that was the last drop).
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Four stages/parts here also, but slightly different. This is from a proverb in Sanskrit:
Aachaaryaat paadamaadatte paadam shishyah svamedhayaa |
Paadam svabrahmachaaribhyah paadam kaalakramena cha ||
The meaning is:
- 25 percent of a person's learning comes from his teacher,
- 25 percent comes from his/her own thinking, study, understanding, use of his/her own intellect,
- 25 percent comes through discussion with fellow students, peers,
- The last 25 percent comes with the passage of time.
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having taught at one point in my life for about 10+ years. I can say in about 15 minutes if a person can get "it" or not.
usually it revolves around.
let a=15
let b=5
let c=a+b
what is c?
if they know the answer to that. Most of the rest is just delivery and work at learning. If they come up with something like c is c for like cat or c is ab or soemthing else. I have seen all sorts of answers but the ones that come up with something mathematical like c is 20, or 15 or 5 or 10. Those are going to work out.
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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It's always been her dream to work in IT.
My parents had their own IT company, but my mom did bookkeeping and she didn't quite get into programming.
She's learning it now, at the ripe old age of almost 60.
I'm way too impatient though... "Alright, we can now create a property... A PROPERTY... NO NOT THERE!  "
Ok, I'm not that bad, but I could be nicer at times.
I got that temper from my mom though, so yeah...
She's making good progress though.
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Sander Rossel wrote: the ripe old age of almost 60.
To some of us that is so young.
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... CodeProject count?
Exception up = new Exception("Something is really wrong.");
throw up;
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I think it counts.
I've learned from your article before.
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