Question 2: Uncovering the tacit mental moves

Uncovering the tacit mental moves is the second step of the Decoding the Disciplines process. Colloquially the second step is sometimes also referred to as "Decoding" because many perceive it as the central step of Decoding the Disciplines.

There is a variety of techniques to “decode” the mental move of the specialist, besides the  interview, to “flash” techniques which include analogies and game mechanics, the bottleneck writing tour, concept/mind mapping or flow charting, 3-d modeling with playdough or other simple materials, and rubric building, to name a few. The advantage of these “flash" techniques is that they are efficient and effective while being fun!

All of the various Decoding techniques involve conversation with an interlocutor, preferably one from a different discipline.

Decoding interview

This exploration of mental moves is often carried out in an interview setting with typically two interviewers helping the instructor to make his or her expertise explicit.

→Main article: Decoding interview

Alternative Decoding techniques (aka Flash Decoding)

While the second step of theDecoding the Disciplines model privileges the interview, a memorable and reliable step, it has a few drawbacks. Limitations of Decoding interviews include:

1. The interview isn’t always 100’% successful in unpacking the specialist’s thinking into intelligible components and must be revisited several times for success.
2. Interviews are arduous, sometimes like mental duels with the specialist making analytical leaps that leave the interviewers adrift in unknown territory without a clear path forward.
3. Interviews are time consuming. When only one specialist can be interviewed at a time and some Decoding groups as large as 100 needing to uncover their mental moves, there’s not enough time or staff to conduct the interviews. Flash Decoding offers a potent short-cut to uncover the often-invisible mental moves of educators. Alternate forms of Decoding give us that “flash” of insight that helps us uncover implicit mental processing so they can be brought to the forefront and scaffolded for the students”

Analogies

One of the most powerful alternative techniques for Decoding is through analogies, metaphors, and narrative stories, although for brevity, we refer to all these as “analogies”. Analogies are inferential frameworks that help novices or students learn new ideas because they can transfer something they know in one domain to a different or new domain.

To come up with an analogy, it helps to consider the characteristics of a good analogy. It must be from outside the target field because the new context helps see the characteristics of the analogy (and thus the characteristics of the mental move). What is this kind of thinking? What is the DOING? Where does it fit in Bloom’s typology? Is it remembering, paraphrasing, applying, analyzing, evaluating, or creating? Once we have classified the type of mental move, we’re ready to look for a new context, the analogic context.

The prompts for finding an analogy, are, “What is this kind of thinking like?” and “Where have I seen this mental move before?” When placing the mental move in a new context, be sure the new context is relatable to students or your audience.

Bottleneck writing tour

A reflective writing process with rounds of reiterative writing about the bottleneck and the mental move. This process uses a series of prompts focused on Step 1 Identify the Bottlenecks and Step 2 Uncover the Tacit Reasoning of the Specialist. It works well when Decoding in large groups and self-directed teams. The final question brings in the interlocutor(s).

Concept or mindmapping or flow charting

Ask the specialist to make a concept/mind map or flow chart of the mental move and explain in words (a think-aloud) as they draw it. Be sure to write down what they say.

Three-dimensional modeling

Use simple materials such as playdough, Legos, or sticks and grass from the garden, build a physical model of the mental move. Then write down in a few words what the model portrays. Voila—what we write down describes the mental move.

Rubric building

Start by listing frequent mistakes students make on a specific concept or assignment (the bottlenecks). Then create a corresponding list of the opposite of each mistake—a list of what the specialist does to avoid each mistake—which turns out to be a list of the mental moves.

As an example, Shopkow, in her SoTL award winning article shows the rubric she made for writing article reviews and microhistory. The rubric is based on a comparison of student mistakes and desired mental moves, which she calls the GOAL. To create the rubric, she lists the mistakes (bottlenecks) students make in identifying a historical argument for an article review. The reviewer doesn’t

• identify the argument in the article correctly (the argument as the reviewer has presented it doesn’t make sense).
• explain the argument in the article clearly (I can’t figure out what the argument is from what the reviewer has said).
•  doesn’t recognize the argument.
• address all the parts of the argument.

Besides listing the mistakes, Shopkow also provides the GOAL for making an argument

• the reviewer “clearly explains the argument in the article, giving the parts of the argument as well as the overall argument.”

The goal in her rubric spells out the desired mental move.

Game mechanics

“At the heart of designing an educational game, the instructor considers which mental moves to center the game around. What kind of thinking do we want students to practice in the game? To do so, just as when flash Decoding with analogies, we start from a bottleneck—where do students struggle to understand? What kind of thinking will this entail? How does flash Decoding with game mechanics work? Choose a bottleneck in your course where students repeatedly struggle. These days, we can ask Chat GPT to brainstorm the reasoning an expert uses to get through the bottleneck. Then we can ask Chat GPT to build a game.”