How do you teach / learn a kata?
How humans master new routines, such as the improvement kata, has been the
subject of brain research and is discussed in the following two articles from the
business press:
Suppose we would like to teach a team of athletes some new routines and have them do well in competition. We would certainly not expect that simply explaining a different way of doing something, no matter how well that explaining is done, will be sufficient for altering their behavior. Once you know what kata you want to adopt in your company, it gives rise to questions such as:
• How do we teach everyone in the organization the desired kata?
• How do we ensure we are practicing the kata correctly?
• How will we know what particular skills an individual needs to work on?
• How will we pass on the kata from generation to generation?
Toyota's answer to these questions is the zen-inspired master-apprentice, or mentor-mentee, coaching system. Mentors teach mentees through repeated practice, in which mentees apply the improvement kata to real-life situations. The intention is that the mentee will learn for him- or herself, but with coaching guidance to ensure that course corrections are made so the right routines are learned. This is done over time via a back-and-forth dialog, which has been compared to a game of catch:
Mentor --> Mentee --> Mentor --> Mentee
Toyota Kata describes this teaching / coaching approach in detail.
Homepage Defining Kata Which Kata? Teaching a Kata
Practicing and learning new routines also brings to mind the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition, which describes five levels of progress in learning a skill with coaching. Here is a brief outline of the Dreyfus levels, and a 1980 Dreyfus research report:
