Endurance and Conscious Competence

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by Patti Stedman | Nov 19, 2014 | Patti's Blog

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.
–Jiddu Krishnamurti

Long before I joined AERC’s Education Committee, I’ve been a teacher.

I come by it genetically, I think. My mother was a third grade teacher and my Dad has a gift for sharing ideas and telling stories to illustrate a point. So I combined my passion for horses and teaching by becoming a certified riding instructor during college before realizing that health insurance and a steady income were going to be beneficial to a theoretical ‘grown up.’

But even as my career changed and evolved to what it is today, teaching has been what I love to do. I think part of it is because I am addicted to learning; I sometimes think I got caught in the intellectual curiosity of a 4th grader. I want to know why and how.

One of my favorite models about learning is the Conscious/Competence matrix, which has been attributed to several different individuals. Never mind that, I think what’s most fascinating is how it fits in with our sport.
We all know that endurance riding has a steep learning curve; I don’t know a single endurance rider, even those with great success, who will not admit to having made dozens of mistakes at the start of their career. Most of us will admit that we still make mistakes, and sadly, most of these come at the expense of our horse’s well-being and therefore we try hard not to make the same mistake repeatedly.

As we’ve begun formalizing and encouraging members to conduct Endurance Clinics and mentor new riders, one of the phenomena I notice is where riders seem to fit in the below matrix:...

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