The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes. Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.
I will add another aspect. Once you understand the Dunning-Kruger effect, you will get worried if you can't find anything wrong. I have a good understanding of gambling and odds and for me there are "levels of confidence". In poker terms, you won't go all in on a pair of kings, but you would think about it on a flush.
Now, yesterday was my first "evaluation" lesson where I've got us up to "safe freeplay" level. I can't really explain my exact teaching methods because I try to change language so I can talk to my students. We've got a sport fencer (male and sabre.. which is unusual), a Polish girl who is really good with the Spanish School of Fencing and by necessity is ambidextrous with the rapier and at quite an advantage when bringing in another weapon... there's something I can learn from that. (As a side note, according to Swetnam she would be "in system" if she was sure enough to switch to Spanish). One guy who has basically taken my place amongst the Saturday Scrappers, which pisses me off because it reminds me how much better I would have been if I'd managed to drop by on a regular basis. I think they're all doing really well, in fact... too well which makes me wonder what I've missed. Sure, this whole venture was so I could test my understanding against others and there's still the issue that it's me and the most esteemed and honourable maestro as overall instructors.
People have this strange idea that the uber confident people are automatically right and that "I don't know" is some kind of sign of terrible weakness. When the reality is- if you want to teach, if you want any kind of authority you must invite questions.
I am worried about how well everyone is doing because I have difficulty believing that I'm that good a teacher.
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