Review of "Skill-Building Approaches to Anxiety-Fueled Work Avoidance"
I love this article.
As an executive function coach, I've been focused on strategies with my new clients. What app can I suggest to a young person? What kind of grid can we make to help them plan their homework? What accessible technology can I teach them?
In this flurry of reaching for the "right" tool to share or show (and worrying that I won't remember the "right" one for them in the moment!), I'm realizing that it's easy to overlook the more important, and, in my experience, the deeper and more intuitive side of executive function issues: the mental space that goes along with success or failure. Because at the end of the day, what is procrastination, task avoidance, task initiation problems, or lack of planning? According to this article, it's a challenge, struggle or deficit often coupled with anxiety.
Friday, October 21, 2016
Tuesday, October 11, 2016
Here's my take on CLT & constructivism:
....it's a work in progress.
Cognitive Load Theory asks the intriguing question: is it ever helpful to withhold information from students?
This question matters to this debate because, in the end, this is at the heart of constructivism. The idea is that students uncover information & principles through their own investigation - and thus "own" this information in a way that is completely different than if they had simply been told to memorize a rule or concept by rote.
For example, I've read about teaching elementary students about calculating volume not by teaching a formula, but by having them mess around with 3-D models of buildings, shapes made of 1 cm blocks, jars of different sizes filled with water, and by having them predict & calculate volume, and, when faced with unexpected results, find their own motivation to explore more, gather more data, and develop a rule on their own.
To me, that sounds mega-cooler than simply memorizing a formula.
Cognitive Load Theory asks the intriguing question: is it ever helpful to withhold information from students?
This question matters to this debate because, in the end, this is at the heart of constructivism. The idea is that students uncover information & principles through their own investigation - and thus "own" this information in a way that is completely different than if they had simply been told to memorize a rule or concept by rote.
For example, I've read about teaching elementary students about calculating volume not by teaching a formula, but by having them mess around with 3-D models of buildings, shapes made of 1 cm blocks, jars of different sizes filled with water, and by having them predict & calculate volume, and, when faced with unexpected results, find their own motivation to explore more, gather more data, and develop a rule on their own.
To me, that sounds mega-cooler than simply memorizing a formula.
Constructivism & Cognitive Load Theory: fight to the finish?
So, my most recent instructor had a bunch of readings on these two theories. (If you bothered to read this post, I'm assuming you are some kind of education nerd like me and are somewhat familiar with these....if not...may I recommend wikipedia or...Wikipedia...?)
But in any event...in many of the articles I've read about these approaches, it seems like the authors are putting them in opposition to each other. That there is a great debate about how to teach people and Only One May Prevail. I get this for battling academicians out to make their reputations. But for me as a teacher...I almost can't understand how I wouldn't use both...
Constructivism, as I understand it, is tied intimately to the project of sense-making or meaning-making. As I get it, it involves presenting learners with a problem or discrepancy, and asks them to try to a) solve the problem and b) as a result of their observations and experiences, come up with general principals or theories related to the topic. (am I getting warm, oh studiers of educational theory?)
To me, this is very appealing. It imagines learners as active participants as opposed to recipients of knowledge - not bank accounts where information may be deposited, but rather sovereign humans, with experiences and opinions and brains, who learn through their own analysis of their world.
Cognitive Load Theory, as I've encountered it thus far, is just a different animal. It looks at how our brains work, particularly our two different kinds of memory, and how new things are (or are not) integrated with old things that we already know.
To me, this is also very appealing. It draws its lifeblood from carefully controlled research and statistics, and interrogates some of our treasured notions of teaching. It looks at how we actually process information and solve problems, and challenges us as teachers to justify why we are including each element - will it really help learners understand new material?
The Cognitive folks seems, so far, to be either dismissive or...carefully neutral around constructivist teaching. Most CLT research has been completed around simple problems in the STEM fields with correct answers and easily-testable solutions. I think this research has brought us tremendous insight...but does not encompass the all of teaching.
The $64,000 question these days is - what about complex, unpredictable problems? What about problems for which the very method of solving them is unknown? How can we prepare students for that?
And of course...innovation. Can we prepare students for "creativity" or "innovation" or are those things a bit immune to teaching?
My answer, in the next post....
But in any event...in many of the articles I've read about these approaches, it seems like the authors are putting them in opposition to each other. That there is a great debate about how to teach people and Only One May Prevail. I get this for battling academicians out to make their reputations. But for me as a teacher...I almost can't understand how I wouldn't use both...
Constructivism, as I understand it, is tied intimately to the project of sense-making or meaning-making. As I get it, it involves presenting learners with a problem or discrepancy, and asks them to try to a) solve the problem and b) as a result of their observations and experiences, come up with general principals or theories related to the topic. (am I getting warm, oh studiers of educational theory?)
To me, this is very appealing. It imagines learners as active participants as opposed to recipients of knowledge - not bank accounts where information may be deposited, but rather sovereign humans, with experiences and opinions and brains, who learn through their own analysis of their world.
Cognitive Load Theory, as I've encountered it thus far, is just a different animal. It looks at how our brains work, particularly our two different kinds of memory, and how new things are (or are not) integrated with old things that we already know.
To me, this is also very appealing. It draws its lifeblood from carefully controlled research and statistics, and interrogates some of our treasured notions of teaching. It looks at how we actually process information and solve problems, and challenges us as teachers to justify why we are including each element - will it really help learners understand new material?
The Cognitive folks seems, so far, to be either dismissive or...carefully neutral around constructivist teaching. Most CLT research has been completed around simple problems in the STEM fields with correct answers and easily-testable solutions. I think this research has brought us tremendous insight...but does not encompass the all of teaching.
The $64,000 question these days is - what about complex, unpredictable problems? What about problems for which the very method of solving them is unknown? How can we prepare students for that?
And of course...innovation. Can we prepare students for "creativity" or "innovation" or are those things a bit immune to teaching?
My answer, in the next post....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)