revised 11/29/23
For too long, executive function has been a term used primarily among special education professionals to discuss deficits, overlooked by mainstream educators as the path to achievement for all.
Simply put, academic engagement that focuses on higher-order thinking and application is a door-opener for students! If students can thrive in academic rigor, they can nail those standardized tests, tackle most problems and challenges that come their way, and follow any of a vast number of career paths. Building academic rigor should be the goal of every school, every teacher. Executive function may be the missing link to increased student achievement.
How many of the following skills would you say are required for students to perform at rigorous levels?
- Focusing
- Concentrating
- Shifting focus from one event to another
- Changing perspective
- Seeing multiple sides of a situation
- Being open to other people’s points of view
- Being creative
- Catching and correcting errors
- Thinking about multiple concepts simultaneously
- Storing and manipulating visual and verbal information
- Identifying same and different
- Remembering details
- Following multiple steps
- Anticipating
- Persisting in a task
- Organizing actions and thoughts
- Considering future consequences in light of current action
These are the skills of executive function, controlled by the brain’s prefrontal cortex.
The good news is, the more you use these skills, the stronger they become. You can build executive function in students by engaging them in these skills.
If you are running a Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom, you can explore ways to build executive function through the various structures inherent in the model. If not, you can still use this list to brainstorm how you can engage students in using the skills listed in the third column. This assessment sheet can be used by teachers to assess students or by students to self-assess.
For more information, read Building Executive Function: The Missing Link to Student Achievement, published by Routledge.
IDE Corp. provides professional learning experiences in building executive function through:
- – Our online, on-demand, professional learning experience on executive function (school-wide enrollment to create a culture of professional learning)
- – Our Virtual Learning Communities – online workshops for educators, facilitated by a consultant