Stealing from the Future or The Dangers of Coasting

It sounds like the ideal in some ways, not having to put in too much effort to get results, but it can quietly steal from the future.

Coasting along not having to put in much effort to achieve the desired results is likely to mean never learning healthy work or study skills. It provides very little opportunity to practice persistence, a quality that is considered to be one of the most important in success in life. It is also likely to result in little real learning. At worst it can have an impact on health, both physically and mentally and the dysfunction can become engrained in the personality, with an expectation that everything will come easily and an unwillingness to put in any effort. 

Even a child who is working at a level well ahead of their age mates can stop learning if the learning environment doesn’t meet their needs. Letting the child coast, languishing in an environment where the curriculum is at a level lower than their learning level or progressing at a pace too slow for that particular child, even for part of a year, can have consequences. Self esteem can plummet, love of learning can disappear, and knowledge and achievement levels can actually go backwards. Depending on the personality of the child, willingness to cooperate or to be patient waiting for others to catch up can also take a dive.

Studies conducted in the northern hemisphere with their long summer break provide some insight into what happens when children are not actively learning. For some children (particularly those without enriched environments out of school) significant regression in achievement levels have been shown after the summer break. Anecdotal comments from teachers in Australia also suggest that even our shorter summer break has a similar effect. (Perhaps this is why schools use tests for the year just completed at the start of the new school year to find out what the kids know instead of using the end of year tests for the current year level, which would at least provide insight into what the students don’t know, or need to learn that year. It would be an effective pre-test but that is a post for another time).

At the Asia Pacific Federation for Giftedness conference in Singapore in 2008 James Stronge from the College of William and Mary presented some interesting research on teacher quality and effectiveness. He outlined the way the gains from an effective teacher can still be evident 3 – 5 years later. Similarly the negative impacts of an ineffective teacher can also last 3 – 5 years. While our children may be able to largely recover from one ‘bad’ year (equating to a year in which they learned little), two back to back has significant long term impacts on learning trajectory. Lost learning time is lost, but it is the impact on motivation which is perhaps more cumulative.

The results of coasting along, the expectation that learning is easy and the lack of opportunity to develop the skills of how to learn often catch up with gifted students in the high school years where they are faced with an increase in new content and expectations. For some the safe choice is to avoid challenge, further compounding the problems of coasting and the impact on self esteem. It is often at this point that less able students who have experienced a better match between their needs and the curriculum offered and who developed ‘academic resilience’ as a result, out perform gifted ‘coasters’.

Gifted students need achievable challenge to grow as learners, to reach into their gifted potentials and develop skills such as flexibility, perseverance, interest, and inventiveness.

Parents are in an ideal position to monitor their child’s enthusiasm for learning. Many parents have told me of their concern that the sparkle in their child’s eyes, or their flame for learning being the catalyst to finding out more about their child’s needs. Remembering that many children show the teacher what they perceive he or she wants to see, the teacher may be oblivious to the changes that you can see as a parent. While being involved in your child’s educational path might not be what you had planned, as a parent of a gifted child it can pay dividends.

Coasting vs Consolidation
Coasting is different to consolidation. This is where after a period of learning, mastering new challenges, the child steps back for a time while this new learning is assimilated with what they already know. When a gifted child is working at an appropriate level, they will probably need to spend about 10% of their time consolidating. Coasting tends to be long term, a bit like taking a stroll instead of jogging.

If it ain't working.............

The first step in changing the system is to stop doing the things we know will fail

While this statement was not written specifically about schools it could apply just as easily to our children's education. The old saying "If it ain't broke then don’t fix it" could perhaps be reworded to say …….. if it ain't working, then fix it.

Teachers might be inspired to try a new approach with a student who doesn't seem to be making progress instead of continuing to do something which hasn't worked to date. After all it  doesn't make sense to think that that more of the same will bring about a different outcome if it didn't work the first time....

Schools might be inclined to consider the role of testing in identifying deep learning (as distinct from shallow thinking and lower order skills), or even in choosing who is in and who is out of special programs when they read some of what neuroscience is discovering about learning, especially when it is considered in light of the world our children will enter when they are finished with school learning.

Parents might also gain confidence in their own judgement. If your child's school experience isn't positive in terms of their learning, or perhaps their mental health, then something needs to change. And you can be an agent of change.

Parents often believe that their child must to go to school regardless. While the is a legal requirement to attend school from the year the child turns 6 1/2, there are options if the current situation isn't healthy. Homeschooling can provide a much closer match between a child's needs and their  learning and there are a raft of options available for parents. A 'holiday' or travel experience can also provide the space to work out what might work better. Or the occasional 'mental health' day to reduce stress levels (of both child and parent) can make the world of difference if other options aren't immediately achievable.

You know your child better than anyone else, you live with them when times are good and also when things are not going well and know that the impact is greater than just on the child. If things are not working, then gather the information you can, look at options and work out how you can avoid being part of something that you know is failing.

Learning - is it a skill, or will??

I wrote in the last blog post about the role attention plays in our students success, or at least how narrowly we have focussed on scores and how that might be impacting on their success. It seems that quite a few people are thinking about related issues. I came across some comments in Steve Miranda's blog recently that build on the idea that success in life is dependent on more that just academic success. Perhaps we could extend that idea to include the thought that it takes more than just being gifted to succeed.

 Steve's comment:

The students who persisted  in college were not necessarily the ones who had excelled academically..... they were the ones with exceptional character strengths, like optimism, persistence and social intelligence. 

Daniel Pink in his book Drive  also emphasized the importance of passion and persistence over talent. And I have just started another book called Bounce  (by Matthew Syed) which (so far) seems to propose that talent is more a matter of opportunity than innate ability.

It is important to help kids develop strong character and nurture their natural intrinsic motivation to learn. Then they are not only more likely to develop personal traits needed to be successful but also gather a great deal of academic learning along the way as a result.

What gets your attention?

What was the most formative experience of your school life?

Was it a result on a test?

Or was it something you experienced with a teacher (good or bad)?

Our school system places a lot of faith in testing and scores as a measure of learning success,  but does all the testing and measuring capture the essence of education? Chances are that the answer most of you gave to the question I asked earlier was thatnit was an experience with a particular teacher, or even a particular lesson. A result on a exam or test doesn't seem to capture the essence of education in quite the same way. You have to wonder then whether school in its presesnt form is 'working', whether it really prepares our children for a future that we can't even imagine. Does a test score build passion, creativity, problem solving ability, team work, tenacity or any of the other skills which are being discovered to  play an important part in success, not just at a school but also in life-after-school, that much larger slice of life?

I have been reading a fascinating book called 'Now You See It' (by Cathy Davidson ) which looks at the science of attention. In it she argues that the narrowness of focus that both our school system and culture value is contributing to the decline in scores that is of concern to educators. Our gifted children are not exempt, although lack of engagement may play an additional role in their apparent failure to perform to their potential in many cases. Our school system is well designed to prepare students for the sort of working life that they were likely to experience in the past but many of those jobs no longer exist as readily as they did. Our children tend to be effective learners in the interconnected world of technology but most are without the opportunity to continue to build or refine these skills in their school based learning. Those whose skills do not lie in the subjects or methods taught in staught are likely to grow up believing they are 'not good at learning', despite many having great strengths in learnig via techology.

The things which command our attention and inspire us might hold the clues to developing an education that will engage and inspire our children to learn and believe they have the skills to cope in a rapidly changing world. Tapping into the new way of learning that they are pioneering and continually evolving will also make a difference.

If you are interested to read about some innovations in learning, including a school where learning opprtunities are designed based on gaming principles, have a dip into Now You See It. And if you fancy some further reading to understand the changing world look for a copy of Dan Pink's book A Whole New Mind and also Guy Claxton's book called What's the Point of School . They are sure to leave you thinking.

School and the Real World

My apologies, things have been a bit quiet on the blog front lately, partly due to an extended overseas break, but I have been gathering ideas in my notebook from things I have been reading, and what comes to mind as a result. This thought started somewhere else but it raised some interesting questions about just what is 'real'.........

When I speak to groups of teachers, or even parents, on the topic of grouping inevitably someone comments in favour of mixed ability groups, claiming that grouping gifted kids together in groups or classes isn't needed because it doesn't reflect the 'real world'.

Equally when talking about the need to tap and develop students' passions in order to keep them engaged, learning meaningfully and on the path to success in life, someone inveitably comments that it is all very well but in the 'real world' you don't get to delve into what ever you like. This is usually said with some degree of envy, most people still feel that work is something you have to do, not enjoy.

The reality is that in the so called 'real world' (that is, the world after our school years are completed) we don't limit ourselves to friends of the same age. We mix with and enjoy the company of people with similar interests to us, regardless of their age. Nor is it likely that we will be in a work situation that includes people from such a wide range of intellectual abilities as a mixed ability classroom (particularly by the end of Primary school or beyond). We tend to work amongst others of a fairly similar intellectual level as ourselves on the whole.

For our children who are at school, that is their real world, perhaps the only one they have had the opportunity experience as yet.

So which is the real, 'real world'?

The value of failing

It is tempting as parents to scaffold so tightly that our children never experience failure, that they never learn how to pick themselves up when things don’t go well and discover that the world doesn’t end, no matter how uncomfortable the might feel. Being able to persist in the face of challenge is a crucial element of grit or perseverance, a really important factor in becoming successful.

Learning what doesn’t work helps build resilience. Not knowing can also help build independence, self reliance and the ability to problem solve. Ultimately this can reinforce the belief that we can control our destiny to a degree rather than being a victim of circumstances. Monitoring too closely can interfere with our children learning these valuable skills. As much as we would like to see them do well, they need to learn how to do that independently, to learn that their actions (or inaction) have a consequence, whether it is forgetting their lunch, not completing homework, or preparing insufficiently for a test. The important thing for parents to do is not to stop them falling, but to provide a safe environment in which they can do so and help them learn from the experience.

It turns out that error-free learning is inefficient. Learning becomes stronger and more long lasting if conditions are arranged so that we make errors. It sounds contradictory but it has been shown that we remember things better and longer if we are given really challenging tests before we learn the material. It appears that an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before we are given or find an answer helps us remember information better than simply studying the information. Trying and failing to retrieve an answer actually helps learning.

Pre-testing, or giving a test before content is taught, then studying or learning just the bits you missed will improve learning. In some ways this makes sense, spending time covering material you already know isn’t likely to move your learning forward. But perhaps more important is becoming comfortable with not knowing. Students who find school easy, who get high marks without effort are missing the chance for deep and long term learning.

The role of frustration in learning

When we learn something new, progress is rarely seen in a smooth and steady line. It happens in bursts. At first progress seems to be slow, then we break through to the next level where we might sit for a while consolidating our skills before we move on again to the next stage.

Schools on the other hand are set up for steady progress. Despite the fact we know that the brain develops in bursts of activity followed by consolidation, and this is what we observe in learning ourselves,  there is pressure to show continual learning.

It is frustrating to reach a certain level of expertise and then feel ‘stuck’ and feel that no matter how hard we work, we cant get past that stage to the next. It doesn’t matter whether it is learning a piece of music, playing a computer game or learning a physical skill like water skiing. But think about how often have you felt frustrated when you couldn’t break through to the next level of something and you left it alone for a while. When you came back to work on it again, it seemed much easier to make the progress that had been alluding you previously. It was as if you had been working on it in the back of your mind while you were doing something else.

It just might be that the frustration actually serves a purpose in learning.  Perhaps frustration is designed to get us to leave something we have been working hard on, so that we can continue the work subconsciously and refresh our energy by changing to a different activity. Perhaps it is the brain’s way of being efficient.

If we jump in when our kids are frustrated and help them out or do it for them, we might just be taking away a valuable moment of learning. Sometimes kids are really annoyed when an adult jumps in to ‘fix’ something for them, perhaps with good reason! We might not be doing them a favour after all when we helped them out.

Perhaps one reason we jump in is to avert the risk of the child feeling like a ‘failure’ for not being able to do something themselves. Certainly with regard to school work, we worry that if a child cannot do something they might feel badly, but perhaps the feeling of ‘failure’ is a result of us telling them (or showing them by jumping in too soon) that we don’t believe they can do it.

The frustration of not being able to do something doesn’t stop a young child from persisting with learning to control their body and become independently mobile.  And persistence is rarely a problem when they are trying to complete self directed tasks, perhaps moving on to the next level of a computer game. Maybe the differences is that no-one is telling them they cant do it and they are following the natural learning process.