Executive function foundations

The Landmark School Outreach Program has published a language-based teaching series for teachers looking to enhance their skills working with students with language based learning disabilities. Patricia W. Newhall's book, Executive Function: Foundations for Learning and Teaching, looks at executive functioning from a slightly different angle than many other authors I have read.

She broadly defines executive function (EF) as "the brain's ability to coordinate the cognitive and psychological processes needed to initiate, sustain, monitor, and adapt the behaviors and attitudes required to achieve a goal" (p.2). This idea that executive function is the underlying skill that enables one to accomplish something is a common thread. She includes Howard Gardner's concept- the integration of

• the hill- establishment of a clear goal
• the skill- the requisite abilities and techniques for attaining that goal
• the will- volition to begin and persevere until the goal is reached (p.71)

Where she goes off a little is in using Brown's 2007 paradigm in seeing the skills as clusters: action, memory, emotion, effort, focus and activation (p. 4). She sees EF troubles as stemming from one of two points- academic weaknesses that stress the prefrontal lobe so as to be unable to bring to bear EF skills or EF weaknesses that interfere with the brain's ability to learn academic skills. On the surface, a teacher might see a student with little motivation to learn, task persistence, or organization yet deeper study is required to identify the weak points and present instruction in a way that meaningfully improves instruction.

Landmark clearly promotes student centered instruction. Throughout the book references to students self-awareness of what is going on, active multisensory learning and inquiry learning abound. This may be more challenging for some teachers to implement than others. Issues around curriculum pacing, content covered and large class sizes are ignored throughout.

One important detail that she points out is that initiation issues are often the result of emotional motivation concerns whereas persistence of effort more often result from poor goal-orientation. Seeing what behaviors the student exemplifies indicates where the intervention needs to occur.

The book offers some useful worksheets to help students and teachers assess general EF skills and motivation. These are available online in modifiable formats for both younger and older students. The book also offers many strategies to help students be successful. One I particularly liked was her class wrap-up strategy (closure activity). It includes a checklist for what study skills were focused on, and short answer responses to identifying the most important concept and what is desired for review. Using this kind of approach improves metacognition of these underlying skills that we often expect students to have that are trouble spots for people with EF weaknesses. I have previously commented on her inclusion of card sort type activities.

The book includes a series of case studies but leaves the thinking entirely up to the reader. While intro questions are provided, a thoughtful debrief is missing. These vignettes might be useful if the text were used in a professional learning opportunity. Overall a short easy to read book full of good suggestions for both individual interventions and whole class instruction aimed at improving EF skills and academic proficiency.