What factors determine one’s intelligence? Is intelligence measured simply by a number one accumulates on an IQ test, NWEA score, or ACT score? Or rather, is intelligence measured by the habits one forms such as study skills, personal systems for accomplishing tasks, or learning strategies? Perhaps, intelligence is a measure of emotional maturity?
Doug Buehl addresses these questions in chapter 6 of our textbook this week by explaining how different aspects determine one’s comprehension to complex text and/or tasks. Buehl analyzes how study skills affect students’ comprehension by determining their exposure to these study skills throughout their educational career. In his argument Buehl credits identity, habits of the mind, emotional intelligence, and learning strategies as components to understanding the successfulness of comprehending complex texts and tasks across disciplines.
As a teacher, I proudly state that I drill the skills with my students for reading comprehension. We emphasize the importance of utilizing reading skills while reading complex text in the hopes of maximizing comprehension. In our reading however, Buehl states, “The term skill is in and of itself diverting.” He furthers this idea by posing the analogy of his wife being a skilled violinist. Buehl argues that it is more appropriate to say, “...she has excellent practice habits that have contributed to her development of skill on her instrument.” Buehl’s wife has dedicated countless hours to practicing her instrument, which has lead her to owning this skill as an accomplished violinist. The importance is in the practice and rehearsal of the skill that leads to comprehension and success. This analogy holds stake with the importance of practicing study skills with students across disciplines. The more practiced a skill is the more ingrained it becomes to a student.
In addition, it is valuable to remind students that the following personality variables affect performance: resisting impulsivity, managing stress and frustration, handling failure, showing persistence, maintaining a positive outlook, collaborating effectively, and delaying gratification. Let’s just take a moment to revisit those variables; resisting impulsivity, managing stress and frustration, handling failure? Are these variables that lead to success as a student or success as a member of society? As an intermediate teacher, I instantly think of the student who shoots up his or her hand while simultaneously shouting the answer aloud for the whole class to hear even though he or she was never actually called on to share. Impulsivity? Absolutely. Stressful? Definitely. But I’m reminded of how eventually that child stops shouting out and begins resisting impulsivity because the behavior is corrected and rehearsed. The child’s new found ownership of this personal variable becomes another practiced habit that will lead to further success.
Colleen,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your post-- I interpreted it as very optimistic, that success in academics, mastery in the fields our students decide to pursue and everyday participation as confident and capable readers is accessible to anyone. The ability to work complex texts is not a single ability that you either have or you don't, but rather it is an amalgamation of many skills that work together for comprehension.
When Beuhl elaborates upon the factors that go into reading comprehension and metacognition, it can easily seem like an insurmountable task to teach students how to master the navigation of complex texts. But the process and wealth of skill needed is so vast that teachers shouldn't get overwhelmed but rather see this as many smaller, more manageable elements that we can work on over time and fine-tune with practice. After all, the reading of complex texts is a mastery process-- we can guide our students through rich and consistent textual interactions that over time become more familiar and less daunting while our students build up their repertoires to help them access the path to independence and confidence in their identities as readers, writers and thinkers.
Margaret-
DeleteI too agree that teaching these skills as a progression throughout the grade levels will be helpful in strengthening the end result. I also believe students will become more accustomed with these strategies if built upon each year.
Colleen:
ReplyDeleteMagaret is correct: your post is optimistic. I wish we could give our students more time to practice and hone these skills during the academic year, but it seems in my opinion there is never enough time. But as Buehl and you point out, parceling out these skills into manageable elements, teaching and practicing them with our students will build confidence in our students.
I should also point out that many times after our students leave our classrooms at the end of the year, we hope that students have learned many things valuable that they can use in the future. But we often don't hear from them until many years later when they visit and tell us how much we have taught them--and we only hear form a few. We have to take comfort that many of them do use these skills, strategies, and knowledge well after they leave our classroom--we just don't hear about it, but it happens. And we have to have faith that our colleagues are doing the same and an amalgamation of those skills and knowledge occurs that will be valuable to them in the future, especially when they reach college.
Christopher-
DeleteI too agree that time seems to fly during the work day! I often struggle with accomplishing all I set out to accomplish during the day. Therefore, I absolutely understand and empathise with the struggle students feel for honing in on and owning these skills.
Colleen:
ReplyDeleteYour post made me recall a very visceral reaction I had to Buehl's analysis. He seemed to label the factors of "impulsivity," "handling failure," "collaborating effectively," and many more as antithetical to engagement. He then goes on to detail his learning strategies, which are supposed to combat and mitigate these variables. I think it is worth noting that factors like "fear of failure," or "collaborating effectively" might be more deeply seated than lacking strategies. In one of my other classes, we spent an entire session examining how Black and Latino students are systematically disenfranchised by their perception of their teachers' expectations that they will fail (Michelle Fine conducted the study). I think it is important to acknowledge that the quality of instruction - and even of administration - can have a significant impact on students' "baseline," for engagement. It is also easy to trigger their sense of hopelessness, even by mentioning a codified word that implies they won't succeed like other students. Tests described as measuring "natural intelligence," for example, often produce significantly worse results in Black teens when that verbiage is used to describe the assessment.
My point is that not everyone comes to the classroom with the same capacity for engagement at the start. Many divest from academics simply in order to avoid perceived racism or imminent failure. When using Buehl's strategies to promote engagement, it is important to maintain a posture of cultural sensitivity, lest the strategy be rendered ineffective by students "tuning out" from what they perceive of as another "failed attempt" to intervene.
Hi Colleen,
ReplyDeleteTo be completely honest, I never truly thought about the "personal variables that affect performance" as things that would hinder success. I never really thought about them being honed by a teacher but more so by parents. I think that the point of nurture versus nature fits in well at this point. All students come into school with different backgrounds and home lives. These how lives have shaped us helped shape us into the people we are just as our nature has. Some students have been taught and exposed to the different positive personal variables that Buehl points out yet others have not even learned about these. Taking into consideration background, each student has a different experience with past teachers, this being said a class is filled with students who are all so different from one another. It seems rather hard for a teacher to fit his or her schedule and teaching style towards each student meanwhile teaching and correcting variables that contribute to success. How do you yourself do it?
Colleen,
ReplyDeleteWhile reading your response, I found my self consitintly reflecting over my performance throughout tis semester thus far. before reading this chapter I never really thought of personal variables in my life and how that affected my success as a student. but with your words, and that of the text, it makes perfect sense that personal variable play a major part in success. With that, I can say that my semester thus far hasn't been what I wanted, but by consistently reflecting my choices and other personal factors, over time my performance has become better. so through personal experience, I can say that it it important to not only teach of academic skills but personal skills that help a student be successful. Think about it, will a student, who might know the material to perfection, be able to perform and succeed to their fullest if they are having personal issues? probably not.
This leads me to another point I agreed with, that is becoming good is at something is not a skill, but the result of practiced habits which allows you to OWN the skill. being in a ton of math classes, I have seen first hand this point. In math one can know the material and such but if one does not practice using the material then that material and what is known, will be forgotten. so with that, I view it is important to teach students to become experts in the material being taught, they must OWN the skill through practiced habits, and that personal variables must be addressed in order to be the best students they can possibly be.