Final Blog

The reading that struck me as most interesting was the excerpt from Dweck which discussed setting the standards for academic learning. He states that we (Americans) have in a sense, enabled our children and have inadvertently educationally handicapped them. Dweck stated the following: "lowering the standards just leads to poorly educated students who feel entitled to easy work and lavish praise" (p. 187). Due to the push for raising test scores, teachers often only teach what is needed for their students to pass the national examinations. In doing so, students often don't have the opportunity to expound upon their learning, which could make it difficult to independently construct their own meaning by way of critical thinking through materials presented in the classroom. As a whole, teachers provide just enough information in one particular educational content, and then move on to the next subject in order to meet the markers for national standards. Dweck talked about a teacher who was reprimanded because she decided to push her students into thinking outside of the box. Some of my most memorable classes in grade school, undergrad, and graduate courses are in courses in which I had teachers/professors that were willing to push me out of my comfort zone in which I had to critically think about the material presented to me. It was through those experiences that I learned the most and can still retrieve the information that I learned. However, I am unable to recall most information from those classes in which I memorized terms long enough to be able to recognize them on multiple-choice tests. William James was on to something when he talked about teachers varying their method of instruction and teaching in a way that students can take the information and build upon their current knowledge structures.

R10

Quote: “Marois found evidence of a ‘response selection bottleneck’ that occurs when the brain is forced to respond to several stimuli at once. As a result, task switching leads to time lost as the brain determines which task to perform” (Rosen, 2008, p. 107).

Question: After reading the article about multi-tasking, I began to think differently than I have before as it pertains to the idea of performing tasks simultaneously. In today’s society, we almost have no other choice than to be skilled in multi-tasking, so if we can do more than one task at once is making good use of our time right? Is the old saying “killing two birds with one stone” a phrase that we should all embody? Or will taking on that phrase eventually be the result of performance deficits? Christine Rosen states asked the following question: “multitasking changed the way people learn,” what might this mean for today’s children and teens, raised with an excess of new entertainment and educational technology, and avidly multitasking at a young age?” (108).   

Personal Connection: Before reading this article and honestly reflecting on my personal experiences, I would have said that I am always an effective ‘multi-tasker’. However, I began to think how effective I really am when performing many tasks at the same time. As a graduate student, multitasking has almost become second nature for me, as I constantly juggle practicum, work, school, and social activities. I have noticed that over time as a graduate student, I am unable to attend to every single facet of my life all at the same time and it be successful. I have learned that I can multitask when one task takes little to no cognitive processing, and is almost automatic, while attending to another task that may take more concentration. I tend to get in trouble when both tasks require intense concentration, and I attempt to attend to both tasks; this usually results in failure to be effective with both tasks at hand.

Outside Connection: The above video clip is an example of multitasking. It is a brief illustration to some of the principles described in Rosen's article.

Module 7

This video was very interesting and focused on a wide range of aspects related to memory. One of the most memorable things about the video is when the man on the video discusses the process of forgetting. He notes that the cause of forgetting is that there was "poor encoding" or "poor retrieval". After listening to the discussion about forgetting, I immediately thought about William James' chapter on memory in which he notes that in order for information to be retained, there must be associations made during the encoding process. When thinking about learning, it is pertinent that teachers are able to present materials in various ways so that students may make inferences (associations) with previous information that they have encoded.  

R9

Quote: “What you have to understand is that even average memories are remarkably powerful if used properly” (Foer, 2011).

Question: After reading the NY Times article, a series of questions ran through my mind from how content should be taught to students all the way to the capacity of the human mind. In terms of learning, since according to Foer, research suggests that when individuals with ‘great memories’ are compared to people with ‘average memories’, “not only did the brains of the mental athletes appear anatomically indistinguishable from those of the control subjects, but on every test of general cognitive ability, the mental athletes’ scores came back well within the normal range” (Foer, 2011), how could learning to become a mental athlete improve a student’s educational experience? What would that look like and how could memory techniques described by Foer be taught to students? After reading the article about how our memory is designed to be more advanced than how much credit is given to our mind, I wonder: have posted notes become the demise to our memory structures? Are technological advances inhibiting our memory? I would have to say: YES! We write down things on posted notes so that we don’t have to remember or we put phone numbers in our cell phones so that we don’t have to rely on our memory to recall digits before phoning a friend, all of which our memory structures are capable of retrieving.    

Personal Connection: I found the NY Times article Secrets of a Mind Gamer, to be incredibly interesting. Before ink and tablets were invented, people relied on their memory for recalling pertinent information. This article reminds me of some of the content William James described in his memory chapter; particularly, about making association with new information in order to better recall it in the future. In my personal experience, I can think back on my undergraduate experience when most exams given were in the format of multiple-choice. I learned very quickly that I could make over 100 hundred flash cards and through repetition remember the facts on the cards; those cards which were harder to memorize, I was able to think of a mnemonic to help me remember. As a result, I pretty much always remembered what I studied for my exams.     

Outside Connection: The above video illustrates a phenomenal memory structure by an individual with Autism who has been able to make sense (meaning) to something he sees and recall it later by recreating everything he viewed. It's pretty remarkable!

Module 6

In this video, the young boy is having difficulty completing his school work even with assistance from his mother. This video is appropriate to the topic of 'sensory registers' as individuals with Autism have sensory difficulties. In the power point presentation, a list of "factors that determine whether our sensory registers 'register' something" were provided. These factors included the following: "attention, perception, constancy, context, intuition, duration and intensity, imagery, the role of context, shitfting perceptual set, pattern recognition, the physical and psychological environment, and meaningfulness", all of which can be tremendous road blocks for individuals with Autism. As with individuals who have other disabilities, each situation is very individualistic, but more so with Autism because it is a spectrum: some may be higher functioning, while another individual may be nonverbal. Students with Autism may have things that set them off which could disturb their attention to their academics; these things could include a loud noise or bright lights, which may cause a distraction. Their perception to external stimuli is very different than how a typically developed individual may experience 'reality'. Individuals with Asperger's may struggle with their 'psychological environment' due to a lack of appropriare social skills, which could cause them to be alienated from peers. Those are just a few examples of how individuals with Autism have a very different 'sensory register' than that of typically developed individuals and how it can effect their learning. The above video is a small example of the difficulty a child with Autism may have while learning.

R8

Quote: “The mechanisms of perception go to a lot of trouble to ensure that what we see corresponds to what is usually out there” (p.200). The elements that make up our perceptions of what we deem ‘reality’ may not always be accurate. This quote makes me think of how the media shapes our perceptions of the world we live in. Through images, concepts, and ideas continuously displayed through different outlets of media, we can actually believe something to be real and make generalizations of a concept that is in actuality false.

Question: The article discusses the concept and formation of language and placing objects, people, ideas, and images into categories/labels to be able to easily identify and retrieve it at a later date. My question, (which closely mirrors a question mentioned in the article) is the following: does placing a label on objects and/or people lead to misconceptions? Furthermore, would the elimination of labels and categories in which we place people change the way we perceive others? Could that stop forms of discrimination?   

Personal Connection: As noted in the article, there is pretty much no way around labels and categories because it is how the human brain accommodates new information that is taken in. The human brain takes new information and tries to pair it with something that has previously been experienced; it is then stored under a specific category and awaits retrieval. In Touch with Reality made me think about what the article states as naive realism: “we see things as they are” (p.198). In my school-based practicum sight, i've noticed that it can be easy to “see things as they are” instead of taking into consideration the whole picture. For instance, a parent who never comes to their child’s Admissions and Release Committee meetings and is often difficult for school personnel to reach may appear to be a negligent parent. On the surface, it would be easy to say that the parent is not acting as an advocate for his/her child, but there could very well be some unknown factors such as the demands of the parent’s job, the health of the parent, lack of transportation, and the like. If not careful, it is very easy to ‘see’ what we want to see in any given situation. This further supports the idea that what our brain tells us to see may not always be an accurate depiction of the situation at hand.   

Outside Connection: The following video is a brief description of gestalt perception, which further supports some of the information provided in the article.

R8

Quote: One of the most eye catching quotes in the Vygotsky article was the following: “We give children a battery of tests or a variety of tasks of varying degrees of difficulty, and we judge the extent of their mental development on the basis of how they solve them and at what level of difficulty. On the other hand, if we offer leading questions or show how the problem is to be solved and the child then solves it, or if the teacher initiates the solution and the child completes it or solves it in collaboration with other children – in short, if the child barely misses an independent solution of the problem –the solution is not regarded as indicative of his mental development…over a decade even the profoundest thinkers never questioned the assumption; they never entertained the notion that what children can do with the assistance of others might be in some sense even more indicative of their mental development then what they can do alone” (Vygotsky, p. 85).

Question: Do IQ tests really tell us much about students other than them being compared to other peers their same age? Vygotsky provided a great example of two students entering in school at the same chronological and mental age, but with guided instruction of knowing how to solve a particular problem, one student’s mental age jumped ahead four grades, while the other student’s jumped ahead one grade. As I reflect on that illustration by Vygotsky, I think about academic interventions that are implemented within the schools. Since research has made it very clear of the biases in standardized tests (particularly with individuals whose culture is not conducive to mainstream society), and educational professionals are aware of such factors, why haven’t the use of IQ tests been ruled out when diagnosing students with a disability, specifically, a learning disability?  

Personal Connection:  After reading the section on the zone of proximal development, I began to reflect on my current experience as a practicum student in the school system and what my future role as a School Psychologist will be. I think about how some teachers and other school personnel attend the Admissions and Release Committee (ARC) meetings and based on the student’s IQ score, they believe that the child should be a recipient of special education services. Instead of sticking a label on the child, what if interventions were made over the course of 6-8 weeks (before a special education referral was ever made) and the student’s progress was monitored to see if he responded to the interventions? On many occasions, the student will make progress. So, then was the child’s mental age (IQ score) an ‘end all’ for his academic progression? No; maybe he just needed differentiated instructions from the teacher to help him understand the material better. As William James stated, teachers should have varied instructions because one student will learn differently than another student. Students’ cognitive development also varies. As Vygotsky puts it, “the zone of proximal development defines those functions that have not yet matured but are in the process of maturation, functions that will mature tomorrow but are currently in an embryonic state” (p. 86). Therefore, all students should be given the chance to learn and not be judged by a test that produces a number and thus creates a form of pseudo-intelligence.

Outside Connection:  

The above video is a cute way of illustrating the zone of proximal development.