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Question: In the book, William James illustrates how to maintain attention even while performing boring tasks, such as staring at a dot. He indicates that one must find various ways of making the dot appealing (p. 52-53). With that being said, how can teachers or other educators help students to have the desire to ‘stare at a dot in various ways’?
After reading the assigned chapters, the following quote stood out to me: “The optical impression may affect solely the marginal consciousness, while the mental focus keeps engaged with rival things. We may indeed not ‘see’ it till someone points it out. But, if so, how does he point out it out? By his finger, and by describing its appearance,- by creating a premonitory image of where to look and of what to expect to see” (p. 54).
This quote is very interesting to me and the concept can not only be applied within the context of education, but throughout various settings. Since my interest is within the realm of education, I will talk about how the above quote is applicable. Students who have difficulty in a subject being taught may be focusing on the wrong piece of information, which may cause academic deficits. When a child is falling behind peers in class, it is the responsibility of the teacher and other school personnel involved in the academic progression of the child, to find other ways of explaining or teaching material; this is also known as an academic intervention, and could increase the likelihood of that child understanding the material. Academic interventions are relevant to the quote in that before implementing the intervention, the student may be focusing on something marginal which may be the result of incomplete math problems, for example. When the intervention is implemented, the student’s prior focus is rerouted into another focal point, a math equation. In this case scenario, it could be that once the student was given an equation, he was then able to ‘see’ how to complete the math problems. The illustration of an academic intervention and its relevance to the above quote is one of many ways this quote can be applied. In reference to teachers, the quote allows them to understand that students may not necessarily ‘see’ things from their perspective of teaching; certain steps, such as pointing out a word or an equation, may be necessary in order to capture the ‘sight’ of the students, and increase the likelihood of sustained attention to the teacher.
The above video illustrates the quote previously mentioned. It is amazing how we, as humans can be focused on one thing and not even recognize something different until it is pointed out to us. The video also demonstrates what William James called, 'voluntary attention' in which the stream of consciousness is fixated on a particular object, which in this case, is the amount of times the basket ball is passed back and forth by people on the white team. The very act of focusing solely on the white team requires voluntary attention.
First off, I loved you incorporating the video into your blog. This really shows that you can miss something if you are not looking for it. I can definitely make a connection to this point from my earlier years in school. During middle school and high school, I performed very well in math but I really struggled with reading. In particular, I struggled with reading comprehension. When reading, I would pay too close attention to details that were irrelevant and would therefore miss the big picture of the story. Reading comprehension is such an area that is such a struggle for students. Being the school psychology major that I am, this makes me wonder what are ways that we can prevent reading comprehension problems, instead of just intervening later on. Is there a way? The new connection I have is that I am currently working with a student with Down syndrome. Her reading skills are very developed, however she struggles so much with reading comprehension. This makes me wonder what details she is paying attention to, and how I can direct her to the important information.
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