Executive function: skills for life and learning
By Jo O’Brien – Acting Assistant Head of Junior School, Teaching and Learning
Executive function and self-regulation skills are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and manage multiple tasks successfully.
Research on the developing brain conducted by Harvard University’s ‘Center [sic] on the Developing Child’ showed that when children have had opportunities to develop executive function and self-regulation skills successfully, both individuals and society experience lifelong benefits. (www.developingchild.harvard.edu)
Children aren’t born with these skills, but they are born with the potential to develop them. The full range of skills and abilities continue to grow and mature through adolescence and into early adulthood and operate in coordination with each other. By focusing on how students learn, we can then address what students learn, at the same time providing students with transferable skills beyond the classroom.
These skills are commonly divided into two categories (Dawson & Guare 2010):
Skills that allow us to achieve goals:
- planning
- organisation
- time management
- working memory
- metacognition.
- response inhibition
- emotional control and self-regulation
- sustained attention
- task initiation
- flexibility
- goal-directed persistence.
Evidence from the research conducted by the ‘Center on the Developing Child’ has identified that early intervention and childhood experiences are essential for school achievement. Intentionally teaching executive function and self-regulation skills supports our young learners to understand their emotions and control their behaviours. Explicitly teaching these skills also addresses all five outcomes of Australia’s ‘Early Years Learning Framework’ (EYLF):
- Children have a strong sense of identity.
- Children are connected with, and contribute to, their world.
- Children have a strong sense of wellbeing.
- Children are confident and involved learners.
- Children are effective communicators.
The relationships that children establish with the important people in their lives, starting at home and extending to their teachers and peers when they start school, are a crucial foundation to developing executive function skills. The IB PYP document ‘The Learner’ supports this notion:
The significance of relationships in the early years is a fundamental part of establishing important skills and dispositions that centre on trust, agency and belonging. When the importance of relationships is reinforced, the foundations for an effective learning community are established. (The Learner pg. 10)
Caregivers and educators can support the development of our early learners’ relational skills in conjunction with executive function by:
- reducing stress in children’s lives by addressing the source and teaching coping strategies
- fostering social connections through play-based learning that is supported by adults
- incorporating physical exercise into their daily routine
- challenging children by increasing the complexity of tasks step-by-step
- repeated practice of both physical and mental skills over time to foster success and build mastery.
For further information on executive function and self-regulation, including a video overview and factsheets, please visit:
https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/executive-function/
Reference
Dawson, P., & Guare, R. (2010). Executive skills in children and adolescents: A practical guide to assessment and intervention. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
