Executive Function and Neurobiology

During lunch and recess today, a group of seven faculty and I gathered to watch a free webinar from ASCD called "Strengthening the Brain's Executive Functioning." Executive functioning includes important higher-order skills such as analyzing, prioritizing, decision making, delay of immediate gratification, judgment, tolerance, empathy, and organization, and occurs in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain. Neural networks in the PFC are the last part of the brain to mature, and are at their peak period of growth and formation between the ages of 9-16 (though the PFC is in a state of constant maturation from the age of about 5 to about 25). No wonder, then, that so many students in upper elementary, middle school and underclassmen in high school struggle to stay organized, track their materials, complete work and in general manage their responsibilities at school and home; there's a neurobiological reason for their poor decision making! One implication is for schools; it is important to promote the development of neuroplasticity, which leads to increased executive functioning, by providing activities and opportunities to build flexible perspectives, learn to interpret and apply information to new open-ended tasks, search for multiple ways to solve problems, and develop metacognition - which obviously can't be accomplished in a teach-to-the-test environment. Another implication is for parents - how you choose to allow your child to spend his/her free time has a direct impact on the ways in which the neurological wiring of the prefrontal cortex is progressing, and thus how your child's brain is literally being formed. As one teacher pointed out in our discussion afterwards, if a child is playing video games for hours on the weekend, those neural pathways are getting tremendous reinforcement while others are neglected. In turn, this shift towards more complex digital lives for children has implications for schools - for example, if those are the neural pathways that are strongest for a child, rather than saying "no screens in school," we need to intentionally use screens to introduce both skills and concepts that we wish children to master. This is a perspective echoed by some of the interviewees in Monday's AP article "iPads take a place next to crayons in kindergarten" (sent to me by a friend who is a preschool teacher - thanks Lars!), and supported by the evidence from this webinar.

The host of the webinar was Dr. Judy Willis. While you can find the handouts of the webinar available for download here, I recommend you check out her great website, which includes information about the intersection of neurobiology and education.