Executive function not a panacea for education ills
ONE OF THE hottest topics across the American education system is a set of cognitive skills called executive function. Curriculums based around improving executive function have been deployed in some of the country’s top schools to make their top students even better. And it’s been rolled out in poor schools to help close the yawning achievement gap between underprivileged students and their well-to-do peers.
Some researchers liken executive function to an air traffic control system, which coordinates the thoughts and impulses arriving on the different runways of the brain’s busy airport. It allows us to stay focused in the face of distraction, resist urges, control emotions, and direct our actions toward a goal. Not surprisingly, scientists have found that these abilities are highly correlated with academic performance and success in later life. And executive function also appears to be malleable, meaning it can be strengthened through targeted training exercises.
The prospect is tantalizing: Improve executive function, better reading and math skills should follow. And the pressure is on. The standards movement demands schools, teachers, and curriculums to produce results, close performance gaps, boost achievement, and get more bang for the educational buck.
But despite the promise and the hype — not to mention the many millions of dollars spent — it turns out there isn’t solid evidence that improving executive function actually leads to better grades. That’s the startling finding of a new meta-analysis, published in the journal Review of Educational Research, which looks at 67 studies of school-based programs that target executive function. In fact, this latest research found no support for the idea that improving those skills can lead directly to better test scores in reading or math.
“We’re really surprised by the lack of support for the notion. Even though intuitively it is super appealing, there just isn’t a lot of really solid evidence out there that shows the link,” says Robin Jacob, a scientist at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, who conducted the review along with Julia Parkinson, now at the American Institutes for Research in Washington, D.C. She called the findings disappointing.
Executive function is a seductive idea, and along with growing interest on the part of educators and researchers and the general public, the past several years have seen an explosion in books, software, and curriculums designed to whip children’s executive function into shape. KIPP, an acclaimed nationwide chain of charter schools with five campuses in the Boston area, stresses a set of character traits, including grit and self-control, that overlap considerably with executive function. Tools of the Mind, a buzzy preschool and kindergarten curriculum used by more than a dozen school districts in Massachusetts, promises to develop children’s self-regulation through regimented dramatic play. Lumosity, the hugely successful San Francisco startup, and Cogmed, a subsidiary of textbook giant Pearson, claim their apps and video games can train the brains of children and adults alike; they and other computer-based programs are now used in hundreds of US classrooms. Meanwhile, the K-12 sector of the cognitive training industry is predicted to grow to $600 million by 2020 up from $175 million in 2012, according to a study from SharpBrains, a firm that tracks the market.
Most of the studies Jacob and Parkinson reviewed found a correlation between executive function and academic performance, and many showed that children’s executive function skills can indeed be improved (at least in the short term) by interventions like a specially designed curriculum or games meant to flex certain cognitive muscles. None, however, demonstrated a causal relationship with achievement in reading or math.
One takeaway is the need for more research, Jacob says, noting that, while they looked at 15 years worth of research, more than half date to 2010 or later, an indicator of how new this line of inquiry still is. Jacob and Parkinson also found that only a handful of studies used randomized, controlled trials, the scientific gold Executive function not a panacea for education ills - Ideas - The Boston Globe: