APPENDIX A: MECHANISMS OF POVERTY AND LEARNING
About Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s). In the past twenty years there has been a sea change in the way pediatricians and social workers have approached the health and wellbeing of children in poverty. In particular, the groundbreaking work in “Adverse Childhood Experiences” by Robert Anda and Vincent Filetti in the 1990’s has led to numerous innovations and inspired a legion of clinicians such as Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician at the Bayview Child Health Center in San Francisco. Health professionals now can clinically gauge a child’s overall wellbeing by assessing the number and severity of specific instances of abuse, neglect and stress.
About Noncognitive Factors. More recently, educational researchers have begun to turn their attention to the mechanisms behind academic performance called “noncognitive factors.” In a seminal work published in 2012 by a team led by Camille Farrington from the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners—The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School Performance: A Critical Literature Review, the authors advocate for less attention on content knowledge and for greater emphasis on academic behaviors, learning strategies, academic perseverance, social skills and academic mindsets.
Academic behaviors and learning strategies. Two of these “factors”—academic behaviors and learning strategies—should be familiar to educators and laypeople alike. Academic behaviors are about school attendance, doing homework, how to organize yourself and your time and class participation. Learning strategies involve study skills and study habits, the ability to see patterns, setting goals, self-regulation and keeping track of your progress. A major component of learning strategies is “metacognition,” defined as “an individual’s knowledge of and control over his or her cognition.”
Academic perseverance and social skills. Other factors such as academic perseverance and social skills have recently attracted the interest of educators. Academic perseverance is about “grit” and tenacity, delayed gratification, self-discipline and self-control. Grit, in particular, has captured the imagination of many educators of late, inspired by the groundbreaking work of Angela Duckworth at UPenn. Social skills involve interpersonal competence, empathy, a sense of responsibility to others, as well as teamwork and cooperation.
Academic mindsets. The fifth noncognitive factor, academic mindsets, is perhaps the most powerful and promising learning mechanism of all, for they focus on the missing elements in school reform efforts: namely a child’s identity, beliefs and attitudes. Timothy Wilson, a prominent social psychologist from the University of Virginia, says it best: “It can be as important to change people’s interpretation of the social world and their place in it as it is to change the objective environment of schools.”
Much of academic mindset research comes out of Stanford University, particularly Carol Dweck (growth mindsets) and Claude Steele now at UC Berkeley (stereotype threat), as well as Geoff Cohen and Greg Walton (“belonging uncertainty” and values affirmation).
Researchers are now beginning to understand how improvements in various academically related mindsets can positively influence other noncognitive factors—from class participation to perseverance to learning strategies.
In brief, academic mindsets appear to be the pivot point of the latest breakthroughs in learning theory, opening up a whole new field for researchers and practitioners alike. As Camille Farrington and others write, “… a gap persists between research findings and teachers’ intentional use of strategies to promote positive student mindsets. Because academic mindsets are so critical to strong student performance, figuring out how to bridge this research/practice gap sees to be a prudent avenue for future work.”
(See Farrington, et al., Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners—The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School Performance: A Critical Literature Review (2012), p. 38)
Footnote: We need to come to grips with the inadequacy of our current language and develop a more accessible vocabulary. For, while researchers are adept at telling us what noncognitive factors are not—“anything not measured by cognitive tests” such as achievement or IQ tests or content knowledge—they are far less adept at capturing what these factors are. After all, words such as behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, skills and strategies—even character—are extraordinarily difficult to pin down with any precision.
This is why Farrington and others call for “conceptual clarity.” (See Farrington, et al., p.74).
About Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE’s). In the past twenty years there has been a sea change in the way pediatricians and social workers have approached the health and wellbeing of children in poverty. In particular, the groundbreaking work in “Adverse Childhood Experiences” by Robert Anda and Vincent Filetti in the 1990’s has led to numerous innovations and inspired a legion of clinicians such as Nadine Burke Harris, a pediatrician at the Bayview Child Health Center in San Francisco. Health professionals now can clinically gauge a child’s overall wellbeing by assessing the number and severity of specific instances of abuse, neglect and stress.
About Noncognitive Factors. More recently, educational researchers have begun to turn their attention to the mechanisms behind academic performance called “noncognitive factors.” In a seminal work published in 2012 by a team led by Camille Farrington from the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research, Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners—The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School Performance: A Critical Literature Review, the authors advocate for less attention on content knowledge and for greater emphasis on academic behaviors, learning strategies, academic perseverance, social skills and academic mindsets.
Academic behaviors and learning strategies. Two of these “factors”—academic behaviors and learning strategies—should be familiar to educators and laypeople alike. Academic behaviors are about school attendance, doing homework, how to organize yourself and your time and class participation. Learning strategies involve study skills and study habits, the ability to see patterns, setting goals, self-regulation and keeping track of your progress. A major component of learning strategies is “metacognition,” defined as “an individual’s knowledge of and control over his or her cognition.”
Academic perseverance and social skills. Other factors such as academic perseverance and social skills have recently attracted the interest of educators. Academic perseverance is about “grit” and tenacity, delayed gratification, self-discipline and self-control. Grit, in particular, has captured the imagination of many educators of late, inspired by the groundbreaking work of Angela Duckworth at UPenn. Social skills involve interpersonal competence, empathy, a sense of responsibility to others, as well as teamwork and cooperation.
Academic mindsets. The fifth noncognitive factor, academic mindsets, is perhaps the most powerful and promising learning mechanism of all, for they focus on the missing elements in school reform efforts: namely a child’s identity, beliefs and attitudes. Timothy Wilson, a prominent social psychologist from the University of Virginia, says it best: “It can be as important to change people’s interpretation of the social world and their place in it as it is to change the objective environment of schools.”
Much of academic mindset research comes out of Stanford University, particularly Carol Dweck (growth mindsets) and Claude Steele now at UC Berkeley (stereotype threat), as well as Geoff Cohen and Greg Walton (“belonging uncertainty” and values affirmation).
Researchers are now beginning to understand how improvements in various academically related mindsets can positively influence other noncognitive factors—from class participation to perseverance to learning strategies.
In brief, academic mindsets appear to be the pivot point of the latest breakthroughs in learning theory, opening up a whole new field for researchers and practitioners alike. As Camille Farrington and others write, “… a gap persists between research findings and teachers’ intentional use of strategies to promote positive student mindsets. Because academic mindsets are so critical to strong student performance, figuring out how to bridge this research/practice gap sees to be a prudent avenue for future work.”
(See Farrington, et al., Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners—The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School Performance: A Critical Literature Review (2012), p. 38)
Footnote: We need to come to grips with the inadequacy of our current language and develop a more accessible vocabulary. For, while researchers are adept at telling us what noncognitive factors are not—“anything not measured by cognitive tests” such as achievement or IQ tests or content knowledge—they are far less adept at capturing what these factors are. After all, words such as behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, skills and strategies—even character—are extraordinarily difficult to pin down with any precision.
This is why Farrington and others call for “conceptual clarity.” (See Farrington, et al., p.74).