From Behavior Challenges to Brain Power: A Holistic Approach for Neurodivergent Students
Navigating the intricate landscapes of neurodiversity, we explore how a fundamental understanding of the neuroscience of executive functions, coupled with creative teaching strategies, can be the cornerstone for a more meaningful educational experience for the neurodivergent students.
The unveiled outcome has the potential to help us foster an inclusive and empowering learning environment for every unique mind.
Executive Functions and Perceived Behavioral Problems
Executive functions, as they are understood in the general sense, are defined as, “the brain-based, cognitive processes that help us to regulate our behavior, make decisions, and set and achieve goals” (Dawson & Guare, 2009).
Some commonly postulated executive functions are organization, metacognition, time management, planning, emotional control, task initiation, response inhibition, working memory, flexibility, sustained attention, and goal-oriented persistence (Benedek et al. 2014; Dawson & Guare 2009, 2010).
It is tempting to attribute some executive dysfunctions to behavioral problems: poor organizational skills to laziness and lack of responsibility; impulse control challenges and sustained attention to oppositional defiance and obstinance; and not being engaged with the lesson to apathy.
It can be argued, however, that each of these negative manifestations of a student’s behavior at school, or at home, has often one or multiple corresponding executive dysfunctions.
For example, ‘laziness’ in sitting down to write an introductory paragraph of an English essay can be due to task initiation or working memory issues; forgetfulness and missed homework assignments may be because of organization problems; and blurting out answers or sudden outbursts could be the result of response inhibition dysfunction.
In fact, Haydon and Harvey (2015) refer to some of these generally perceived negative qualities as “creative strengths,” convincingly arguing that “if we can identify where creative behaviors are misinterpreted, we can learn how to more effectively take responsibility and employ these characteristics as productive strengths” (p.50).
So how can we address these executive function challenges in our students without falling into the habit of mistakenly viewing them as behavioral issues?
Holistic Executive Functions
One way in which we can understand the root cause of perceived students behavioral challenges is by cultivating a more accurate understanding of executive functions.
Adapting McCloskey et. al’s (2009) executive functions model, I would argue that a more holistic approach - as opposed to a merely traditional view of executive functions that reduces them to the prefrontal cortex cognitive processes - is needed.
Executive functions should be viewed as the brain processes “beyond the prefrontal cortex” (Woerner-Eisner, 2016).
In order to function well and regulate the responses to stimulations that it receives, the brain, as a whole, needs to be engaged.
The Neuroscience of Holistic Executive Functions and Deep Learning, and Practical Implications for Teachers
1. Attention Control
We are surrounded by thousands of bits of data at any given second, but our brain can only process so much at a time.
The Reticular Activating System (RAS), a filter residing in the lower part of the posterior brain, filters almost all the incoming data and selects the necessary information to which we consciously attend (Willis, 2017).
The RAS responds to and gives priority to novelty, which means novel stimuli have a better chance of entering the brain.
Here is how this simple but extremely important neurological concept applies to teaching: To immediately engage the students in the lesson you are about to teach, you have to ensure that the information is put forth in a novel way.
The novelty of the presentation of the lesson unleashes this filter and allows the selected information to get into the brain.
In other words, because of the novelty through which you present the lesson, the students’ RAS filters select the presented information and let it enter their brains.
Movement, humor, change of voice, music, multi-sensory input, change of the routines, or any other creative and novel way to present the information would do the job.
The novel entry of stimuli into the brain has another important advantage. Novel stimuli will release dopamine, an important neurotransmitter in the brain.
The release of dopamine not only increases the students’ sense of pleasure, it also enhances alertness, memory, and motivation (Willis, 2009).
This surge of focus and motivation, in turn, facilitates optimal arousal.
“Optimal arousal enables our brains to be alert, receptive, and ready to attend and learn” (Littman, 2017).
Once the students are at this state, ready to attend and learn, we need to keep their interests alive as we continue to teach them the lesson.
2. Positive Emotional State
Once the information comes in through the RAS, it must first pass through your brain’s emotional core, the limbic system, where your amygdala and hippocampus evaluate whether this information is useful and relevant.
One issue with the students who struggle with executive functions is that once the surge of heightened attention created by the initial release of dopamine is subdued, they have difficulty remaining focused.
Therefore, for optimal learning to take place, the delivery of the lesson has to continue to be engaging and creative.
One way to re-engage the students is ensuring that the lesson is designed in a way that they find personally relevant.
The greater the personal relevance, the higher the chance of sustaining their attention.
If the students find the lesson personally relevant and engaging, the information will continue to travel to their higher, thinking brains.
However, if the lesson fails to engage the students on a meaningful and personal level, or if it is simply too challenging or not challenging at all, the data is re-routed to their lower, reactive brains.
Judi Willis (2017) uses the analogy of Fight, Freeze, Flight to explain how students behave if the information they receive goes to their lower, reactive brains.
The students, particularly those who are already struggling with regulating their emotions, thinking, and behavior, may act out (fight) in the class; zone out (freeze), or make regular visits to the bathroom (flight).
In other words, if we fail to ensure a sustained positive emotional state throughout teaching a lesson, we are in essence contributing to our students’ fear, anxiety, or boredom, all of which resulting in blocking the new information from entering into their prefrontal cortex, or the thinking brain.
However, if we make sure the lesson is personally relevant, engaging, and creative, the new information (i.e. knowledge) continues to travel to the students’ higher brains where it can be processed, analyzed, made sense of, and reflected upon.
3. Enhanced Cognitive Performance
Being in a sustained positive emotional state assists the hippocampus - a part of the limbic system responsible for converting short-term memory to long-term memory - to consolidate the flow of information that needs to travel to the conscious mind.
Improved memory helps with retrieving old information and activating background knowledge needed to link with the new information.
The combined old and new information is then ready to travel to the conscious, thinking mind, where the brain tries to make sense of the received data.
If the lesson continues to be engaging and novel, the brain will conceptualize the information more effectively, helping students make personal meaning out of it.
This might all sound a bit confusing, but, in principle, it is very simple.
Let’s recap:
RAS filters external stimuli and often allows the novel ones to enter the brain.
The novel stimuli, once entered the brain, release dopamine.
Dopamine increases attention, internal motivation, and memory.
If the lesson continues to be presented in a novel, engaging, and creative way, dopamine continues to release, and as such, it helps the focused, happy, and motivated student to combine the old and new information more readily.
The newly formed concepts will then travel to the higher-brain where all the conscious thinking and self-regulation (i.e. executive functions) take place.
The engaging and personally relevant lesson, that has been consistently presented in a creative way, will eventually help the students to conceptualize the newly acquired information at a deeper level.
This process, if repeated regularly, will improve higher-order thinking skills which can, in turn, help improve executive functions skills.
After all, once being in control of their cognitive minds, neurodivergent students can better self-regulate (i.e. manage their behavior).
The regulated behavior, with repeated practice, can become habitual, helping neurodivergent students consciously reprogram their unconsciousness.
Conclusion
A holistic approach to executive functions means all regions of the brain work in tandem to help an individual be engaged in a meaningful, goal-oriented behavior.
The so-called behavioral challenges can be mitigated once we get to the root cause of them.
We need to redirect our attention and resources from focusing on the behavior itself to providing creative teaching practices that increase deep learning, hone executive functions, and inevitably mitigate behavioral issues.
And as always, a fundamental understanding of how the brain works can lead us the way.
By weaving creative teaching practices into the educational fabric, we can navigate a path towards not just knowledge acquisition but a transformation in the classroom dynamic, fostering an environment where perceived behavior challenges among neurodivergent students are not just managed but significantly reduced.
Dr. Iman Parsa
At XQ Focus Consulting, we help you identify the root cause of your student’s perceived behavioral challenges and provide you with a plethora of neuroscience backed tools and protocols to address them. Book a free consultation here to learn more.
References
M. Benedek, E. Jauk, M. Sommer, M. Arendasy, A.C. Neubauer (2014). Intelligence, Creativity, and Cognitive Control: The Common and Differential Involvement of Executive Functions in Intelligence and Creativity. Intelligence, 46, pp. 72-83
Dawson, P. & Guare, R, (2009). Smart but Scattered: The Revolutionary "Executive Skills": Approach to Helping Kids Reach Their Potential. New York: NY: Guilford
Dawson, P. & Guare, R, (2010). Executive skills in Children and Adolescents (2nd. ed,). New York, NY: Guilford.
Haydon, K. P. & Harvey, J. (2015). Creativity for Everybody. New York, NY: Sparkitivity, LLC.
Kenrick, D. T., Neuberg, S. L., Griskevicius, V., Becker, D. V., & Schaller, M. (2010). Goal-Driven Cognition and Functional Behavior The Fundamental-Motives Framework. Current Directions. Psychological Science, 19(1), 63-67.
Littman, E. (2017). Never Enough? Why Your Brain Craves Stimulation. Additude: Inside the ADHD Mind.
Pohl, M. (2000). Learning to Think, Thinking to Learn: Models and Strategies to Develop a Classroom Culture of Thinking. Sydney, Australia: Hawker Brownlow Education.
Woerner-Eisner, L. (2016). Enhancing Executive Function: Going Beyond the Prefrontal Cortex. Eau Claire, WI: PESI Publishing & Media.
Willis, J. (2009). How to Teach Students About the Brain. Educational Leadership, 67(4).
McCloskey, G., Perkins, L.A., & Van Divner, B. (2009). Assessment and intervention for executive difficulties. New York, NY: Routledge.
Willis, J. (2017). Neuroscience and Executive Skills: Strategies for Executive Functions, Memory and Learning. Learning and the Brain Summer Institute Workshop, July 17 -21, Santa Barbara, CA.