Re: [xmca] Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?

[Nancy Mack <nancy.mack@wright.edu>]

I think Jay raises excellent points about intention, motivation, and emotional labor.
 
 Since I have worked a great deal with preservice and inservice teachers, I have seen that sharing an effective teaching strategy is never enough.  The best of intentions can end up as an oppressive practice. Instead, when teachers know more about theory and their role as theory builders, they can develop a theory-practice continuum that is both effective and meaningful.  Of course, we all need to see our students as theory builders who need meaningful work in which to learn.
 
 It is a control issue.  I appreciated the point about self regulation being the development of mental processes versus just being able to stand in line without poking one's neighbor.
 
 My self regulation in my later years is a lot like Jay's in which I am thinking about how our large institutions require constant assessment and thwart meaningful engagement and critical thought.
 
 I have been interested in the scholarship on emotional labor, particularly Teaching with Emotion: A Postmodern Enactment by  Michalinos Zembylas.  When working with groups that have been marginalized and oppressed, it takes a great deal of critical thinking not to work in service of the hegemonic institutional forces.

So, long story short, I am in favor of self regulation that includes critical thought and meaningful engagement.

Nancy Mack

English Department
Wright State University

http://www.wright.edu/~nancy.mack





----- Original Message -----
From: Jay Lemke <jaylemke@umich.edu>
Date: Sunday, September 27, 2009 11:14 pm
Subject: Re: [xmca] Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>

> 
> It seems perfectly reasonable that learning how to play a role 
> gives  
> us practice at regulating our behavior, or perhaps better put: 
> at  
> acting in the service of some larger goal or longer-term 
> activity.  
> When this is done collaboratively and cooperatively, and with 
> buy-in  
> by all participants, when we enjoy doing it and want to do it, 
> it  
> seems pretty worthwhile. And for many reasons, not just 
> improving the  
> "self-control" of working class children or kids who don't fit 
> the  
> middle class norms of behavior.
> 
> How to facilitate this seems like a worthwhile research area.
> 
> But I can't help but wonder about the politics, not of the Tools 
> of  
> the Mind approach as such, but of the desire for tools to 
> replace  
> external control (expensive, visibly oppressive) with inner self-
> 
> regulation (cheap, invisible and hard to resist) in the context 
> of a  
> corporatist economy whose biggest problem at the moment seems to 
> be  
> getting a labor supply which is both docile and capable of 
> complex  
> symbolic value-production. Capital has to be itching for modes 
> of  
> education that will increase symbolic skills (multi-
> literacies)  
> without increasing critical resistance to the status quo.
> 
> The last big push in this direction, under the misdirecting name 
> of  
> "accountability" (and in the US, No Child Left Behind), was to 
> very  
> strictly and specifically regulate exactly what skills were to 
> be  
> learned and enforce this through testing. Submitting to the 
> curriculum  
> and testing regime was supposed to maintain docility, while the 
> skills  
> were kept as far from anything "critical" as possible (and I 
> include  
> creative as one road to critical).
> 
> It didn't really work because it couldn't stimulate higher 
> mental  
> functions and still keep everything under control, and its 
> approach to  
> the former was too "academic" and middle-class dispositionally 
> and  
> culturally to expand the pool of potential symbolic-value workers.
> 
> So I worry that what might initially be empowering for children, 
> to  
> learn to play roles in big dramas of their own (partial) 
> devising,  
> because they like doing it, could so easily become an education 
> for  
> docility skills, a preparation to play the role of good producer 
> and  
> good consumer in dramas designed by others for their, not our, profit.
> 
> If I were doing research on these experimental classrooms, I'd 
> be  
> paying particular attention to the supports for children's 
> creative  
> involvement in designing, managing, writing, changing the 
> dramas, and  
> for how power relations intersect with play constraints. 
> Empowerment  
> isn't empowering if you don't wind up with more power, and 
> just  
> because you can better self-regulate does not mean you have 
> more  
> power. Even if it is a necessity for the effective use of the 
> power  
> you've got, much (but not all ) of the time.
> 
> JAY.
> 
> PS. In this context, what would be some practical precursors 
> of  
> _critical_ involvement?
> 
> 
> Jay Lemke
> Professor (Adjunct)
> Educational Studies
> University of Michigan
> Ann Arbor, MI 48109
> www.umich.edu/~jaylemke
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sep 27, 2009, at 7:36 AM, Peter Smagorinsky wrote:
> 
> > September 27, 2009 The NY Times Magazine Section
> >
> > The School Issue: Preschool
> >
> >
> > Can the Right Kinds of Play Teach Self-Control?
> >
> >
> > By PAUL TOUGH
> >
> >
> >
> > "Come on, Abigail."
> >
> > "No, wait!" Abigail said. "I'm not finished!" She was bent low 
> over  
> > her
> > clipboard, a stubby pencil in her hand, slowly scratching out 
> the  
> > letters in
> > the book's title, one by one: T H E. . . .
> >
> > "Abigail, we're waiting!" Jocelyn said, staring forcefully at 
> her  
> > classmate.
> > Henry, sitting next to her, sighed dramatically.
> >
> > "I'm going as fast as I can!" Abigail said, looking harried. 
> She  
> > brushed a
> > strand of hair out of her eyes and plowed ahead: V E R Y. . . .
> >
> > The three children were seated at their classroom's 
> listening  
> > center, where
> > their assignment was to leaf through a book together while 
> listening  
> > on
> > headphones to a CD with the voice of a teacher reading it 
> aloud. The  
> > book in
> > question was lying on the table in front of Jocelyn, and every 
> few  
> > seconds,
> > Abigail would jump up and lean over Jocelyn to peer at the 
> cover,  
> > checking
> > what came next in the title. Then she would dive back to the 
> paper  
> > on her
> > clipboard, and her pencil would carefully shape yet another 
> letter:  
> > H U N. .
> > . .
> >
> > Henry fiddled with the CD player. Like Abigail and Jocelyn, he 
> was a
> > kindergarten
> > 
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/education_pr> eschool/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>  student in Red Bank, a  
> > small town
> > near the New Jersey shore. The students at the elementary 
> school  
> > came mostly
> > from working-class and low-income families, and, like the 
> town  
> > itself, the
> > student population was increasingly Hispanic. Jocelyn, with 
> flowing  
> > dark
> > hair, was the child of immigrants from Mexico; Henry was 
> Hispanic  
> > with a
> > spiky haircut; Abigail was white and blond.
> >
> > "Abby!" Henry said. "Come on!" He and Jocelyn had long ago 
> finished  
> > writing
> > the title of the book on their lesson plans. They already had their
> > headphones on. The only thing standing between them and the 
> story  
> > was the
> > pencil clutched in their classmate's hand.
> >
> > G R Y. . . .
> >
> > "O.K., we're starting," Jocelyn announced. But they didn't 
> start.  
> > For all
> > their impatience, they knew the rule of the listening center: 
> You  
> > don't
> > start listening to the story until everyone is ready.
> >
> > "Oh, man," Henry said. He grabbed his face and lowered his 
> head to  
> > the desk
> > with a clunk.
> >
> > C A T E R. . . .
> >
> > "Let's begin!" Jocelyn said.
> >
> > "I'm almost done!" Abigail was hopping up and down now. "Don't 
> press  
> > it!"
> > She bounced from foot to foot, still writing: P I L. . . .
> >
> > "I'm pressing it!" Henry said. His finger hovered over the 
> play  
> > button on
> > the CD player . . . but it did not fall, not until Abigail 
> etched  
> > out her
> > last few letters and put on her headphones. Only then, 
> finally,  
> > could the
> > three of them turn the pages together and listen to "The Very Hungry
> > Caterpillar."
> >
> > When the CD finished, each child took a piece of paper and 
> drew three
> > pictures to illustrate what happened at the beginning, in the 
> middle  
> > and at
> > the end of the book. Then they captioned each one, first 
> drawing a  
> > series of
> > horizontal lines under the pictures, one for each word, and 
> then  
> > writing out
> > each word, or an approximation thereof: For "butterfly," 
> Abigail wrote
> > "btrfli." Their language skills were pretty impressive 
> for  
> > kindergarten
> > students. But for the teachers and child psychologists running 
> the  
> > program
> > in which they were enrolled, those skills were considered 
> secondary  
> > - not
> > irrelevant, but not as important as the skills the 
> children  
> > displayed before
> > the story started, when all three were wrestling with 
> themselves,  
> > fighting
> > to overcome their impulses - in Abby's case, the temptation to 
> give  
> > up on
> > writing out the whole title and just submit to the pleas of 
> her  
> > friends; for
> > Jocelyn and Henry, the urge to rip the pencil out of Abby's 
> hand and  
> > start
> > the CD already.
> >
> > Over the last few years, a new buzz phrase has emerged 
> among  
> > scholars and
> > scientists who study early-childhood development, a phrase 
> that  
> > sounds more
> > as if it belongs in the boardroom than the classroom: 
> executive  
> > function.
> > Originally a neuroscience term, it refers to the ability to 
> think  
> > straight:
> > to order your thoughts, to process information in a coherent 
> way, to  
> > hold
> > relevant details in your short-term memory, to avoid 
> distractions  
> > and mental
> > traps and focus on the task in front of you. And recently, cognitive
> > psychologists have come to believe that executive function, 
> and  
> > specifically
> > the skill of self-regulation, might hold the answers to some 
> of the  
> > most
> > vexing questions in education today.
> >
> > The ability of young children to control their emotional and 
> cognitive> impulses, it turns out, is a remarkably strong 
> indicator of both  
> > short-term
> > and long-term success, academic and otherwise. In some studies,
> > self-regulation skills have been shown to predict 
> academic  
> > achievement more
> > reliably than I.Q. tests. The problem is that just as we're 
> coming to
> > understand the importance of self-regulation skills, those 
> skills  
> > appear to
> > be in short supply among young American children. In one 
> recent  
> > national
> > survey, 46 percent of kindergarten teachers said that at least 
> half  
> > the kids
> > in their classes had problems following directions. In 
> another  
> > study, Head
> > Start teachers reported that more than a quarter of their 
> students  
> > exhibited
> > serious self-control-related negative behaviors, like kicking 
> or  
> > threatening
> > other students, at least once a week. Walter Gilliam, a 
> professor at  
> > Yale
> > 
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/y/yale_un> iversity/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 's child-study center, estimates  
> > that
> > each year, across the country, more than 5,000 children are 
> expelled  
> > from
> > pre-K programs because teachers feel unable to control them.
> >
> > There is a popular belief that executive-function skills are 
> fixed  
> > early on,
> > a function of genes and parenting, and that other than 
> medication,  
> > there's
> > not much that teachers and professionals can do to affect children's
> > impulsive behavior. In fact, though, there is growing evidence 
> that  
> > the
> > opposite is true, that executive-function skills are 
> relatively  
> > malleable -
> > quite possibly more malleable than I.Q., which is notoriously 
> hard to
> > increase over a sustained period. In laboratory studies, research
> > psychologists have found that with executive function, 
> practice  
> > helps; when
> > children or adults repeatedly perform basic exercises in cognitive
> > self-regulation, they get better at it. But when researchers 
> try to  
> > take
> > those experiments out of the lab and into the classroom, 
> their  
> > success rate
> > is much lower. Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the 
> University of
> > 
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/univers> ity_of_pennsylvania/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  Pennsylvania, has  
> > spent the
> > last seven years trying to find reliable, repeatable methods 
> to  
> > improve
> > self-control in children. When I spoke to her recently, she 
> told me  
> > about a
> > six-week-long experiment that she and some colleagues 
> conducted in  
> > 2003 with
> > 40 fifth-grade students at a school in Philadelphia.
> >
> > "We did everything right," she told me: led the kids through 
> self- 
> > control
> > exercises, helped them reorganize their lockers, gave them 
> rewards for
> > completing their homework. And at the end of the experiment, 
> the  
> > students
> > dutifully reported that they now had more self-control than 
> when they
> > started the program. But in fact, they did not: the children 
> who had  
> > been
> > through the intervention did no better on a variety of 
> measures than a
> > control group at the same school. "We looked at teacher 
> ratings of
> > self-control, we looked at homework completion, we looked 
> at  
> > standardized
> > achievement tests, we looked at G.P.A., we looked at whether 
> they  
> > were late
> > to class more," Duckworth explained. "We got zero effect 
> on  
> > everything."
> > Despite that failure, Duckworth says she is convinced that it 
> is  
> > possible to
> > boost executive function among children - she just thinks it 
> will  
> > require a
> > more complex and thoroughgoing program than the one that she 
> and her
> > colleagues employed. "It's not impossible," she concludes, 
> "but it's  
> > damn
> > hard."
> >
> > Which is why Abigail, Henry and Jocelyn are potentially 
> so  
> > important. They
> > and their classmates are enrolled in Tools of the Mind, a 
> relatively  
> > new
> > program dedicated to improving the self-regulation abilities 
> of young
> > children, starting as early as age 3. Tools of the Mind is 
> based on  
> > the
> > teachings of Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist who died 
> of  
> > tuberculosis
> > in 1934, at age 38, and whose educational theories and methods 
> were,  
> > until
> > recently, little known in the United States. Over the past 15 
> years,  
> > Deborah
> > Leong and Elena Bodrova, scholars of child development based 
> in  
> > Denver, have
> > turned Vygotsky's philosophy into a full-time curriculum 
> for  
> > prekindergarten
> > and kindergarten students, complete with training manuals 
> and  
> > coaches and
> > professional-development classes for teachers. Tools of the 
> Mind has  
> > grown
> > steadily - though its expansion has sped up in the past few 
> years -  
> > and it
> > now is being used to teach 18,000 prekindergarten and 
> kindergarten  
> > students
> > in 12 states around the country. Leong and Bodrova say they 
> believe  
> > they
> > have found the answer to the problem that has bedeviled 
> Duckworth  
> > and other
> > psychologists for so long. Their program, they say, can 
> reliably teach
> > self-regulation skills to pretty much any child - poor or 
> rich;  
> > typical
> > achievers as well as many of those who are considered to 
> have  
> > special needs.
> > (They make the claim that many kids given diagnoses of 
> A.D.H.D.  
> > would not
> > need Ritalin
> > 
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics> /ritalin_drug/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>  if they were  
> > enrolled in
> > Tools of the Mind.) And if Leong and Bodrova are right, those 
> improved> self-regulation skills will lead not only to fewer 
> classroom  
> > meltdowns and
> > expulsions in prekindergarten and kindergarten; they will also 
> lead to
> > better reading and math scores later on.
> >
> > At the heart of the Tools of the Mind methodology is a simple 
> but  
> > surprising
> > idea: that the key to developing self-regulation is play, and 
> lots  
> > of it.
> > But not just any play. The necessary ingredient is what Leong 
> and  
> > Bodrova
> > call "mature dramatic play": complex, extended make-believe 
> scenarios,> involving multiple children and lasting for hours, 
> even days. If you  
> > want to
> > succeed in school and in life, they say, you first need to do 
> what  
> > Abigail
> > and Jocelyn and Henry have done every school day for the past 
> two  
> > years:
> > spend hour after hour dressing up in firefighter hats and 
> wedding  
> > gowns,
> > cooking make-believe hamburgers and pouring nonexistent tea, 
> doing  
> > the hard,
> > serious work of playing pretend.
> >
> > Over the last decade or so, the central debate in the field of
> > early-childhood education has been between one group that 
> favors  
> > what you
> > might call a preacademic approach to prekindergarten and  
> > kindergarten and
> > another group that contends that the point of school in those 
> early  
> > years is
> > not to prepare for academic study; it is to allow children 
> to  
> > explore the
> > world, learn social skills and have free, unconstrained fun. 
> The  
> > preacademic
> > camp began to dominate the debate in the late 1990s, drawing 
> on some
> > emerging research that showed that children's abilities at 
> the  
> > beginning of
> > kindergarten were powerful predictors of later success. If a 
> child  
> > reached
> > his 5th birthday well behind his peers in measures of 
> cognitive  
> > ability,
> > this research showed, he would most likely never catch up. The 
> good  
> > news in
> > the research was that if you exposed struggling children to certain
> > intensive reading and math interventions in prekindergarten and
> > kindergarten, when their minds were still at their most 
> pliable, you  
> > could
> > significantly reduce or even eliminate that lag. And so the 
> answer,  
> > to many
> > scholars and policy makers, was clear: there was no time to 
> waste in  
> > those
> > early years on Play-Doh and fingerpainting, not when kids, 
> and  
> > especially
> > disadvantaged kids, could be making such rapid advances in 
> the  
> > critical
> > cognitive skills they needed.
> >
> > More recently, though, a backlash has been growing against 
> the  
> > preacademic
> > approach among educators and child psychologists who argue 
> that it  
> > misses
> > the whole point of early-childhood education. "Kindergarten 
> has  
> > ceased to be
> > a garden of delight and has become a place of stress and 
> distress,"  
> > warned a
> > report released in March by a research group called the 
> Alliance for
> > Childhood, which is advised by some of the country's most esteemed
> > progressive-education scholars. There is now too much testing 
> and  
> > too little
> > free time, the report argues, and kids are being forced to try 
> to read
> > before they are ready. The solution, according to the 
> report's  
> > authors, is a
> > return to ample doses of "unstructured play" in kindergarten. 
> If  
> > kids are
> > allowed to develop at their own paces, they will be happier 
> and  
> > healthier
> > and less stressed out. And there will still be plenty of time 
> later  
> > on to
> > learn how to read.
> >
> > On the surface, Bodrova and Leong would seem to belong to the 
> second  
> > camp.
> > They say, after all, that play should have a central place in
> > early-childhood classrooms. And they do find fault with the academic
> > approach, arguing that in practice, many of the early-
> childhood  
> > academic
> > initiatives that have been introduced in the No Child Left Behind
> > 
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/n/no_child_lef> t_behind_act/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>  era have failed to  
> > produce
> > any significant improvement in academic skills. At the same 
> time,  
> > they don't
> > agree that the solution is unstructured free play. The 
> romantic idea  
> > that
> > children are born with flowering imaginations and a natural 
> instinct  
> > for
> > make-believe is simply wrong, they say. Especially these days, 
> they  
> > contend,
> > when children spend more time in front of screens and less 
> time in
> > unsupervised play, kids need careful adult guidance and 
> instruction  
> > before
> > they are able to play in a productive way.
> >
> > Bodrova and Leong began working together with early-
> childhood  
> > teachers in
> > 1992, soon after Bodrova immigrated from Russia to be a 
> visiting  
> > professor
> > at Metropolitan State College of Denver, where Leong was a 
> professor  
> > of
> > child development. When they visited local classrooms, they 
> were  
> > struck by
> > how out of control things often seemed. It was a period 
> when  
> > preschool and
> > kindergarten teachers were taught to "follow the child's 
> lead," to let
> > children guide the learning process with their own interests 
> and  
> > unfettered
> > imaginations. In practice, Bodrova and Leong observed, 
> classrooms  
> > were often
> > chaotic free-for-alls.
> >
> > Bodrova and Leong had both studied Vygotsky, and they 
> discussed  
> > whether some
> > of his methods might help improve the climate of these 
> classrooms. For
> > Vygotsky, the real purpose of early-childhood education was 
> not to  
> > learn
> > content, like the letters of the alphabet or the names of 
> shapes and  
> > colors
> > and animals. The point was to learn how to think. When 
> children enter
> > preschool, Vygotsky wrote, they are "slaves to their 
> environment,"  
> > unable to
> > control their reactions or direct their interests, responding 
> to  
> > whatever
> > shiny objects are put in front of them. Accordingly, the 
> most  
> > important goal
> > of prekindergarten is to teach children how to master 
> their  
> > thoughts. And
> > the best way for children to do that, Vygotsky believed, 
> especially  
> > at this
> > early age, is to employ various tools, tricks and habits that 
> train  
> > the mind
> > to work at a higher level. So Tools of the Mind students learn 
> to use
> > "private speech" - to talk to themselves as they do a 
> difficult task  
> > (like,
> > say, forming the letter W), to help themselves remember what 
> step  
> > comes next
> > (down, up, down, up). They use "mediators": physical objects 
> that  
> > remind
> > them how to do a particular task, like CD-size cards, one with 
> a  
> > pair of
> > lips and one with an ear, that signify whose turn it is to 
> read  
> > aloud in
> > Buddy Reading and whose turn it is to listen. But more 
> than  
> > anything, they
> > use play.
> >
> > Most of Vygotsky's counterparts in the field of child 
> psychology,  
> > including
> > influential figures like Jean Piaget and Maria Montessori, 
> held that
> > imaginary play was an immature form of expression, a 
> preliminary  
> > stage of
> > development. But Vygotsky maintained that at 4 or 5, a 
> child's  
> > ability to
> > play creatively with other children was in fact a better gauge 
> of  
> > her future
> > academic success than any other indicator, including her 
> vocabulary,  
> > her
> > counting skills or her knowledge of the alphabet. Dramatic 
> play, he  
> > said,
> > was the training ground where children learned to 
> regulate  
> > themselves, to
> > conquer their own unruly minds. In the United States, we 
> often  
> > associate
> > play with freedom, but to Vygotsky, dramatic play was actually 
> the  
> > arena
> > where children's actions were most tightly restricted. When a 
> young  
> > boy is
> > acting out the role of a daddy making breakfast, he is limited 
> by  
> > all the
> > rules of daddy-ness. Some of those limitations come from 
> his  
> > playmates: if
> > he starts acting like a baby (or a policeman or a dinosaur) in 
> the  
> > middle of
> > making breakfast, the other children will be sure to steer him 
> back  
> > to the
> > eggs and bacon. But even beyond that explicit peer 
> pressure,  
> > Vygotsky would
> > say, the child is guided by the basic principles of play. Make-
> 
> > believe isn't
> > as stimulating and satisfying - it simply isn't as much fun - 
> if you  
> > don't
> > stick to your role. And when children follow the rules of make-
> 
> > believe and
> > push one another to follow those rules, he said, they 
> develop  
> > important
> > habits of self-control.
> >
> > Bodrova and Leong drew on research conducted by some of 
> Vygotsky's  
> > followers
> > that showed that children acting out a dramatic scene can 
> control  
> > their
> > impulses much better than they can in nonplay situations. In 
> one  
> > experiment,
> > 4-year-old children were first asked to stand still for as 
> long as  
> > they
> > could. They typically did not make it past a minute. But when 
> the kids
> > played a make-believe game in which they were guards at a 
> factory,  
> > they were
> > able to stand at attention for more than four minutes. In another
> > experiment, prekindergarten-age children were asked to 
> memorize a  
> > list of
> > unrelated words. Then they played "grocery store" and were 
> asked to  
> > memorize
> > a similar list of words - this time, though, as a shopping 
> list. In  
> > the play
> > situation, on average, the children were able to remember 
> twice as  
> > many
> > words. Bodrova and Leong say they see the same effect in Tools 
> of  
> > the Mind
> > classrooms: when their students spend more time on dramatic 
> play,  
> > not only
> > does their level of self-control improve, but so do their 
> language  
> > skills.
> >
> > In the past, when psychologists (or parents or teachers or 
> priests)  
> > tried to
> > improve children's self-control, they used the principles 
> of  
> > behaviorism,
> > reinforcing good and bad behaviors with rewards and 
> punishments. The  
> > message
> > to kids was that terrible things would happen if they didn't 
> control  
> > their
> > impulses, and the role of adults, whether parents or 
> preschool  
> > teachers, was
> > to train children by praising them for their positive self-
> control  
> > ("Look at
> > how well Cindy is sitting!") and criticizing them for their 
> lapses.  
> > And in
> > most American prekindergartens and kindergartens, behaviorism, 
> in  
> > some form,
> > is still the dominant method. But Bodrova and Leong say that 
> those  
> > "external
> > reinforcement systems" create "other-directed regulation" - 
> good  
> > behavior
> > done not from some internal sense of control but for the 
> approval of  
> > others,
> > to avoid punishment and win praise and treats. And that, they 
> say,  
> > is a kind
> > of regulation that is not particularly valuable or lasting. 
> Children  
> > learn
> > only how to be obedient, how to follow orders, not how to 
> understand  
> > and
> > regulate their own impulses. The ultimate goal of Tools of the 
> Mind  
> > is not
> > emotional or physical self-regulation; it is cognitive self- 
> > regulation - not
> > the ability to avoid grabbing a toy from the kid next to you 
> (though  
> > that's
> > an important first step), but the much more subtle ability to 
> avoid  
> > falling
> > for a deceptively attractive wrong answer on a test or 
> to  
> > concentrate on an
> > arduous mental task. And those abilities are more difficult 
> to  
> > affect by
> > other-directed regulation. Because the abilities are more 
> abstract,  
> > they are
> > less likely to be elicited by rewards. Kids are rarely able 
> to  
> > organize
> > their thoughts better in order to get an ice-cream cone.
> >
> > As a result, many practices that most prekindergarten 
> teachers  
> > consider
> > essential are more or less banned from Tools of the Mind 
> classrooms.  
> > There
> > are no gold stars, no telling the class that they are all 
> going to  
> > have to
> > wait until Jimmy is quiet; even timeouts are discouraged. When 
> there  
> > is a
> > conflict - when, say, Billy grabs a toy from Jamal - the Tools 
> of  
> > the Mind
> > teacher's first questions are supposed to be: What was it in 
> the  
> > classroom
> > that made it hard for Billy to control himself? And what 
> mediators  
> > could
> > help him do better next time? The teacher does remind Billy 
> that  
> > there is a
> > rule and he broke it, but she doesn't make a big deal out of 
> the  
> > incident.
> > "We pretty much try not to use this whole concept of 
> misbehavior,"  
> > Bodrova
> > told me. "These kids are not born criminals. Even if they 
> do  
> > something that
> > is completely out of bounds, they do it because they can't 
> stop  
> > themselves."
> >
> > There are not yet firm experimental data that prove that Tools 
> of  
> > the Mind
> > works. But two early studies that began in the late 1990s in 
> Denver  
> > showed
> > some promising results: After a year in the program, students did
> > significantly better than a similar group on basic measures 
> of  
> > literacy
> > ability. And more recent studies, including one overseen by 
> Adele  
> > Diamond, a
> > professor at the University of British Columbia who is one of 
> the most
> > prominent researchers in the field of cognitive self-control, 
> have  
> > shown
> > that Tools students consistently score higher on tests 
> requiring  
> > executive
> > function. Angela Duckworth told me that when she read 
> Diamond's  
> > report,
> > which was published in Science in 2007, "I got very excited." 
> Her  
> > failed
> > 2003 study had persuaded her that the usual approach to self-
> control  
> > in
> > early-childhood education, a brief intervention here or 
> there,  
> > wouldn't
> > work. But Tools of the Mind was clearly a different strategy. 
> "It's an
> > immersion approach," she said. "It's not that these kids are 
> pulled  
> > out and
> > they do self-control for half an hour a day. Everything is about
> > self-regulation, every single moment. Everything about the 
> culture  
> > that the
> > classroom creates reinforces that."
> >
> > It's one of the reasons that visiting a Tools of the Mind 
> classroom  
> > can
> > cause moments of cognitive dissonance. While there's a lot 
> of  
> > dressing up
> > and playing with blocks, plenty of messing around with sand 
> tables  
> > and Legos
> > and jigsaw puzzles, there are also a few activities that seem 
> not just
> > grown-up but protocorporate, borrowed directly from the 
> modern  
> > office. Every
> > morning, before embarking on the day's make-believe play, each 
> child  
> > takes a
> > colored marker and a printed form called a play plan and draws 
> or  
> > writes his
> > declaration of intent for that day's play: "I am going to 
> drive the
> > choo-choo train"; "I am going to make a sand castle"; "I am 
> going to  
> > take
> > the dollies to the beach." At the beginning of 
> prekindergarten,  
> > children are
> > coached on dramatic play - called Make-Believe Play Practice - 
> with  
> > the
> > teacher leading the children, step by step, through the 
> mechanics of
> > pretending. (The training manual describes how a teacher might 
> coach  
> > a child
> > to feed a baby doll: "I'm pretending my baby is crying. Is 
> yours? What
> > should we say?") In kindergarten, every student carries around 
> a  
> > clipboard
> > with the day's activities on it - that's what Abigail was 
> writing on  
> > at the
> > listening center - and each Friday, every child has a 5- or 10-
> minute> "learning conference" with his teacher, a mini-
> performance review in  
> > which
> > the children discuss what they accomplished in the last week, 
> where  
> > they
> > fell short and what skills they want to work on in the week to 
> come.  
> > All of
> > these practices, along with plenty of others that fill the 
> day, are  
> > designed
> > to reinforce habits of self-control.
> >
> > This comprehensiveness creates an extra level of complication for
> > researchers examining Tools of the Mind. There are now four separate
> > large-scale long-term experimental studies under way across 
> the  
> > country. But
> > even if the researchers do find, in a few years, that the 
> program has
> > long-term effects on executive function and school 
> performance, they  
> > still
> > won't know exactly which techniques in the Tools of the Mind 
> package  
> > are the
> > most useful, or whether they all need to be employed in 
> concert in  
> > order to
> > have an effect. Stephanie M. Carlson, a professor of 
> child  
> > psychology at the
> > University of Minnesota
> > 
> <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/univers> ity_of_minnesota/index.html?inline=nyt-org>  who studies executive  
> > function,
> > told me she is impressed with what she has seen so far of 
> Tools of  
> > the Mind.
> > But, she pointed out, "it's a really heavy-hitting approach, 
> and  
> > there are a
> > lot of different techniques used during the course of the day. 
> What  
> > we don't
> > know is what the secret ingredient is." It might be all the 
> dramatic  
> > play,
> > but it also might be the literacy practice, or the 
> learning  
> > conferences, or
> > something else entirely.
> >
> > In the end, the most lasting effect of the Tools of the Mind 
> studies  
> > may be
> > to challenge some of our basic ideas about the boundary 
> between work  
> > and
> > play. Today, play is seen by most teachers and education 
> scholars as  
> > a break
> > from hard work or a reward for positive behaviors, not a place 
> to  
> > work on
> > cognitive skills. But in Tools of the Mind classrooms, 
> that  
> > distinction
> > disappears: work looks a lot like play, and play is treated 
> more  
> > like work.
> > When I asked Duckworth about this, she said it went to the 
> heart of  
> > what was
> > new and potentially important about the program. "We often 
> think  
> > about play
> > as relaxing and doing what you want to do," she explained. 
> "Maybe  
> > it's an
> > American thing: We work really hard, and then we go on 
> vacation and  
> > have
> > fun. But in fact, very few truly pleasurable moments come 
> from  
> > complete
> > hedonism. What Tools does - and maybe what we all need to do - 
> is to  
> > blur
> > the line a bit between what is work and what is play. Just 
> because  
> > something
> > is effortful and difficult and involves some amount of 
> constraint  
> > doesn't
> > mean it can't be fun."
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > xmca mailing list
> > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
> >
> 
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