Yvette Jackson
-Intro:
Schools are conditioned to focus on student weaknesses rather than student strengths
Need to start by identifying students strengths, then provide enriching options - high level activities that increase intellectual development (Piaget)
Those that focus on student strengths can stand up to the current deficit culture with confidence and inspire students to build on their strengths, enabling high performance and leading to self-driven learning and self-actualization.
Pedagogy of confidence occurs in schools when teachers are focused on high intellectual performance for all students.
pedagogy of confidence (PoC): a cooperative process:
Student motivation to Learn is directly affected teachers' confidence in their students' potential.
Book describes the high operational practices gleaned from gifted education that fuel the pedagogy of confidence.
Shift focus of instruction from weaknesses ---
Instead need to identify and amplify Intellectual potential and strengths of students to better engage and accelerate learning & achievement.
Pedagogy of confidence is a shift from a culture of deficit to a culture of belief in intellectual potential.
Socrates Argument of the purpose for education- to draw out what is already inside the student.
Confidence derived from competence causes us to become intensely stimulated.
W/ pedagogy of confidence we can unlock the immense potential of our school-dependent students.
-Chapter 1 - the need to believe
PofC is the fearless expectation and support for all students to demonstrate high intellectual performance.
Switch instructional focus from what needs to be taught to how to maximize learning through the cultivation of student strengths while providing High Operational practices (HOP) to produce High Intellectual Performance (HIP)
Enable students to make personal connections to their learning, affirming the value of their lived experience.
Confident teachers do this through the interconnectedness of culture, language & cognition as a frame to:
1. Conduct their teaching methods
2. Choreograph the integration of enrichment to identify and direct strengths and interests (noredink.com is a great example)
3. Compose and orchestrate learning strategies to engage participation, ensure understanding, and address needs. (formative assessment, teach like a champion strategies)
4. Engineer the design of assessments to engage expand & accelerate the learning of school-dependent students (Naiku, google forms, Stranded unit assessments, checkpoints, etc)
Ultimate goal of PofC is self-directed learning and self-actualization.
Need to eclipse the Cognitive holocaust decimating urban districts, ravaging lives of both teachers and students, robbing them of the opportunity for self-actualization.
Impetus for setting weaknesses as the focus of instruction for school-dependent students:
Brought on by IQ tests, Remedial and pull out programming was put in place as students were labeled disadvantaged, minority (less than) and disabled (strong percentage of Sped students African American boys). Pedagogy of deficit remediation ensued. At the same time "gifted" children were taught with a focus on their strengths.
Gifted programs
The culture and belief of high expectations:
Most critical ingredients of gifted programs are belief and high expectations. High expectations motivated teachers to seek strategies and opportunities that focused on strengths and interests - strategies that engaged and challenged cognitive skill.
Latin root "educo" means to draw out one's potential.
Teachers Battle the endless underperformance of students when weaknesses are the focus set of the course.
Research indicates people are gifted only in those areas they have a passionate interest in - interest that when guided evolves into exceptional strengths.
gifted programs maximize opportunities for self-fulfillment
High intellectual performance is developed when strategies and opportunities bridge learning to interests & abilities, elicit gifted behaviors and habits of mind, expose students to content that builds their frame of reference and engages exploration, support development of requisite skills to strengthen cognition, and enable self-directed learning, and provide opportunities for the application of learning in authentic and meaningful ways.
What happens when these are the goals for all students?
Question of equity:
Why don't we treat every Interaction with students and parents with as much thoughtfulness and thoroughness as is done in AP courses?
Pedagogy of gifted programs targeted confidence of both teachers and students- as the operative goal
Confidence is the foundation for high expectations and focus on strengths, possibilities, new creations, and new meaning for students. Confidence advances exploration, discovery, self-direction, multiple frames for thinking and acting and the development and application of new knowledge and skills. Confidence is empowering, pushing cognition to deeper levels of existence and expression.
"Low focus/high impact considerations" from gifted pedagogy -
Low focus in the development of general pedagogy, yet high impact in engaging learning and developing performance or products valued as demonstrative of high intellectual ability.
Low focus high impact considerations of a pedagogy of confidence
(-came to be known as "high operational practices" of pedagogy of confidence):
Identifying and activating student strength
Eliciting high intellectual performance
Providing enrichment
Integrating prerequisites
Must also build relationships and create bridges from what must be taught to the lived experiences of school-dependent students.
-Chapter 2: continuing the drama of disregarded realities
What current realities are antagonistic to pedagogy of confidence?
Battle of those who prescribe to a weaknesses based approach vs those who champion a strengths-based /directed growth pedagogy.
those antagonistic to PofC disregard 2 critical realities:
1) the reciprocal relationship between teacher confidence and student success
2) the impact of the students' experience outside and inside of school on their motivation, intellectual development and learning.
The real gap to close is the gap existing between school-dependent students' potential and their achievement!
Jackson mentions the "devaluing phenomenon known as the 'achievement gap'." and the influence it has on teachers' approaches to instructing school-dependent students
Urban education has devolved - the expansion of the cognitive holocaust that perpetuates prejudice about the capacity of school-dependent students & destruction of confidence of the many unheralded teachers who have in fact elicited exponential growth despite prejudicing policies.
P of C - the artful use of the science of learning to generate high operational practices that empower and support students and teachers to fearlessly pursue demonstrations of high intellectual performance that can lead to self-directed Learning and self-actualization.
Reading and math skills are only approximations of learning - thus the vast range of Intellectual capacity of school-dependent students is not assessed.
Characterizing standardized tests as a means to assess learning potential or diagnose the causes of learning problems is invalid.
Standardized Tests are not constructed in a manner that is reflective of the diversity of students.
The conceptions teachers have about the linguistic differences of their students are extremely problematic. Teachers must admit if they don't know how to move their students from the linguistic form that has been practical and social for them to the standard form on which they are assessed or from which they must construct meaning. (see C&LR teaching and learning chapters 4&5)
-Chapter 3 other disregarded realities
Are there additional barriers that affect the intellectual development & learning of African-American school-dependent students?
When we believe in the vast intellectual capacity of all students to achieve at high levels, we are relentless in searching for ways to unleash that capacity.
2 critical reasons for low motivation and Learning of underachieving school-dependent students:
1. Inattention to connecting to the students' personal frames of reference
2. A disregard for the experiences students deal with on a daily basis that impacts their psyche
Decontextualized instruction coupled with the fear students experience outside (and sometimes in) school suppress motivation and diminish learning.
We cannot ignore the frames of reference of African American students and the perceptions these frames create, which are colored by the racial identity of the individuals. Their ancestors were brought to this country and enslaved against their will. They developed "survival techniques" to preserve their life including "passivity and suppression of any demonstration of exceptional ability for fear of becoming a threat." This has continued long after slavery was abolished as institutional racism still exists today.
Educators must recognize how their own culture influences how they see and respond to the world.
Sociocultural deprivation -
A lack of connecting new experiences to one's cultural references
This short-circuits cultural anchors needed for expanding confidence, intellectual capabilities, and motivation
Absence of motivation
Lack of motivation results from a deficit of encouragement both indirectly (lack of access to role models) and directly (marginalized programming, misguided teacher perceptions of students or lack of parental pressure)
Culture and motivation
Our cultural group affects our behavior patterns
Experience within our culture influence our personal goals, values and attitudes
One's cultural frame of reference is a filtering agent.
Neurobiology and school-dependent students
See p. 48-49 for description of how stress associated with prejudice, degradation, stereotypes, reaction to abuse, feelings of failure, marginalizing language, low self-esteem have on brain functioning and the release of cortisol (inhibits comprehension).
Recognizing the deep effects race and cultural frame of reference have on belief, behaviors, and learning of school-dependent African-American students is the first step to ameliorating how these students are actually perceived and subsequently how they feel they are perceived, critical considerations for transforming education.
The effect of poverty on learning:
Lack of exposure - by age 3 middle-income children vocab is twice that of children living in poverty
Poverty also causes physiological impairments that have major effect on achievement (poor eye sight misdiagnosed as ADHD)
Malnutrition - no food evenings and weekends takes a toll on the brain, leaving legions in the prefrontal cortex that impair higher order thinking and problem solving.
Neural systems affected by malnutrition stunt language development, and executive cognitive functions like paying attention, remembering details, and planning
When we recognize the realities of the experiences of these students inside and outside of school, the consideration should not be why these students fail to achieve, but rather, how so many learn in spite of debilitating conditions they are relegated to endure.
-Chapter 4 - the transformative theory and practice of Divining Intelligence
Reuben Feuerstein's theory of structural cognitive modifiability of the brain is the premier research underlying PofC
Cognitive modifiability is a comprehensive learning system consisting of 3 interconnected approaches:
1. Mediation -
2. the learning propensity Assessment Device
3. instructional enrichment
All are designed to repair cognitive dysfunctions and accelerate intellectual development
Impact of sociocultural deprivation - missing links to one's own culture, which make it difficult for students to have an anchor -
Cultural interactions transmit certain ways Of confronting and adapting to new experiences
How does sociocultural deprivation happen?
Limited intentional transmission of culture from parents, no connection to cultural heritage in the teaching students receive and a glaring absence of culture in curriculum
See Jacksons example of how her parents ensured high expectations rooted in culture on P.58 - fascinating story
Theory of Structural cognitive modifiability
Elucidates how the structure of one's cognition can be affected by guided interactions (or lack thereof) that affect the "fundamental processes of thought, learning and problem solving
Feuerstein's definition of intelligence
Dynamic process that enables an individual to adapt in response to need, a novel situation, or changes in the environment. In order to adapt students need cognitive tools or functions required to decide upon and differentiate among numerous options. Thus, intelligence involves cognition (or ways of thinking or making meaning), which is comprised of conntive functions that help an individual adapt to or control his/her environment. Intelligence is modifiable.
Mediation
Accelerating intellectual development and learning
Intelligence (or adaptability) depends on 3 different phases of cognitive behavior:
Input phase- Taking in information
Elaboration phase - Reasoning about or thoughtfully operating on info that has been taken in.
Output phase - effectively communicating the results of this reasoning
Feurstein found that the most salient catalyst for assisting restructuring of cognitive functions and the development of intelligence was the interaction between the teacher or parent (or mediator) and the student
The mediator's goal is to elicit from the learner a personal motivation for learning and to provide the strategies needed for efficient and effective learning
Mediator, guided by intention, culture, and emotional investment in his/her learner organizes and exposes learning experiences to provide the learner with opportunities to deeply investigate information by posing authentic questions strategically framed in the cultural context of the learner. They probe for elaborations and personal connections from students.
Effective Mediators want students to grasp what is taught and will do whatever it takes to help the Learner do that.
School-dependent students have the same intellectual capacity to learn, but mediation is needed to reduce attitudinal and motivational deficiencies, poor work habits, or lack of learning sets.
Skills for focusing on seminar/foundations students are listed under categories of input, elaboration and output on P. 62-63.
Learning propensity assessment device (LPAD)
A battery of tests-learning-test situations focused on diagnosing the thinking processes by themselves by pinpointing cognitive deficiencies, thus allowing the most direct mediation to be prescribed.
Involves teaching students during assessment process and then analyzing the way they applied cognitive functions for learning (dynamic testing)
3 components of dynamic testing:
Assessment of fluid processes of thought, perception, learning and problem solving
Carefully structured teaching of cognitive principles and processes
Reassessment of the ways in which the teaching has modified a student in direction of higher capacity and greater efficiency on similar, albeit different, problems.
3 structural components of LPAD:
a task, problem or situation whose mastery requires a grasp of a given principal through application of the relevant cognitive operation
An operation: categorization, seriation, permutation, logical multiplication, analogically or syllogistic reasoning, all of whose appropriate use depends on prerequisite cognitive functions as well as attitudinal and motivational factors
A language or modality in which the task is presented: pictorial, numerical, graphic, verbal, or logicoverbal
See graphic of LPAD model on p. 65
The more school-dependent students demonstrate performance reflective of high intelligence, the more confident teachers become about reversing the underachievement of these individuals who have been challenged by barriers that have prohibited them from learning to their full potential
Pre-requisites for all learning (especially self-directed learning & high intellectual performance)
Focus on comparative analysis
Decision making
Problem solving
Achievement
Must expose students to experiences that are important for complex thinking
Must select stimuli that are meaningful and establish patterns of attention to ensure appropriate focusing behavior
Provide models that students can imitate
Repeat and vary the thinking process so that students' interactions will become more voluntary and innovative
The key to instructional enrichment is "the bridging process" - making deliberate connections between cognitive functions addressed in IE and disciplines to be learned
A students ability to learn is not static or fixed. Feuerstein's Structural Cognitive Modifiability (neuroscience shows us the modifiability of an individuals mental functions) shows that learning is a dynamic process.
-chapter 5
Extraordinary learning growth requires extraordinary teaching
The quest is to devise materials that will challenge the superior student while not destroying the confidence and will to learn of the less fortunate.
Pursuit of excellence requires "long run" and "short run" objectives for curriculum design and instruction
Pedagogy of confidence "long-run" goals are self directed learning and self-actualization. "short run" objective is demonstrating high intellectual performance.
High intellectual performance is innate and can be expressed in all humans under the right circumstances.
First fundamental consideration for developing transformative pedagogy:
Intelligence is modifiable. All students benefit from a focus on high intellectual performance. Learning is influenced by the interaction of culture, language and cognition.
2nd fundamental consideration for developing transformative pedagogy:
Acknowledgement that school-dependent students often live w/ debilitating circumstances outside of school (socioeconomic, psychological, environmental) all of which effect emotional balance and inside of school (marginalizing labels, assessments and programs). These realities restrict intellectual development.
3rd fundamental consideration for developing transformative pedagogy:
Since the brain is modifiable "enriching mediation" can correct cognitive dysfunctions and strengthen the brain so that high intellectual performance can be elicited.
4th fundamental consideration for developing transformative pedagogy:
Mediation is facilitated through high operational practices that affirm potential, provide specific training in cognitive skills that explicitly activate cognitive functions, and engage learners by bridging instruction to real-life applications that are meaningful and relevant to students.
Artful aspect of pedagogy of confidence is mediation
Neuroscience research shows that learning entails strengthening connections between neurons. "making sense happens though mediation's guided, reflective discussion."
The brain is stimulated to make connections to past experiences through high level tasks when it is engaged, challenged, and receives meaningful, beneficial and compelling feedback (Jensen 1998 p.32-33)
Goal of mediation is to rekindle instrinsic motivation for learning by providing strategies and opportunities that develop competence.
Formula for learning:
L: (U+M) (C1+C2)
Learning: (understanding +motivation) (competence + confidence)
Student engagement is is affected by our brains recognition of relevance and meaningfulness. Developing interests and connecting to personal experiences stimulates motivation.
Conditions that foster intrinsic motivation for self-directed learning and self-actualization are positive beliefs, personal goals, and productive emotions.
Competence and confidence are fortified when:
Strengths are used to develop less developed areas
Students are made aware the value of their strengths and given opportunities to demonstrate and apply their strengths
Students are made aware of the Modifiability of the brain and the impact effort and belief have on modifying the brain
Students are guided to bridge personal experiences and cultural frames of reference to concepts being taught
Critical components to mediation are engagement, supported challenge and feedback
The interconnectedness of culture, language and cognition for engaging learning:
To positively impact the cognitive development of school-dependent students of color, the cultural knowledge referenced in schools must reflect who these students are, how they see the world, and now they feel the world sees them.
The mode of choice a teacher uses to counter the natural "push back" of adolescents' misbehavior (especially African American Adolescents) succeeds only in bringing about the disintegration of motivation and productive participation in class.
When teachers are unable to make links to students' cultural references -the lens with which we perceive and understand the world - an "affective filter" develops. Students become unmotivated, and are unable to identify with the teacher. Mediating the learning of new information must be situated in the immediate lives of adolescents, where relevance and meaningfulness reside for them.
Culture is predominantly transmitted verbally, so cultural patterns are influenced by language and our language is influenced by culture.
Adolescents have their own cognitive style, shaped both by their ethnic culture and youth culture.
The cognitive style of individuals of African america and hispanic/Latino decent is different (field dependent) from those of European and Asian decent (field independent). The orientation of field dependence toward more social interaction highlights why working with partners and having authentic relations with teachers is so beneficial for students of African American decent.
Need to take a mindful approach to language as a critical part of pedagogy.
Students' culturally bound cognitive and communicative styles are their primary discourse - the way they use language, the way they think, or the way they act.
For school-dependent students, learning academic language amounts to the acquisition of a 2nd language. Must stop repeatedly correcting students' language as they are trying to engage in conversation. The key is to engage students in authentic dialogue (not lecture) relating knowledge to themselves and their world.
-chapter 6 - the high operational practices (HOP) of the pedagogy of confidence
3 lessons about pedagogy for Students labeled as gifted:
1. Belief in and expectations for their ability to drive the choices of exposure and opportunity that are made available to them
2. Their Educ is designed as a constantly unfolding series of invitations to explore their innate capital (the frontier of their intelligence)
3. Discoveries they make About their intelligence is guided to better determine what they want to pursue to feel self-actualized
Reciprocal relationship between teachers' confidence and students' success and the impact of students' lived experiences outside and inside of school on their intellectual development, their learning, and how they are perceived
Gifted education is a pedagogical resource we can learn from to guide education for all students
6 high operational practices (HOP)
1. Identify and activate student strength
2. Elicit high intellectual performance
3. Provide enrichment
4. Integrate prerequisites for academic learning
5. Build relationships
6. Situating learning in the lives of students
7. Amplify student voice - ask students for input about what engaged their learning and to articulate what their lives are like at their school
5,6 &7 are particularly important for school-dependent students
Relationships & connections to theirs personal lives validate their experiences.
The new HIP HOP - high intellectual performance through high operational practices
HOP are the axis by which POfC revolves to produce the HIP that can motivate self-directed learning and self-actualization
Intelligence if modifiable!
All students benefit from a focus on HIP
Learning is influenced by the interaction of culture, language and cognition
HOPs are culturally responsive in that:
1. They validate: incorporate cultural knowledge, prior experiences, and performance styles of students to make learning more appropriate and effective - teach to and through the cultural frame of references and strengths of students.
2. They are comprehensive
3. They are multidimensional: address curriculum content learning context, classroom climate, student-teacher relationships, instructional techniques, and performance assessments
4. They are empowering: empower academic competence
5. Transformative: develop in students the knowledge, skills, and values needed to become social critics
6. Emancipatory - vehicles for making authentic knowledge about different ethnic groups accessible to students
Teachers feel empowered when they observe the motivation & growth of their students!
Habits of mind:
Persisting
Managing impulsivity
Listening with understanding/empathy
Thinking flexibly
Thinking about thinking (meta cognition
Striving for accuracy
Questioning and posing problems
Applying past knowledge to new situations
Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision
Gathering data through all senses
Creating, imagining, innovating
Responding with wonderment and awe
Taking reasonable risks
Finding humor
Thinking interdependently
Remaining open to continuous learning
Poor intellectual or academic performance is directly attributed to feelings of inferiority, inefficient mental processing, and insufficient background knowledge especially in cross-cultural situations.
All students have an innate desire for engagement, challenge, and feedback. Mediation through HOP offers the needed catalysts, encouraging the high intellectual performance school-dependent students are capable of achieving. These acts of HIP invigorate students' perceptions of themselves as competent learners while spawning positive perceptions of their teachers as facilitators of this learning. I have seen these positive perceptions create a fellowship of commitment between teachers and their students that vitalizes them both, transforming classrooms into oases of extraordinary teaching and learning.
Chapter 7
Students create personal portfolio of strengths starting w/ bubble map
Reflect on how those strengths were developed
Goal is to bring into consciousness the diverse strengths they possess, the effort they applied to develop these strengths, and the abilities they have achieved as a result.
Deepen self-concept, self-esteem & their sense of competence while illustrating the benefits of their self-efficacy.
Then classify strengths from bubble map onto a tree map. Create general concepts or category headings with specific strengths under each category.
Ex: speaking
Debate
Discussion
Storytelling
Ask them to reflect on how these skills help them in school, in the outside world, & what careers might require such strengths...
This reflective strength identification process encourages overt connections to future career opportunities
Seeing strengths already ld existing within them will stimulate motivation, self-directed learning, & higher achievement
Do this 3 times per year
Once trust is built have individuals share strengths and build a collaborative bubble map and tree map or " class strengths profile"
Teacher can quickly identify commonality amongst strengths so strategies and activities that capitalize on those strengths can be employed on a regular basis.
Also facilitates interactions for peer to peer support (matching one student's strengths with another's needs in collaborative projects)
Activating strengths through affirmations
Positive affirmations can reprogram negative beliefs & motivate students to set goals
Students should write their own affirmations, carry them with them, hang them in their locker, recite them daily, etc. They revitalize confidence!
Teachers & students Should collaboratively create a class affirmation (Pledge of achievement instead of pledge of alligence)
Possible study skills work to replace resource:
Animating student strengths & amplifying student voice through student-led parent conferences.
Objective:
1. Increase sense of collaborative responsibility between student, parent & teacher regarding achievement in core areas.
2. Increase engagement of student and parents in the work students are doing at school by holding a student-led conference two times in a semester (during teacher office hour) At this conf. students present a portfolio created in their study-skills class displaying their ELA, math, social studies and science course work complete with a brief reflection and survey questions detailing the self-reported effort and persistence students showed in completing the assignment, test or quiz. The creation of the portfolio for the conf cultivates a "growth mindset" (dweck, 2000) providing students with perspectives on the results of their efforts by showcasing important aspects of school-life.
3. Elicit procedures and practices students use for studying and learning directly from the student and then provide feedback to improve those processes. (Students are rarely asked to consistently reflect on their own learning and growth). Students become active, rather than passive, partners in the education process.
"Students w/ IEPs benefit from actively working w/ adults in setting realistic personal goals and plans for achievement." (Jackson, 110)
Students are ultimately assessed and graded on the completion of the portfolio, consisting of graded assignments in each core area. Students reflect on every graded assignment, quiz, test focusing primarily on the effort and persistence they showed in studying/completing it.
Job-a-like Teachers & ISF would develop a rubric that measures self-reported effort on each core-area assignment. (Students who struggle need to think critically about the outcome of each assignment they complete and the work/effort that went into completing it.)
Students then lead conferences w/ parents - this would highlight the extent to which students understand, process and apply the FA feedback they receive from teachers. Students' portfolio would demonstrate strengths as well as areas where improvement is needed.
Need checklist/rubric -
Need to establish post-conf survey to collect parent feedback
Concern: will student get all graded materials back from teachers for portfolio.
Teachers need help Applying the Inter-connectedness of culture, language and cognition to identify or design strategies that will enhance cognitive development and motivate learning.
Outcomes of prof development:
More intentional use of strategies to engage more students (TLC)
Increase use of common language around best practices in instruction
Increased awareness of the impact of culture on learning and use of culturally relevant instructional materials.
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