Executive Function Skills and Academic Success in College: Supporting Students with Executive

Function Challenges

Rebecca K. ShanklandMonica A. Lambert

Executive FunctionsExecutive function processes critical to success in college-level academics include

•planning and prioritizing

•goal setting

•organization

•retaining and manipulating information in working memory

•shifting flexibly

•self-monitoring/self-checking

Students with Executive Function Challenges (EFCs) have chronic difficulty in one or more of these key executive functions.

What are Executive Functioning Challenges (EFCs)?Students with EFCs have chronic difficulty planning, organizing, executing, and evaluating their performance on tasks which can make success in college-level academics much more difficult.  Students with EFCs may struggle in any of these areas: 

• planning and prioritizing• goal setting• organization• task initiation• task completion• retaining and manipulating information in

working memory• shifting flexibly between • self-monitoring/self-checking• time management• inhibition / impulse control• emotional control

Why Teach Executive Function Skills?

Teaching Executive Function Skills•Teach a few strategies well.•Match strategies taught to the needs of the students and the tasks they need to accomplish.•Teach one or two strategies at a time to mastery; then add additional strategies.•Model the strategy for students by thinking aloud.•Provide ample opportunities for students to practice in small groups or pairs BEFORE expecting independent use of the strategy.•Help students reflect on their use of the strategy.•Talk with students about other situations in which the strategy could be used and how they might adapt the strategy to that situation (generalization).

Strategic learners •Know a number of useful learning strategies•Know when, where, and how to use strategies•Know why a strategy is useful and important•Know how to select an appropriate strategy for a particular task and how to monitor their strategy use•Know how to create and modify strategies•Are reflective and planful in their use of strategies•Constantly increase their knowledge base and connect new information to prior knowledge (Hock, 1992, 1993; Hock, Schumaker, & Deshler, 1999)

Academic Success Cycle (Meltzer, 2010)

• Strategy instruction plays a critical role in enhancing students’ conceptual understanding, their ability to reflect on their own learning and the learning process, their creative use of knowledge, and their ability to transfer skills to novel situations (Brown, 1997; Deshler, Schumaker, & Lenz, 1984, Pressley & Woloshyn, 1995).

• Successful learners use effective and efficient strategies to process information (Brown & Campione, 1986; Harris & Graham, 1992; Meltzer, 1993; Palincsar et al., 1993; Pressley et al., 1989).

• “Explicit instruction plays a critical role in helping all students to use metacognitive strategies to learn more easily” (Deshler et al., 2001; Graham & Harris, 2003; Meltzer et al., 2004b; Swanson, 1999; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001).

• Effective and efficient learning strategies serve as a bridge between skills, content, and complex academic demands (Meltzer, 2010).