by Ruby K Payne
This is an actual case. What came out in the story was that Jennifer had seen a TV show in which a girl her age had died suddenly and had never known she was ill. Jennifer's parents took her to the doctor, he ran tests, and he told her she was fine. So she didn't go to the nurse's office anymore.
A metaphor story is to be used one on one when there is a need to understand the existing behavior and motivate the student to implement the appropriate behavior.
TEACHING HIDDEN RULES
For example, if a student from poverty laughs when he/she is disciplined, the teacher needs to say, "Do you use the same rules to play all computer games? No, you don't because you would lose. The same is true at school. There are street rules and there are school rules. Each set of rules helps you be successful where you are. So, at school, laughing when being disciplined is not a choice. It doesn't help you be successful. It only buys you more trouble. Keep a straight face and look sorry, even if you don't feel that way."
This is an example of teaching a hidden rule. It can be even more straightforward with older students. "Look, there are hidden rules on the streets and hidden rules at school. What are they?"
After the discussion, detail the rules that make students successful where they are.
WHAT DOES THIS INFORMATION MEAN IN THE SCHOOL OR WORK SETTING?
a Students from poverty need to have at least two sets of behaviors from which to choose-one for the street and one for the school and work settings.
? The purpose of discipline should be to promote successful behaviors at school.
a Teaching students to use the adult voice (i.e., the language of negotiation) is important for success in and out of school and can become an alternative to physical aggression.
? Structure and choice need to be part of the discipline approach.
r Discipline should be seen and used as a form of instruction.
CHAPTER 8
Instruction and Improving
Achievement
ne of the overriding purposes of this book is to improve the achievement of resources, and numerous studies have documented the correlation J of students from poverty. Low achievement is closely correlated with lack between low socioeconomic status and low achievement (Hodgkinson, 1995). To improve achievement, however, we will need to rethink our instruction and instructional arrangements.
TRADITIONAL NOTIONS OF INTELLIGENCE
For years, and still very prevalent, is the notion that nearly all intelligence is inherited. In fact, the book The Bell Curve purports that individuals in poverty have on the average an IQ of nine points lower than individuals in the middle class. That might be a credible argument if IQ tests really measure ability. What IQ tests measure is acquired information. Try the following IQ test and see how you do.
IQ TEST
1. What is gray tape and what is it used for?
2. What does dissed mean?
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of moving often?
4. What is the main kind of work that a bondsman does?
5. What is a roach?
6. How are a pawnshop and a convenience store alike? How are they different?
7. Why is it important for a non-U.S. citizen to have a green card?
8. You go to the bakery store. You can buy five loaves of day-old bread for 39 cents each or seven loaves of three-day-old bread for 28 cents each. Which choice will cost less?
9. What does deportation mean?
10. What is the difference between marriage and a common law relationship?
These questions are representative of the kinds of questions that are asked on IQ tests. This test is only different in one way: the content. Yet it illustrates clearly the point that the information tested on many IQ tests is only acquired knowledge. IQ tests were designed to predict success in school. However, they do not predict ability or basic intelligence. If middle-class students were to take this (invalidated) test, they could possibly have nine IQ points fewer than many students in poverty. Therefore, the assessments and tests we use in many areas of school are not about ability or intelligence. They are about an acquired knowledge base; if your parents are educated, chances are you will have a higher acquired knowledge base. A better approach to achievement is to look at teaching and learning.
DIFFERENTIATING BETWEEN TEACHING AND LEARNING
The emphasis since 1980 in education has been on teaching. The theory has been that if you teach well enough, then learning will occur. But we all know of situations and individuals, including ourselves, who decided in a given situation not to learn. And we have all been in situations where we found it virtually impossible to learn because we did not have the background information or the belief system to accept it, even though it was well-taught and presented.
In order to learn, an individual must have certain cognitive skills and must have a structure inside his/her head to accept the learning-a file cabinet or a piece of software. Traditionally, we have given the research on teaching to teachers and the research on learning to counselors and earlychildhood teachers. It is the research on learning that must be addressed if we are to work successfully with students from poverty.
Teaching is what occurs outside the head.
Learning is what occurs inside the head.
In this oversimplified representation of a learning structure are four elements. The first is Cognitive Strategies. These are even more basic than concepts. They are fundamental ways of processing information. They are the infrastructure of the mind. Concepts store information and allow for retrieval. Skills-i.e., reading, writing, computing, language-comprise the processing of content. Content is the "what" of learning-the information used to make sense of daily life. Traditionally in schools we have assumed that the cognitive strategies are in place. If they are not, we test and place the student in a special program: special education, dyslexia, Chapter i, ADHD, 504, etc. Little attempt is made to address the cognitive strategies because we believe that to a large extent they are not remediable. We focus our efforts in pre-K and K on building concepts. We devote first through third grades to building skills. We enhance those skills in grades 4 and 5. And when the student gets into sixth grade, and on to 12th grade, we teach content.
The truth is that we can no longer pretend this arrangement worksno matter how well or how hard we teach. Increasingly, students, mostly from poverty, are coming to school without the concepts, but more importantly, without the cognitive strategies. We simply can't assign them all to special education. What are these cognitive strategies, and how do we build learning structures inside the heads of students?
COGNITIVE STRATEGIES
Compelling work in this area has been done by Reuven Feuerstein, an Israeli. He began in 1945 working with poor, disenfranchised Jewish youths who settled in Israel after World War II. He had studied under Jean Piaget and disagreed with Piaget in one major way. He felt that between the environmental stimulus and the response should be mediation (i.e., the intervention of an adult).
Mediation is basically three things: identification of the stimulus, assignment of meaning, and identification of a strategy. For example, we say to a child, "Don't cross the street. You could get hit by a car. So if you must cross the street, look both ways twice."
WHY IS MEDIATION SO IMPORTANT?
Mediation builds cognitive strategies, and those strategies give individuals the ability to plan, systematically go through data, etc.
If an individual depends upon a random, episodic story structure for memory patterns, lives in an unpredictable environment, and has not developed the ability to plan, then ...
If an individual cannot plan, he/she cannot predict.
If an individual cannot predict, he/she cannot identify cause and effect.
If an individual cannot identify cause and effect, he/she cannot identify consequence.
If an individual cannot identify consequence, he/she cannot control impulsivity.
If an individual cannot control impulsivity, he/she has an inclinati
on toward criminal behavior.
Feuerstein identified the missing links that occur in the mind when mediation had not occurred. These students by any standard would have been identified as special-education students. Yet, with his program, many of these students who came to him in the mid-teens went on to be very successful, with some even completing Ph.D.s. To teach these strategies, Feuerstein developed more than 50 instruments. What are these missing cognitive strategies?
MISSING LINKS
(Feuerstein, 1980; Sharron, 1994):
I. "Mediated focusing"- Ability to focus attention and see objects in detail. Opposite of blurred and sweeping perceptions.
2. "Mediated scheduling"- Based on routine. Ability to schedule and plan ahead. Ability to represent the future abstractly and therefore set goals.
3. "Mediation of positive anticipation"-Ability to control the present for a happy representation of the future.
4. "Mediation of inhibition and control"- Ability to defer gratification, think before acting, control impulsiveness.
5. "Mediated representation of the future"-Ability to construe imaginatively a future scenario based on facts.
6. "Mediation of verbal stimulation"-Use of precise language for defining and categorizing the environment.
7. "Mediated precision "-Ability to precisely define situations, things, people, etc., and use that precise thinking for problem-solving.
Missing links/mediations result in cognitive issues.
What Are These Cognitive Issues?
Blurred and sweeping perceptions and the lack of a systematic method of exploration mean that these students have no consistent or predictable way of getting information. They see only about 50% of what is on a page. If you watch these students in a new setting, they will rapidly go from object to object, touching everything. Yet when you ask them what they have seen, they cannot tell you. This area is related to the use of the casual-register story structure, which is episodic and random in the details or information presented. They simply do not have cognitive methodology for doing tasks or a systematic way to finish tasks.
Impaired verbal tools means they do not have the vocabulary to deal with the cognitive tasks. Vocabulary words are the building blocks of the internal learning structure. Vocabulary is also the tool to better define a problem, seek more accurate solutions, etc. Many students who rely solely on casual register do not use or have many prepositions or adverbs in their speech.
Impaired spatial orientation is simply the inability to orient objects, people, etc., in space. Directions, location, object size, object shape, etc., are not available to them. They have neither the vocabulary nor the concepts for spatial orientation.
Impaired temporal orientation is the inability to organize and measure in time. One of Feuerstein's observations was that these students assign time to incidents on the basis of the emotional intensity of the experience, not the measured time that is part of educated thinking. I find among students from poverty that time is neither measured nor heeded. Being somewhere on time is seldom valued. And time itself is not seen as a thing to be used or valued.
Impaired observations of constancies is the inability of the brain to hold an object inside the head and keep the memory of the object constant. In other words, when there are impaired observations of constancies, objects change shape and size in the mind. If this is the case, then learning alphabet letters, retaining shapes, etc., are problematic. It is also the inability to know what stays the same and what changes. For example, east and west are always constant; left and right change based on the orientation of the moment.
Lack of precision and accuracy in data-gathering is another cognitive issue. It is related to several of the above issues. Problem-solving and other tasks are extremely problematic because students from poverty seldom have the strategies to gather precise and accurate data.
Another cognitive issue is the inability to hold two objects or two sources inside the head while comparing and contrasting. If a student is unable to do this, he/she cannot assign information to categories inside his/her brain. If a student cannot assign information to categories, then he/she cannot retrieve the information except in an associative, random way.
These issues explain many of the student behaviors. How do we make interventions?
What Are These Cognitive Strategies That Must Be Built?
Feuerstein identified three stages in the learning process: "input, elaboration, and output."
1. Input Strategies
Input is defined as "quantity and quality of the data gathered."
i. Use planning behaviors.
2. Focus perception on specific stimulus.
3. Control impulsivity.
4. Explore data systematically.
5. Use appropriate and accurate labels.
6. Organize space with stable systems of reference.
7. Orient data in time.
8. Identify constancies across variations.
9. Gather precise and accurate data.
io. Consider two sources of information at once.
n. Organize data (parts of a whole).
12. Visually transport data.
2. Elaboration Strategies
Elaboration is defined as "use of the data."
i. Identify and define the problem.
2. Select relevant cues.
3. Compare data.
4. Select appropriate categories of time.
5. Summarize data.
6. Project relationships of data.
7. Use logical data.
8. Test hypothesis.
9. Build inferences.
io. Make a plan using the data.
ii. Use appropriate labels.
12. Use data systematically.
3. Output Strategies
Ouput is defined as "communication of the data."
i. Communicate clearly the labels and process.
2. Visually transport data correctly.
3. Use precise and accurate language.
4. Control impulsive behavior.
What do these strategies mean?
Mediation builds these strategies. When these strategies are not present, they can be built. Typically in school, we begin teaching at the elaboration level (i.e., use of the data). When students do not understand, we reteach these strategies, but we do not revisit the quality and quantity of the data gathered.
Input Strategies (Quality and Quantity of Data)
Use planning behaviors includes goal-setting, identifying the procedures in the task, identifying the parts of the task, assigning time to the task(s), and identifying the quality of the work necessary to complete the task.
Focus perception on specific stimulus is the strategy of seeing every detail on the page or in the environment. It is the strategy of identifying everything noticed by the five senses.
Control impulsivity is the strategy of stopping action until one has thought about the task. There is a direct correlation between impulse control and improved behavior and achievement.
Explore data systematically means that a strategy is employed to procedurally and systematically go through every piece of data. Numbering is a way to go systematically through data. Highlighting each piece of data can be another method.
Use appropriate and accurate labels is the use of precise words and vocabulary to identify and explain. If a student does not have specific words to use, then his/her ability to retrieve and use information is severely limited. It is not enough that a student can do a task, he/she must also be able to label the procedures, tasks, and processes so that the task can be successfully repeated each time and analyzed at a metacognitive level. Metacognition is the ability to think about one's thinking. To do so, labels must be attached. Only when labels are attached can the task be evaluated and, therefore, improved.
Organize space with stable systems of reference is crucial to success in math. It means that up, down, right, left, across, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, etc., are understood. It mean
s that an individual can identify with labels the position of an item. It means that a person can organize space. For example, if an individual doesn't have this strategy, then it's virtually impossible to tell p, b, and d apart. The only differentiation is the orientation in space.
Orient data in time is the strategy of assigning abstract values to time and the measurement of time. This strategy is crucial for identifying cause and effect, for determining sequence, and for predicting consequences.
Identify constancies across variations is the strategy of knowing what always remains the same and what changes. For example, if you do not know what always makes a square a square, you cannot identify constancies. It allows one to define things, to recognize a person or an object, and to compare and contrast. This strategy allows cursive writing to be read in all of its variations. I once asked a group of fifth-grade students I was working with this question: "If you saw me tomorrow, what about me would be the same and what would be different?" Many of the students had difficulty with that concept.
Gather precise and accurate data is the strategy of using accurate labels, identifying the orientation in time and space, knowing the constancies, and exploring the data systematically.
Consider two sources of information at once is the strategy of visually transporting data accurately, identifying the constancies and variations, and exploring the data systematically. When that is done, then precise and accurate labels need to be assigned.
Organize data (parts of a whole) involves exploring data systematically, organizing space, identifying constancies and variations, and labeling the parts and the whole with precise words.
Visually transport data is when the eye picks up the data, carries it accurately to the brain, examines it for constancies and variations, and labels the parts and the whole.
Elaboration and Output Strategies