Tapping Student Effort: Increasing Student Achievement
Tapping Student Effort: Increasing Student Achievement
Author: Stephen G. Barkley with Contributing Editor Terri Bianco
Binding Type: Paper
Size: 5 3/8 x 8 1/2
Number of Pages: 172
Format: Paperback
Year Published: 2007
Availability: In Stock
Price: 19.95
Are your students making little progress despite all your efforts?
Are you working too hard to get your students to learn and be successful in school?
Are you struggling to pull learning out of them or pushing them to try harder?
Author Steve Barkley offers a unique and easy-to-understand formula for student success. As you put the formula into practice, you will be thrilled at how it taps students' effort and ability.
- Shift your perspective to give you a new definition of student effort, ability, and success.
- Realize the power of beliefs and vision in how students learn.
- Discover ways to generate enthusiasm and motivation in students so they will want to exert effort.
Foreword by Joseph K. Hasenstab:
Since 1980 Steve has put endless effort into understanding learning and sharing his learning and passion with educators across the country and recently around the world. It’s appropriate that effort be the focus of this third book because he exerts quality effort in all his undertakings.
I believe that the secret behind effort that leads to success in any field is “fire in the belly” which provides the perseverance to accomplish a vision. How else can we explain the high interest today in Internet blogs, computer chat rooms, video games, watching the NFL channel? People have passions and vision towards which they will exert effort.
Here’s an example of effort I have exerted in my past 12 years. I play golf 150 days a year: As a golfer, I stand 120 yards from the hole. The wind is coming at me 15 to 20 miles per hour from left to right. I have to choose a club and a target. I pick my club and then I have to ask my mind that in this kind of wind and distance and location to the hole, how hard to I need to hit the ball to gain closeness to the pin? Do I trust that I can hit the ball at 120 yards (with a large and deep sand bunker in front of the hole and a steep embankment of green to the back)? Do I hit to a safe area or chance going at the hole? These steps involve deciding on something that counts. This is the most compelling part of golf: after-risk assessment, the “action.” That is, telling the brain: “I am going to send the ball 120 yards. I need to target the left tree for a left to right drift, then land the ball in the broad area and get par. I do not risk a bunker or a steep pin placement on the green.” Then I hit the ball and find out the consequences of my passion, vision, ability, and effort. That’s me. Our students have passions too.
As educators, we have to face the challenges of how students learn differently today because of the amount of time they spend on computers and playing computer games. “Considering the amount of time spent on gaming, it is logical to assume that this gaming has affected the cognitive minds of teens today. William D. Winn, Director of the Learning Center at the University of Washington’s Human Interface Technology Laboratory believes that this generation of children thinks differently than the rest of us. They develop hypertext minds. They can leap around. It’s as though their cognitive structure were parallel not sequential” (Hostetter, 2000; Prensky, 2001).
“Patricia Greenfield made several discoveries of how this game generation’s cognitive skills differ from the previous generations. First, the game generation is more comfortable with visual-spatial skills, mental maps, and seeing the computer as a tool” (Greenfield, 1984).
Learning how to play video games is accomplished through “trial and error, observation, and hypothesis testing.” (This is a good example of exerting effort.) Children develop cognitive skills vital in science: “inductive discovery.” “Video games instruct children in decoding what symbols and graphics represent similar to learning what math or science symbols mean.” They also develop multitasking skills “which require quicker responses as well as more concentration on the game” (Greenfield, 1984).
Effort is exerted in the classroom when there are successful skill and performance patters defined (similar to those needed to be successful in golf), which are modeled, practiced, and coached. Effort to learn skill and performance patters will be exerted by students if we create “compelling whys” for them – give them reasons for learning.
Learning the skills and performance patters required in live events (real situations) that count (have consequences for the person) produce the greatest effort. Effort applied in these events is the result of one’s passion.
Our job as educators is to create the habit of making effort to occur within students. The future success of our society will be creating experts from our students. Research into experts, whether chess players or surgeons, shows producing an expert requires ten years of effort beyond the bounds of just “getting by” and expanding limitations by risk taking. As an example of such a risk, board certified doctors often refer their most difficult cases to other doctors who specialize in tough cases. They have successes. They also have deaths. The expert expands boundaries by taking risks. We need to develop experts.
Personally, I believe that what separates good teachers from great teachers is continuing “effortful study” of the magical moves of best teaching practices. A person reading this book is doing “effortful study.” So, congratulate yourself.
Creating schools of the future will occur one reform at a time over perhaps generations. One day all classrooms will be exciting and useful with students exerting effort to learn. Steve’s book on effort is part of that future.
