Recap: Understanding and Supporting Executive Function
Executive functioning skills are critical to memory, attention, organizing, and planning—among many other tasks important to learning and teaching. In a recent workshop, CETL explored how instructors
In many of our previous workshops on neurodivergence and inclusive teaching, the CETL team has talked about the ways executive function factors into teaching and learning. In our March 26th workshop, we took a focused look at what executive function is, what challenges executive functioning skills, and how we can create structures that strengthen and support these skills in our work as educators.
As UDL on Campus explains, executive functioning describes a set of cognitive capabilities that influence behaviors like:
Setting goals
Planning and organizing
Breaking down goals/projects into smaller steps
Identifying and using problem-solving strategies
Remembering details
Paying attention
Setting priorities
Monitoring progress
Self-discipline (e.g., avoiding distractions, inhibiting impulses)
Some liken executive functioning to the air traffic controllers, managing airplanes and ensuring they don’t crash. Lose some capacity there, and things can more easily get overlooked.
What affects executive function
Everyone has executive functioning skills—and everyone, at least sometimes, struggles to manage their executive function. That’s because executive functioning is cognitively demanding, particularly when our cognitive efficiency is impacted by things like:
How much sleep you got the last two nights (and how good it was)
How well you’re feeling (physically, mentally, emotionally, etc.)
How familiar you are with new information
Whether you’re comfortable at the moment
In the workshop, I used the metaphor of a bucket for our brains. Sometimes we have great big (and empty) five-gallon buckets-for-brains, ready to focus our attention on learning something new (which is a cognitively demanding task) while also managing our emotions, monitoring our body language, and scanning the environment for things that might catch our attention (be that a predator lurking or someone making a funny face).
When your sleep is lower quality, or if you’re feeling the effects of mid-April academic overwhelm (purely hypothetically, of course), or if the room is too hot, too cold, or too crowded, then your bucket can shrink… maybe a little, maybe a lot. Or maybe, if you’ll allow it, the bucket starts to fill up, in ways more or less delightfully.
Another layer: Cognitive load
All of this makes more sense when we understand the concept of cognitive load, a concept from psychology that captures the various things our brains are balancing—both consciously, subconsciously, and unconsciously—at any given moment. There are three kinds of cognitive load worth knowing a little bit about:
Intrinsic cognitive load: This involves trying to understand complex, often new information. Ideally, to help reduce the demand of intrinsic cognitive load, we want to try to simplify the complexity of information, particularly for non-experts. As educators, this can look like providing organizing tools for new topics—things like categories, visual representations, or mnemonic tools to help learners decipher new concepts.
Germane cognitive load: This is the very deep processing we want our students to be doing in our classes. It involves absorbing new information by integrating it with new information. Whereas intrinsic cognitive load is about deciphering information, germane cognitive load is about connecting it to what we already know and making sense of that information in context. It’s the critical thinking panacea learning aspires to be. Ideally, we are maximizing germane cognitive load in our teaching and learning.
Extraneous cognitive load: This is all the other stuff that can distract us—things like loud noises, weird smells, a lack of sleep, social anxiety (does the person sitting next to me think I’m dumb?), and so forth. To the extent possible, we aim to reduce extraneous cognitive load.
As I said, we all have executive functioning skills, and we all experience challenges to them at various times. But for some of our students and colleagues, these challenges are more regular and more pronounced. We talk about executive function when we talk about neurodivergence and inclusive teaching because neurodivergent (and otherwise disabled) individuals and those who may feel like they don’t belong in college (such as historically minoritized students and those who come from under-resourced high schools) are going to be affected more by executive functioning challenges.
Supporting executive functions
For all but a few people, educators are generally not executive functioning experts, so you might be wondering why you should invest precious time and effort into building supports for executive functioning into your work. If you relate to any of these statements, though, taking executive functions into account will make your life less frustrating and more joyful:
You’re tired of answering the same questions over and over again—and they’re in the syllabus.
Your students may be motivated to learn, but lack the skills to manage stress or get started on learning tasks.
Challenges around procrastination or tackling large projects can derail a student’s progress and success (and, most importantly, self-esteem).
You would rather teach engaged and enthusiastic students.
Thankfully, friend-of-CETL Jennifer Pusateri from the University of Kentucky has put together a curated set of resources on supporting executive functioning through Universal Design for Learning (UDL) on the University of Virginia’s Teaching Hub, including this incredibly helpful four-page PDF with very specific guidance on how to support students’ executive functions in three clusters:
Focus and activation: Things like shifting tasks, tuning out distractions, and taking notes.
Activation: Things like meeting deadlines, prioritizing tasks, and planning for long-term projects.
Memory: Things like answering questions with little/no processing time, holding information in short-term memory when taking notes, and recalling information.
Be sure you check out Jennifer’s guide!
One last note: I credit Sherri Restauri with clueing me into the coolest website I’ve found in the last year—Goblin.Tools. It has a number of neurodivergent-friendly tools available, powered by AI, including the “Magic To-Do” that can take a big project and break it down into discrete steps (see the screenshot below as an example; I asked Goblin.Tools to tell me the steps to create a presentation for a workshop on executive function). The Estimator tool can help students estimate how long a particular task could take.
This was our last CETL workshop of the academic year, and what a year it’s been! You’re welcome to read recaps from other workshops here on our blog. You can find our slides from this workshop here.