Honoring Cognitive Diversity

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Honoring Cognitive Diversity

• Philippe Ernewein, MA
• Dean of Faculty Training Development

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The blender

• Arts with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen
• Out of Our Mind by Ken Robinson
• Proust the Squid by Maryanne Wolf
• Raising Resilient Children by Robert Brooks Sam
  Goldstein
• Living and Learning with New Media by MacArthur
  Foundation

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Objectives Mindset

• Evaluate current research.
• Re-write re-frame traditional definitions of
  learning differences.
• Design specific classroom projects that celebrate
  cognitive diversity.
• Learn 3 concrete, practical, ready-to-go
  strategies.

• All students have gifts.
• Intelligence is multifaceted.
• Operate based on asset-based thinking.
• Emotional balance cognitive flexibility are a
  key ingredients to future success.

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Living and Learning with New Media Summary of
Findings from the Digital Youth Project

• The digital world is creating new opportunities
  for youth to grapple with social norm, explore
  interests, develop technical skills, and
  experiment with new forms of self-expression.
• -November 2008 www.macfound.org

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Living and Learning with New Media Summary of
Findings from the Digital Youth Project

• Friendship-driven interest-driven
• Contrary to popular images, geeking out is
  highly social and engaged, although usually not
  driven primarily by local friendships. Youth turn
  instead to specialized knowledge groups of both
  teens and adults from around the world, with the
  goal of improving their craft and gaining
  reputation among expert peers.

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Geeking out
Geek out (verb) To dive into a topic or talent,
highly social and engaged, although usually not
driven primarily by local friendships with goal
of improving craft and gaining reputation among
expert peers.
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Living and Learning with New Media Summary of
Findings from the Digital Youth Project

• Adults should facilitate young peoples
  engagement with digital media.
• Contrary to adult perceptions, while hanging
  out online, youth are picking up basic social and
  technical skills they need to fully participate
  in contemporary society.

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Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds

• We wont survive the future by simply doing
  better what we have done in the past.
• -students with strong academic abilities
• -students with lower academic abilities

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Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds

• The problem in conventional assumptions about
  intelligence is that there is a single measure.
  People are thought to be more or less intelligent
  on a single scale based on ideas of IQ and
  academic ability (106).

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Eric Jensen, Arts with the Brain in Mind

• Education is not an either-or scenario (v).
• Arts vs. rigorous curriculum
• Progressive vs. traditional
• Language arts vs. science
• Logical vs. emotional

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Back to Sir Robinson for a moment

• The rationalist tradition has driven a wedge
  between intellect and emotion and between the
  arts and sciences in society at large. It has
  distorted the idea of creativity in education and
  unbalanced the development of millions of people.
  The result is that equally important abilities
  are overlooked or marginalized (8).

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Overlooked and Marginalized

• The deficit model has fallen far short in
  helping us to achieve this goal. System relief
  has simply not been found to be synonymous with
  changing long-term outcomes (xiv).
• -Robert Brooks Sam Goldstein, Raising
  Resilient Children

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Stations

• Directions
• Read definitions
• Rewrite
• Select reporter
• Select scribe
• Stations
• Aspergers Disorder
• ADHD (inattentive)
• ADHD (hyper-impulsive)
• NVLD/NLD

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PACE essentials

• Student choice in the medium
• Student control of the medium
• Opportunities to play take risks
• The need for critical judgment
• -Ken Robinson, Out of Our Mind (111)

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PACE steps

• Identify
• -Diagnostic learning profile, learning
  modalities,
• personality inventory, MI survey, formative
• assessment, exit slips.
• Facilitate
• -Dedicate classroom workshop time, offer
  examples,
• conduct conference, environmental structure.
• Celebrate
• -Create on-going opportunities for students to
  share
• process and final products.

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PACE steps

• Identify
• -Diagnostic learning profile, learning
  modalities,
• personality inventory, MI survey, formative
• assessment, exit slips.
• Facilitate
• -Dedicate classroom workshop time, offer
  examples,
• conduct conference, environmental structure.
• Celebrate
• -Create on-going opportunities for students to
  share
• process and final products.

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What did we learn?