Table of Contents
What is Executive Dysfunction?
Executive Dysfunction is a significant difficulty with executive functioning skills such as planning, paying attention, task initiation, and organization. All of these skills are connected to working memory, which is the brain’s ability to focus on an idea, make decisions on that idea, and organize plans to follow through.
Executive Dysfunction is not a single condition but a notable weakness in this specific network of skills. Students with Executive Dysfunction can therefore look different from student to student. Some may struggle more with attention but not have problems organizing plans given enough time. Others may be different and struggle with organization and task initiation, but not struggle with paying attention during lectures.
Because of this, it is important to focus on the specific problems the student is having rather than focusing on a diagnosis. Different interventions and scaffolds will help students in different ways depending on their personal areas of weakness.
Before deciding what interventions will be most appropriate, it is important to be able to identify students that may have Executive Dysfunction. Once the student has been identified and the difficulties assessed, the teacher can then decide on which supports will help teach executive functioning skills to the student the most effectively.
Identifying Executive Dysfunction in the Classroom
Students who are diagnosed with Executive Functioning Issues are often described by their teachers as:
- Taking longer than their peers to complete tasks.
- Struggling to begin writing assignments.
- Forgetting instructions.
- Procrastinating assignments until the due date.
- Often losing their train of thought.
- Giving up easily.
- Regularly making simple mistakes.
How to Teach Executive Functioning Skills
- Have them use organization apps.
Calendars, to-do lists, and habit trackers can be very helpful tools to help students with executive dysfunction to support their weaker planning skills. While initially it may be difficult to get students to actually use these tools, in the end they can help support their struggling processing by acting like a mental external hard drive for their brains.
When students struggle to keep things they need to do later in their minds, having clear to do lists and habit tracking apps will free up their memory and allow them to focus on the other tasks at hand. Students with executive dysfunction often plan poorly and struggle to manage their time, but if they can set up apps to take over some of the planning and time management aspects of their work, they can spend more mental energy elsewhere and be less likely to become overwhelmed and procrastinate.
Calendars and reminders also work well for being another push for students struggling with task initiation. While the calendar can not actually cause them to start, it can act as one more reminder and push to get their work done that shows up directly on their phone.
Whenever a student gets a new assignment, the first thing they should do is enter it into their calendar and put in appropriate reminders for the task several times before the due date. The Google Calendar app makes this easy, allowing for a quick entry of new entries along with multiple reminders that can come via email or as a push notification.
Teachers will have to spend significant time with these students helping them get into the habit of using their online tools or they will simply be another thing for their struggling working memories to manage. While starting these good habits will initially feel like a burden, once good habits have been formed, students will end up having a way to independently organize their time that they can take with them after graduation.
- Schedule their scheduling
While all of the above mentioned calendar and habit tracking tools may be very useful for students with executive dysfunction, if they do not carve out time to use these tools, they will quickly become forgotten. The teacher should help students set specific times to utilize their intervention strategies so that they can slowly become more natural and effective.
While it may be tempting to tell students to check their calendars and update notes first thing in the morning, this can be a difficult time to fit in more tasks as mornings are often busy. In an ideal world, students would wake up and check their email and calendars before even coming to school, but this ignores the reality of most students’ mornings.
Students are often rushed by parents, interrupted by siblings, and busy with breakfast, chores, and other family requirements first thing in the morning. This also ignores the research that students work better when their day starts later, so mornings will be groggy and unproductive until the world can find a way to delay school start times to at least 9 or 10am.
Right when they arrive at school is also not always the best time to get these types of tasks done. Friends will demand attention, higher noise levels will be distracting, and classes will be starting soon, putting time pressure and stress onto the student to get planning out of the way quickly, increasing the chances things are forgotten or rushed.
It is better to find a calmer time during the school day for students to organize their work and plan what needs to get done when. If students have a study period, this is an easy thing to fit in, but many students do not have this luxury.
Another possible time may be right after school as they wait for parents to pick them up. Students will still have the usual temptations of their phones and any friends left waiting, but it is generally a bit of a quieter time when compared to the morning, especially if their parents are some of the later ones to pick them up.
Each student will have their own schedules and each school will have a different school set up and culture that will make different times more or less suitable for planning. Teachers and students should work together to find a time that works for the individual student and their other obligations.
- Meditation can help them avoid bad decisions.
New Research released earlier this year shows that meditation can actually be very helpful for students with executive function to keep them from making poor choices. One of the key aspects of executive functioning is using working memory to avoid making bad choices.
When temptation arises, people must use their executive functioning to remind themselves of their long term goals and avoid the short term gratification. For example, someone working on improving their physical health needs to avoid junk food when shopping and avoid lounging on the couch when they should be heading to the gym.
The new research this year looked at several facets of executive functioning and found that while meditation did not help those with executive dysfunction in other areas of executive functioning such as shifting their attention or updating their ideas, there was a clear improvement in inhibition.
Another interesting finding from this research is that it did not require an extended practice to get many of the inhibition benefits that meditation provides. According to the researchers, “Long-term experience in meditation does not offer additional gains in any function than the relatively shorter mindfulness interventions.” (Lodha and Gupta)
This is encouraging as it means that students should quickly improve with only a short time trying meditation. This does not mean that teachers should not work on making it a habit however.
While it may not take a long time to get some benefits in the inhibitory networks of the brain, the study did not do a follow up study to see how long these benefits lasted. Inevitably, if the student stops meditating, eventually the benefits will be lost and the student will need to practice again to regain those lost powers.
Meditation does not need to be the stereotypical chanting or closed eyed “emptying of the mind” that many mischaracterize it as. Even simple breathing exercises such as square breathing or a body scan can be easy first time meditation activities.
For more help on implementing meditation into class, read more details in this guide linked here.
- Help them create small wins.
One of the most difficult parts of having executive dysfunction is feeling like no matter what you do, it never makes a difference. Because students with executive dysfunction struggle with planning and completing goals, they can quickly give up and give in to short term pleasures.
Teachers can help overcome this by helping students to create smaller goals that give them smaller wins at multiple times across each task. These small wins will give students a boost of dopamine in their brain, which is one of the main neurochemicals responsible for motivation and initiating action.
When students can more easily see that their wins lead to progress, they will be more likely to continue giving effort as it does not feel as much like a waste of their mental energy. This can be further helped by using the apps and to-do lists mentioned above. Being able to check off multiple smaller tasks is often more rewarding in the brain of students with executive dysfunction than just one check at the end.
- Talk them through their efforts using logic and evidence.
It can be difficult for students with executive dysfunction to actually notice the benefits of their efforts. Because their brain struggles to keep everything in their brain at the same time, it can be hard for them to make connections between what they did in the past, what they are doing now, and how it has made a difference in their lives.
Teachers should collect evidence in the form of grades, missed or met due dates, and other data to show students that even if they do not realize it, their efforts are improving their work and life. They should help students make connections like “Since you’ve been using your calendar, you only missed one assignment this month!”.
This can help them have some food for thought to fight against the little voice in their head that says their efforts are a waste of time. Whenever the student feels tempted to give up or procrastinate, they will be better able to realize that their efforts actually do have a direct connection with their results.
Conclusion
While these intervention strategies have been suggested in the context of helping students with a notable weakness in executive functioning, the truth is that all teenagers are still developing the parts of their brains that deal with planning for the future and not giving in to impulses.
These strategies can be helpful for getting many students into healthy habits and give them tools that they can keep with them well after they graduate. Better executive functioning is not only helpful at school.
Many adults also struggle with many of these mental challenges, but students who are helped to develop easily implemented strategies to start plans, organize their time, and push through temptation will be more successful workers and be better able to realize their personal goals later in life as well.
Instead of trying to identify students who have some sort of mental deficiency that need these interventions, teachers should implement them with any or even all students in their classes. This will help bolster fundamental aspects of every student’s brain and support those who are struggling as well as empower those who are already doing well.
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References
Lodha, S., Gupta, R. Mindfulness, Attentional Networks, and Executive Functioning: a Review of Interventions and Long-Term Meditation Practice. J Cogn Enhanc 6, 531–548 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41465-022-00254-7
