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Using “Intelligence” Tests to Describe Individual Differences

Focus on “Intelligence” as an Individual Difference

There are two commonly used tools to look at difference in intelligence:  The WISC-R and the Woodcock Johnson Cognitive Test.  These tests are (often/sometimes?) used to determine a critical difference between “achievement” and “ability” relative to classroom curricula.  These discrepancies may be used to determine eligibility for special education.  Here is a link for WISC-V

WISC-5

See http://www.myschoolpsychology.com/test-tools/wisc-5/

 

Other tools:  Administration and Interpretation: Qualification for Use of this Test

https://www.pearsonclinical.com/psychology/qualifications.html

https://www.pearsonclinical.com/psychology/products/100000771/wechsler-intelligence-scale-for-childrensupsupfifth-edition–wisc-v.html

https://www.pearsonclinical.com/psychology/products/100000310/wechsler-intelligence-scale-for-children-fourth-edition-wisc-iv.html

http://images.pearsonclinical.com/images/pdf/wisciv/wisc-iv_clinical_interpretation.pdf

See http://www.myschoolpsychology.com/test-tools/wisc-5/

 

 

 

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Habits of Mind Website

Direct “quotes”

http://www.habitsofmindinstitute.org/about-us/

Our Mission:

To transform schools into learning communities where thinking and Habits of Mind are taught, practiced, valued and infused into the culture.

Our Vision:

To create a more thoughtful, cooperative, compassionate generation of people who skillfully work to resolve social, environmental, economic and political problems.  Founders and Co-Directors: Art Costa and Bena Kallick

 

What is the Institute for Habits of Mind?:

The Habits of Mind are dispositions that empower creative and critical thinking.  Habits of Mind International has an outreach around the world.  We have a growing team of affiliates, each representing the power of the habits in classrooms, schools, and communities.  We have certified Habits of Mind Learning Communities of Excellence each committed to the Habits of Mind as central to a thoughtful learning environment.  Our Institute offers professional development through virtual media, workshops, consultations, and conferences.

More Information about Habits of Mind:

 

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A Wide Range of Models Addressing Individual Differences

So Far we have looked at Differentiation and CAST approaches to individual differences. Here are those differences in chart form:

Differentiated Instruction CAST: Universal Design
Concrete Abstract Recruiting Interest
Simple Complex Perception
Basic to Transformational Physical Action
Few Facets to Multi Facets Sustained Interest and Persistence
Smaller Leaps to Greater Leaps Language & Symbols
More Structured to More Open Expression & Communication
Less Independent to Greater Independence Self-Regulation
Quicker to Slower Comprehension
Clearly defined vs fuzzy problems Executive Function

 

There are several models/sites that again focus on how learners differ:  Some focus on only one “characteristic” or descriptor.  For example

Growth Mindset

https://biglifejournal.com/blogs/blog/teach-growth-mindset-kids-activities

Mindfulness

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/08/mindfulness-education-schools-meditation/402469/

GRIT

https://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_grit_the_power_of_passion_and_perseverance?language=en

A more extensive set of “characteristics” or descriptors was proposed by Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick  called “Habits of Mind”, and we will explore those on the next post.

 

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CAST and Individual Learners

CAST Posting to WtoL

Some Excerpts: http://udlguidelines.cast.org/?utm_medium=web&utm_campagin=none&utm_source=cast-home

“Welcome to the new home for the UDL Guidelines! In this first release of our new site, we’ve updated the look, but the Guidelines themselves, their descriptions, and the research behind the Checkpoints haven’t changed. We’re looking forward to constantly improving this site with more resources, updated research, and to continue evolving the UDL Guidelines as a living, breathing tool for implementing the UDL framework.

The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.”

CAST Posting to WtoL-29yncjz

 

 

 

So well designed!

 

 

 

 

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Differentiation vs Individualization

Differentiation vs Individualization by Tomlinson 2017

http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/117032/chapters/What-Differentiated-Instruction-Is%E2%80%94and-Isn%27t.aspx?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=email&utm_content=book&utm_campaign=howtodifferentiateinstruction-email-03272017

Classrooms, 3rd Edition by Carol Ann Tomlinson

Direct Quote Excerpts:    Chapter 1. What Differentiated Instruction Is—and Isn’t

Kids of the same age aren’t all alike when it comes to learning any more than they are alike in terms of size, hobbies, personality, or food preferences. Kids do have many things in common, because they are human beings and because they are all young people, but they also have important differences. What we share makes us human, but how we differ makes us individuals. In a classroom with little or no differentiated instruction, only student similarities seem to take center stage. In a differentiated classroom, commonalities are acknowledged and built upon, and student differences also become important elements in teaching and learning.

At its most basic level, differentiating instruction means “shaking up” what goes on in the classroom so that students have multiple options for taking in information, making sense of ideas, and expressing what they learn. In other words, a differentiated classroom provides different avenues to acquiring content, to processing or making sense of ideas, and to developing products so that each student can learn effectively……

Differentiated instruction IS proactive

Differentiated instruction IS more qualitative than quantitative.   Many teachers incorrectly assume that differentiating instruction means giving some students more work to do, and others less. …

Differentiated instruction IS rooted in assessment.  Teachers who understand that teaching and learning approaches must be a good match for students look for every opportunity to know their students better. They see conversations with individuals, classroom discussions, student work, observation, and formal assessment as ways to keep gaining insight into what works for each learner. What they learn becomes a catalyst for crafting instruction in ways that help every student make the most of his or her potential and talents.

Differentiated instruction IS taking multiple approaches to content, process, and product.   In all classrooms, teachers deal with at least three curricular elements: (1) content—input, what students learn; (2) process—how students go about making sense of ideas and information; and (3) product—output, or how students demonstrate what they have learned. These elements are dealt with in depth in Chapters 12, 13, and 14.

By differentiating these three elements, teachers offer different approaches to what students learn, how they learn it, and how they demonstrate what they’ve learned. What the different approaches have in common is that they are crafted to encourage all students’ growth with established learning goals and to attend to pacing and other supports necessary to advance the learning of both the class as a whole and individual learners.

Differentiated instruction IS student centered

Differentiated instruction IS a blend of whole-class, group, and individual instruction.

 What Differentiated Instruction Is NOT

Differentiated instruction is NOT “individualized instruction.”

Differentiated instruction is NOT chaotic

Differentiated instruction is NOT just another way to provide homogeneous grouping.

******

From another sources–Differentiated Instruction from anotehr source

By Tracey Hall, Ph.D., Senior Research Scientist, NCAC, Figure Page 2 Adapted from Oaksford, L. & Jones, L. 2001  Differentiated Instruction via CAST-19matek

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How Many Ways Do We “Describe/Assess” Individual Differences?    

Here are some sources using different descriptor  in how individual learners differ:

Blogs devoted to “Individual Differences”

Personalized Learning

CAST

“Differentiated Learning”

Focus on “Popular” Specific “Characteristics” of Learners that Impact Learning

Habits of Mind

GRIT

GROWTH MINDSET

MINDFULNESS

SELF-ADVOCACY

Formal  “INTELLIGENCE TESTS”

WISC-R

Woodcock Johnson Cognitive Test

Categories in Psychology

Developmental Psychology on Individual Differences

Are there similar “characteristics” across Categories?

 

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Making Choices about Programs/Approaches to Learning

Personalized Learning categories

Continuum of Choice by Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on work at bit.ly/continuumchoice

Providing choice can be confusing. If learners are choosing from a set of pre-planned choices from a computer program or a list of options from the teacher, then the teacher is ultimately the one responsible for the learning not the learner. As learners increase responsibility around voice, teachers can also provide a process that builds ownership as learners move toward agency with choice.


Participant 

The teacher or a computer program provides a menu of options for learners. These options are choices for learners to learn content through images, videos, text-based resources, audio, hands-on activities, or interactions with peers. These options allow learners to access information, engage with content, and express what they know and understand. The choices offered provide learners opportunities to showcase what they know from writing a paper to creating a performance.

Co-Designer

The teacher provides learning possibilities and then gets out of the way for learners to go on their own journey (via Jackie Gerstein). They invite input from learners to add to options of choices on how they would prefer or need to access information, engage with content, and express what they know. The teacher collaborates with the learner to brainstorm ideas for lesson design, assessment strategies and types of tools and resources to use with activities. Teachers and learners review and collaborate how to give more choice as they learn and demonstrate evidence of learning.

 

Designer 

The learner chooses topics and direction for what they plan to design based on personal interests. They research topics based on questions generated individually or with peers. The learner acquires the skills they need to choose the appropriate tools and resources for developing and creating their design. Learners, individually or with peers, brainstorm and choose ideas using the design thinking process to create change or design new products:

  1. Empathizeis where they talk to people and reflect on what they see.
  2. Defineis where learners become aware of needs and how to make changes to meet needs.
  3. Ideateis where learners brainstorm ideas and questions around changes.
  4. Prototypecan be a sketch or model that conveys the product or idea for change.
  5. Testis to determine what works, what doesn’t work and then modifies the prototype.

The learner can be part of a pathways program that guides the design of their learning. They find an advisor or mentor who can guide them as they explore their interests, talents and passions to discover their purpose. They can choose extended learning opportunities such as internships or apprenticeship to take their aspirations to another level.


Advocate

The learner chooses a challenge or problem that they are passionate about. This is where the learner wants to make a difference and perseveres to choose what will be their purpose of learning. When they identify the challenge or problem they then own an authentic voice with a clear purpose for the choices they will make to advocate for what they believe. They employ strategies and build a network of others who want to solve the challenge or problem to advocate for change. The group works strategically to develop an action plan to shape the change. When the learner has the experiences of advocacy working toward something they believe in, they are using the power of democracy and understand their part in the system.


Entrepreneur

The learner self-regulates, adjusts, and determines learning based on what they want to do with their lives. They take their ideas and passion to pursue an idea and possibly to create a business. Even young learners may invent or come up with an idea that improves a product or invent something that has never been done before. This is the driving force that becomes their purpose. They take the lead by driving the design process and advocating for what they believe is an important product or idea. They build a support system as their personal learning network (PLN) that helps guide them on their journey to learn, build, design, create, develop, and promote an idea or product. The learner understands the importance of being connected, branding who they are and pursuing their purpose for learning.

NO program I am aware of is without criticism.  Educators must investigate and make choices.  I recommend a  Google Search to get a complete picture of any Program/Model of Individualized Instruction or Describing Individual Differences.

 

 

 

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How Many Ways Can We Describe Individual Learners?

There are so many ways “individual differences” have been described in the Education and Psychology literature that its hard to know where to start.

I’m going to begin with a popular Blog named “Personalized Learning.” Here an excerpt and link:

Personalized Learning

excerpt

Sunday, November 8, 2015 Choice is More than a Menu of Options Providing choice can be confusing. If learners are choosing from a set of pre-planned choices from a computer program or a list of options from the teacher, then the teacher is ultimately the one responsible for the learning not the learner. As learners increase responsibility around voice, teachers can also provide a process that builds ownership as learners move toward agency with choice. – See more at: http://www.personalizelearning.com/2015/11/choice-is-more-than-menu-of-options.html#sthash.K9OgSitG.dpuf

 

 

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A Plan for Understanding How Children Learn to be Learners

A sequence of posts.

Exploring Learning Models of that are related to Executive Function,

*SocioCultural/Vygotsky (August 30, 2018)

*Behavioral (September 5, 2018)

*Concept-Based Learning (September 19, 2018)

*More than Content: Concepts Plus Process (October 3, 2018)

*Information Processing from a Developmental Point of View/Sternberg and Flavell (October 31 2018)

* * * * *

*Begin with a Plan to Understand and Collaborate with Individual Children About Their Learning (This is our next series of posts.)

                                                            * * * * *

Translating the most promising model for your situation into Context-Based Instruction

 

*Choose Instructional Principles

*Sequence Goals and Objectives

*Engage in Diagnostic Teaching

*Monitor Progress and Make Necessary Changes

*Work toward Generalization

*Apply to A Domain and then Across Domains

*Continue to Grow By Following the Literature

 

 

 

 

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Information Processing: From a Developmental Perspective

Below are a few short excerpts from the last “model of learning” in this series.  These excerpts highlight the work of John Flavell and Robert Sternberg.  Their ideas address a range of learners:  those who succeed easily and those who are challenged.

I chose to focus on these two authors because of their emphasis on how learners process and manage information:  their attention, short term memory, working memory, long term memory, and problem solving skills.

“Educators are very interested in the study of how humans learn. This is because how one learns, acquires new information, and retains previous information guides selection of long-term learning objectives and methods of effective instruction. To this end, cognition as a psychological area of study goes far beyond simply the taking in and retrieving information. It is a broad field dedicated to the study of the mind holistically. Neisser (1967), one of the most influential researchers in cognition, defined it as the study of how people encode, structure, store, retrieve, use or otherwise learn knowledge. Cognitive psychologists hypothesize an intervening variable or set of variables between environment and behavior—which contrasts it with behavioral theories.”

http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/papers/infoproc.pdf

 Information Processing and Memory

“One of the primary areas of cognition studied by researches is memory. There are many hypotheses and suggestions as to how this integration occurs, and many new theories have built upon established beliefs in this area. Currently, there is widespread consensus on several aspects of information processing; however, there are many dissentions in reference to specifics on how the brain actually codes or manipulates information as it is stored in memory.”

……..

The implications of this research are clear. If learning—relatively permanently change—is to take place, new information must be transferred into long-term memory. Therefore, repetition and maintenance rehearsal are not sufficient to produce a lasting effect. This has great relevance to instruction and teaching, for if the aim of education is learning, information must be presented in such a way that it can be incorporated into the memory structure.”

Development of Memory and Information Processing

As previously stated, cognition is the encoding, structuring, storing, retrieving, using, or otherwise learning knowledge (Neisser, 1967). There are important developmental aspects for INFORMATION PROCESSING

According to Flavell et al. (2002), from an information processing perspective some of the most important are:

 

  1. Brain changes brought about by biological maturation or experience;
  2. Increased processing capacity, speed, and efficiency as a result of both maturation and knowledge development;
  3. Modifications of connections in a neural network;
  4. New emergent concepts arising from repeated self-organization as a result of adapting to the demands of a changing environment; and
  5. Increased capacity for problem-solving and metacognition

 

“Another theorist firmly grounded in the information processing approach is Sternberg (1988). Sternberg’s theory suggests that development is skills-based and continuous rather than staged and discontinuous as stage theorists believe, and his focus is on intelligence. This focus on intelligence separates his ideas from stage theorists because it rejects the idea of incremental stages, but rather suggests that development occurs in the same way throughout life differentiated only by the expertise of the learner to process new information….First, and very importantly, Sternberg’s model does not differentiate between child and adult learning….. Cognitive development is viewed as a novice to expert progression; as one becomes better at interaction and learning, one is able to learn more and at higher levels. Development changes as a result of feedback, self-monitoring, and automatization. In this theory, intelligence is comprised of three kinds of information processing components: metacomponents, performance components, and knowledge-acquisition components.”

 

“In Sternberg’s (1988) model, each of these three components works together to facilitate learning and cognitive development. Metacomponents are executive in nature. They guide the planning and decision making in reference to problem solving situations; they serve to identify the problem and connect it with experiences from the past….”

 

 “In summary, there are many different theories of information processing that focus on different aspects of perceiving, remembering, and reasoning. One of the most important agreements is that elaboration is a key to permanently storing information in a way that facilitates its quick retrieval when it is needed. Bloom et al (1956) and Anderson and Krathwohl (2000) provide some excellent suggestions as to how we can encourage increased elaboration among our students. However, as proposed by Hummel and Huitt (1994) if students are not required to demonstrate the results of elaboration on meaningful tasks such as examinations or projects, they are not likely to adequately develop the skills required for higher-level thinking. It is, therefore, imperative that educators and parents require the development and use of these skills as a normal process of students’ lives. If we do that, the amounts and types of student knowledge will increase dramatically and students will be better prepared for life as adults in the information age.”

 

 

                                                              

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