The typical promotional format for a new book is to get people to read it and tell you how great it is, how it solves the problem it set out to solve, how the people who paid for it and read it and applied it got exactly what it promised “AND MORE!” as they tout on late-night TV. That’s not what this is. It would misrepresent “Executive Functions” and its core premise.
The book is about customizing supports for students so they can become self-directed learners. Becoming the captain of their own ship, using informed choice to take command of their time and effort, establishes the bedrock of confidence and the willingness to reach for challenges. Every person, and their “crew,” will arrive at that destination in their own way. Executive Functions is not A solution to academic performance issues. It’s a system, an approach, a philosophy, and a process. No testimonial can capture that, or communicate the true impact it has on someone’s life.
So what “testimony” CAN Executive Functions offer? Using it will
- help readers think about learning differently
- give users opportunities to learn about their own needs, strengths, and the most efficient, personal pathways to better performance
- provide real world tools, insights, and strategies for taking concrete actions that move from potential to results
- focus the family and support team on positive results, empowered communication, and safe, respectful honesty to minimize stress
- point out pathways that develop and evolve executive functions for a lifetime
- build life skills that transfer from school to higher education, to work, to personal life, and every other area that requires intelligent management of time and attention
Performance will improve as a direct result of the person-centered approach, which does not offer a static solution, discipline, or set of rules. Human performance is not a mechanistic outcome. Human beings, especially developing humans, are always in a state of growth and change. Adapting is not a trait or a state. It’s an always-on process. Executive Functions embeds the tools and strategies for success inside that ever changing reality. It’s that dynamic approach that makes the difference, and sets students on a path to ever-increasing self-determination, ownership, and independent pride in their own achievements.
Mainstream discussions about executive functions present it as a set of mental traits, behaviors, or neurological phenomena. While that is true when studying it as cognitive science, it’s not very productive for empowering young people to activate their own “starter” executive functions. Additionally, the traditionally accepted practices that claim to build executive functions are too often simply recycled versions of social conventions like “discipline” or “accountability.” These ideas can be useful, but if they were enough, the problem of establishing strong executive functions would have been solved a long time ago and the terms themselves would not be needed to talk about it.
What a person-centered process, grounded in behavioral analysis, offers is a solution that matches the problem; that is, the solution itself changes, adapts, and develops in response to the changes the learner demonstrates in their own skill set. Skills are not tools or discrete abilities. They are an expression of the deep human ability to adapt. Skills should adjust, change, be elaborated and extended to meet the needs of a specific moment. When skills are applied, considered, and upgraded for long enough they become expertise. And an expert can lead and innovate, which are themselves dynamic processes. “Executive Functions” is a guide to building a custom strategy that assumes changes will be needed, and offers pathways to make room for change and updates as the learner becomes more and more self managing.
To learn exactly how “Executive Functions: Blueprints for Learner Success” can help you, or someone you support, improve performance, sign up for a free online discussion with the author, Erik Amin.
