The current HE classroom: Promoting new types of learning, executive function processes and strategies to foster students’ motivation and academic success

Abstract

[EN] Students' academic success in this digital, globalized era requires their mastery of processes such as goal setting, planning, prioritization, organization, flexibility to change, storage/manipulation of information in working memory, and self-monitoring. These processes are called executive function (EF) processes. It is important to integrate strategies that systematically address these processes in the classroom to help students understand how they think and how they learn. This paper provides a paradigm for understanding/helping students integrate strategies involving EF processes; it describes how strategic, systematic instruction and adaptations to classroom-work and tasks may benefit all students, while effectively addressing the needs of students who exhibit significant weaknesses in these processes. Furthermore, individuals and organizations involved in HE express the need for other important types of learning that do not readily emerge from Bloom's taxonomy: e.g., learning to learn, leadership, interpersonal skills, ethics. This paper introduces Dee-Fink’s proposal for a broader taxonomy of significant learning.