Category: Executive Functioning

Don’t Let Neurodivergence Derail Your Semester

2/29/2024

Helping Struggling Learners Stay on Track

Image by Julia M Cameron

The semester is underway. Is your neurodivergent student staying on track? ADHD, autism, dyslexia and other learning differences can pose obstacles to academic consistency, but with the right guidance, struggling learners can maintain traction and achieve academic success.

Last month, we examined how neurodivergent students can use a growth mindset for goal setting. This month, we are exploring how individuals with learning differences can apply a growth mindset in order to maintain momentum.

Life’s little setbacks

I recently assisted a worried parent whose teenage son Lucas sprained his ankle just before cross country tryouts. While she was understandably upset that he might become disheartened, we discussed ways he could reframe the accident as an opportunity for personal and athletic growth.

I coached Lucas to view his injury not as a setback, but as a chance to grow both mentally and physically. The idea was for him to embrace the prescribed rehabilitation plan with patience, recognizing that progress might be gradual. During coaching sessions, I encouraged him to focus on achievable gains during recovery rather than dwelling on limitations. Adopting a growth mindset helped Lucas set realistic short-term goals, making the recovery process more manageable and providing a sense of achievement.

Despite the initial disappointment and some bumps along the healing path, with support, Lucas maintained focus on his goal of returning to competitive form. While his recovery didn't unfold as initially anticipated, Lucas did experience growth in ways he hadn't foreseen. His mother remarked that he eventually learned to navigate a slow rehabilitation with grace and cultivated resilience and perseverance. The experience became a transformative journey for him, resulting in a successful recovery and a strengthened mindset for future athletic and academic challenges.

What is growth mindset?

Dr. Carol Dweck's theory on growth mindset highlights the significance of tackling problems with grit. Unlike a fixed mindset that sees struggles as proof of built-in limitations, a growth mindset sees them as opportunities to get better. Like flexing strength-building muscles, this outlook generates endurance and gives students the confidence that they can make continuous improvement and achieve their goals.

Growth mindset is also associated with more consistency in tracking goals. A research study at Eindhoven University of Technology in Eindhoven, Netherlands has found that a growth mindset allows people who are tracking their progress to maintain both self-compassion and persistence while pursuing their goals.

Dweck's growth mindset theory can help neurodivergent individuals focus and persevere when using tracking systems in pursuit of their academic, professional and personal goals. This approach not only fosters resilience in navigating obstacles, but also helps learners develop acceptance about the path their progress takes.

How you can help

Goal-setting thrives on continuous improvement and achievement. If you are guiding someone on their educational path, you can encourage them to face challenges with a positive mindset and navigate their pursuits with determination and adaptability.

Encourage your student to write down their goals: When learners jot down their goals, they’re making them real and touchable. Writing brings clarity, helping individuals express what they are reaching for, and serves as a friendly nudge, keeping objectives in sight.

Help your learner find a way to track their goals: Keeping tabs on progress is like having a roadmap for accomplishments. It's a visual testament to how much ground a student has covered. Tracking helps students stay focused, gives room for adjustments when needed, and ensures that they stay true to their aspirations.

Teach your student to cultivate self-compassion regardless of the result: Embracing a positive mindset is key for bouncing back. Understanding that stumbling is part of the journey helps students accept imperfections, dial down the fear of failure, and face challenges with a positive spin.

Help your learner continue to persevere, even when they don't meet their goals: Many pursuits are more like marathons than sprints. Treating setbacks as stepping stones to learning and self-improvement helps students become more adaptable, ready to face whatever hurdles come their way.

Growth mindset allows people who are tracking their progress to maintain self-compassion and persistence while pursuing their goals.

Coaches and educators can support students in adopting a growth mindset to advance their academic, professional, and personal success. If neurodivergence has hindered your student’s progress and satisfaction, they can adopt these strategies and see their objectives take root and flourish.

Is your student looking to set sustainable goals and maximize their academic confidence? Schedule a complimentary information session.

As an executive function coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, college transition, and career development.

"I wanted to express my appreciation. I am certain that your direction and voice made a difference for our son, probably even more than he realizes. Thanks again!" - Richard, Parent

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Growth Mindset, Neurodivergence and New Year Goal Setting

1/23/2024

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Young woman ascending artificial rock climbing structure

Image by Allan Mas

Celebrating Progress, Grit and Fresh Starts

Winter is a traditional season for quiet reflection on the year that has passed. It presents an opportunity to celebrate where we took risks, navigated obstacles, persevered, acquired skills, and made gains.

It’s also a time for setting goals for the coming year. For people with learning differences, forward momentum can feel particularly evasive. They tend to find progress toward goals to be more of a “one step forward, two steps back” experience.

In this article, we’ll explore the nature of progress for neurodivergent students, how growth mindset theory can help, and concrete strategies for using that mindset as a tool for better goal setting.

Progress Is Not a Straight Line

When assessing their progress, and creating goals for the coming year, people who are wired differently need to steer clear of perfectionistic thinking, or the notion that improvement must be immediate in order to exist. If you know someone who is neurodivergent, as I am, they may at times experience progress as imperceptible growth, happening beneath the surface of understanding. They may encounter satisfying breakthroughs, followed by humdrum plateaus, followed by what appear to be disappointing setbacks. These frustrating roller coasters – fits and starts – can erode their confidence. The path may not make sense, given the sweat equity.

The journey of tackling a high school, college, or career challenge may ultimately prove to be as valuable as arriving at the destination. In setting goals for the new year, people with learning differences such as ADHD and autism benefit from giving themselves credit for the process of forward movement, not just achievement. Sustaining efforts outside their comfort zones can embolden neurodivergent individuals to stay the course and practice positive habits that eventually develop into routines.

Growth Mindset Theory

Dr. Carol Dweck’s growth mindset theory highlights the importance of facing setbacks with persistence. Unlike a fixed mindset, which interprets struggles as indicators of inherent limitations, a growth mindset views them as opportunities to develop strengths. This perspective fosters stamina and empowers students with the confidence that improvement and progress are always within reach.

Embracing a growth mindset unleashes cognitive potential. A January 2023 Neuroscience article cites a Southwest University study that correlates growth mindset with greater gray matter in the part of the brain responsible for decision making and goal setting. Research at the Gene-Brain-Behavior (GBB) Project supports the notion that individuals who have a growth mindset develop critical reasoning skills that make them resilient and adaptable thinkers.

Growth Mindset and Neurodivergence

Neurodivergent individuals, whether in middle school, high school, college or beyond, can adopt a growth mindset to increase their traction with academic, professional and personal goals. However, encouraging students with learning differences via blanket positive encouragement that lacks relevant details can be baffling to them, or even backfire.

In the June 2023 Washington Post article “The growth mind-set: Why friends, family and work make a difference,” author Tara Parker-Pope describes the value of bringing attention to a person’s specific strengths and areas of growth, rather than simply praising them for doing “a good job.” The idea is that vague, but positive statements from mentors and peers can actually contribute to an individual’s anxiety because they don’t have a clear sense of which actions the praise is connected to, whereas targeted and accurate feedback helps them conceptualize what they are doing well, and focus on areas where they can still improve.

People with learning differences may benefit during goal setting by noting whether they struggle with metacognition and the ability to see how they navigate through environments, responsibilities, and achievements. Feedback from mentors can help them take a detailed and precise account of how past decisions played out, highlight specific areas of growth, realistically assess their strengths and blind spots, and plan what to work on accordingly. From there, supportive routines can be introduced and practiced.

Growth Mindset and Developing Sustainable Habits and Routines

While detailed feedback and support can empower neurodivergent individuals to set appropriate goals, and routines can keep them on track, cultivating patience and gentleness with themselves and the fruits of their efforts can help them stay in the game and bolster lagging confidence.

To be sustainable, growth is best framed as a gradual progression, not a one-off event. Rather than allowing setbacks to weigh us down, we can view them as opportunities for improvement. People who are wired differently can acknowledge previously challenging goals and the hurdles they have overcome, then take stock of growth edges, unrealized potential, and support structures they can implement to ease the process.

Achievement of long-term goals will play out differently than that of short-term objectives. Rushing to the end point of complex, incremental pursuits may be counterproductive. Multifaceted endeavors, targets and aspirations require longer time frames.

How Neurodivergent People Can Use a Growth Mindset for More Effective Goal Setting

Aim for gradual progress. Learners sometimes feel pressured to absorb new information at astronomical speed and achieve instant results. However, lasting progress can take time. It is okay to go at our own pace and trust the process. Unmet goals are not unachievable; they just have not yet been met. People with learning differences can leave room in their worldview for those aims to manifest on their own time, supported by steady effort. Desired outcomes inevitably take longer than expected to achieve.

Validate efforts, not just results. Consistency and tenacity are vital to success. Repeatedly stretching outside one’s comfort zone ultimately leads to major growth. Expectations associated with high school, college, and professional milestones can emphasize external achievement, downplaying internal and subjective gains, which are often at least as significant. It is easy to focus only on results without appreciating the learning process. Yet we benefit from identifying new skills acquired along the way, regardless of their size.

Cultivate grit. Learners can make friends with resilience by incorporating positive forward movement into their daily routines. Growth is a process, so it is necessary to be prepared to work toward goals gradually over time, even before progress becomes apparent. Challenges and obstacles do not need to deter students from tackling new tasks with courage. If they don't meet their goals today, they can take a break from the frustration and try again tomorrow. Pacing matters. People can develop new stamina by making a habit of revisiting difficult projects with greater equanimity. If routines include getting back on the proverbial horse after a setback, progress toward goals becomes a natural phenomenon.

Get effective supports in place to maintain momentum.

Solo Support: Discovery is a beautiful thing, and our life paths are nothing short of adventure. Struggling learners can visualize achieving their goals. They can commit to making significant growth toward them, and imagine taking the steps that will get them there. To concretize progress, they can then gamify positive actions and reinforce effective habits to ingrain them into routines.

Community Support: If neurodivergent individuals are not making the traction they want, they may be missing key resources and self-management tools. Skillful mentorship can expose learners to fresh perspectives and untried solutions. No one succeeds entirely alone. Asking for help and assembling a team can provide encouragement and inspiration. It is crucial to be conscientious about the environment we inhabit and the influences we absorb, as the people we interact with inform our inner dialog. If interactions are energizing and help us move forward toward goals, we are in the right company.

Observe and celebrate progress. Celebrating achievement activates the brain’s reward system by releasing oxytocin and dopamine. This can generate a feedback loop that reinforces motivation. It also reduces stress, accelerating learning and increasing memory, focus and attention. No accomplishment is too small or negligible. Learners can develop greater courage and a stronger sense of achievement by recognizing the little wins and appreciating how far they have come.

Coaches and educators can support students in adopting a growth mindset to advance their academic, professional, and personal success. If neurodivergence has hindered your student’s progress and satisfaction, they can adopt these strategies and see their objectives take root and flourish.

Is your student looking to set sustainable goals and maximize their academic confidence? Schedule a complimentary information session.

As an executive function coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, college transition, and career exploration.

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ChatGPT Do’s and Don’ts for Students, Coaches and Educators

7/28/2023

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Image by Andrea Piacquadio

Help your students avoid the academic pitfalls of AI chatbots

Like them or not, AI writing generators, and their idiosyncrasies, have entered the classroom.

In other articles, we describe some risks associated with using AI chatbots for assignments as well as how students can maintain rigorous standards with their AI-assisted academic projects.

Today’s article highlights best practices for generating meaningful search inquiries.

“Students with learning differences are facing a crisis where the allure of letting AI tools do the heavy lifting may feel too strong to pass up. Yet they may not understand how to create effective research inquiries, or recognize when a chatbot’s algorithm is incorporating poor content into its response. To make matters worse, neurodivergent learners may not appreciate the value of academic struggle, and how circumventing a healthy challenge ultimately serves to erode their confidence.”

Problem: Ineffective Use of AI Writers as a Research Tool

We live in a culture where people often outsource judgment. Learners can internalize shame for academic missteps, and as a result, they may not trust their own reasoning. By contrast, AI writing generators bring forth slick and convincing output in a matter of seconds, which students may regard as more authoritative than their own ideas about a topic.

However, AI writers have limitations. Their algorithms construct text based on the phrasing of a research question. Students can’t just type a question once and expect to be given a pertinent or adequate answer. Leveraging AI tools requires skill in formulating meaningful inquiries and follow-up questions that will generate germane output from a chatbot. However, many learners are unsure about how to conduct effective research inquiries.

Just because it comes out of a machine doesn’t mean it’s relevant.

Neurodivergent learners may not fully understand how knowledge is constructed in the information age. Students using AI writers such as ChatGPT to get ideas for a writing assignment will quickly discover the breadth of existing knowledge about a subject. However, the first response from an AI chatbot may skate on the surface of a topic, be overly general, or not fully incorporate elements that are necessary to a student’s project focus. It is inadequate as a definitive conception of what to include in the academic essay they are composing.

A high school student of mine recently needed help navigating an essay assignment on a book he had chosen from a list provided by his English teacher. He had also been given a list of literary themes he could cover in his paper. During class, his teacher suggested breaking the project into small steps, starting with answering several short questions designed to help the student establish a relationship between the novel and the literary theme.

To the teacher’s credit, he designed a learning project that modeled experimental risk-taking with an emerging technology. The teacher had not read the book, and used ChatGPT to create sample sub-prompts for the student to use. In essence, the assignment was a test-drive of the AI writer’s strengths and limitations.

During our coaching session, the student and I both attempted to identify a connection between the sub-prompts, the original essay assignment, and the novel. Regrettably, neither of us could.

While I appreciate that the teacher opted to offer learners a trailblazing educational experience, ChatGPT’s ability to comb through unthinkably huge piles of data at breakneck speed had not resulted in pertinent research questions for my student.

An internet search taught me enough about the story and its themes to suggest alternate questions that the student was then able to use to focus his essay subject. He identified quotes from the book that related to his chosen theme, and his essay was off and running.

While all was well, I was left wondering — what did the learner need that ChatGPT’s output did not provide?

I was not privy to the original queries and search terms that resulted in essay sub-prompts that had a weak link to how the literary theme played out in the book. Yet my student’s experience drove home the importance of teaching learners effective research skills, particularly when using new technologies.

ChatGPT's ability to comb through unthinkably huge piles of data at breakneck speed had not resulted in pertinent research questions for my student.

The good news is that a well-crafted inquiry can generate germane output from an AI writer. Chatbots allow learners to ask slightly different versions of the same question in a single thread so that the resulting dialog offers multiple approaches to understanding a subject. It can also create successively deeper and more nuanced responses.

Students can use iterative queries to hone meaningful content that informs the concepts they choose to include in the design of their projects. Keeping the same window open and asking follow-up questions drives the AI writer’s algorithm to drill down and get more specific information on a subject.

Here is an example of how to design successive prompts in ChatGPT to get increasingly more meaningful output:

Question 1

Screenshot of initial ChatGPT query shows output that is too generic..

ChatGPT's first response is too general for the student's needs.

Question 2

Screenshot of second inquiry to ChatGPT resulting in a more relevant response.

A follow-up question helps ChatGPT return more relevant content.

Question 3

Screenshot of third question to ChatGPT shows even more pertinent output for the student.

Subsequent questions tailor ChatGPT's output to the student's priorities.

By incorporating more detail into follow-up questions, students can challenge the chatbot to yield more useful content. With each successive inquiry in a dialog thread, the output in that thread becomes more tailored to the information the learner is seeking.

Students don’t need to live under the false assumption that ChatGPT’s first response is an appropriate overview of the info they are beginning to research. AI writing tools can be purposed as a dialectical learning device, allowing for a Socratic investigation, where a succession of back-and-forth “conversations” allows for a series of deeper questions and answers.

Solutions and Tips: Coaches and educators must help students understand how to use AI tools such as ChatGPT to aid, rather than replace critical thinking.

Create assignments that encourage your learner to use ChatGPT for initial research, but then hone their argument using analysis and writing skills.
Help your student navigate AI chatbots by first creating a prompt that will generate an overview of what has been written about a subject.
Teach learners to zero in on the specific aspects of a subject, challenge, or task that most pertain to their goals and values with respect to the assignment.
Guide your students to refine their thinking with iterative queries that steer the chatbot’s output, resulting in increasingly relevant responses.
In the classroom, students can discuss and analyze different versions of chatbot responses they receive from their queries.

While AI chatbots are a robust writing resource, students leveraging them for research must discern the most pertinent aspects of a topic, craft effective follow-up questions to generate a meaningful response, develop a unique angle, compose original language, and incorporate personal knowledge and specific evidence into their content. Classroom time or a tutor can help learners cultivate research habits that allow them to utilize AI tools as an asset to learning.

Is your student looking for guidance in using research technology to maximize their academic confidence? Schedule a complimentary information session.

As an executive function coach and academic tutor, I specialize in helping individuals with learning differences exceed their goals for academics, organization, and college transition.

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