Essay On Executive Function In Education

INTRODUCTION
Executive functions are a set of processes that all have to do with managing oneself and one's resources in order to achieve a goal. It is an umbrella term for the neurologically-based skills involving mental control and self-regulation. Some of the skills include components of reasoning, attention, planning, inhibition, set-shifting, working memory and the ability to regulate interference (Pennington, Ozonoff, 1996). These sills are necessary for adequate performance in all areas of daily life. They allow us to organise our behaviour, help us to plan activities, sustain attention, complete tasks and achieve long term goals. Executive function also enables the person to recognize the significance of unexpected situations and to

These include goal setting, organizational skills, time management, and strategies to learn new things. They are precursors to learning, skills or ability sets that are important for students to learn any content area knowledge. These are often discussed in the context of executive functions.
Executive functions impacts a student’s ability to socialize with their friends, converse with their teacher and other staff members, homework completion and simply getting to and from school. Researchers have found that when children exhibit executive function, they are able to learn more in the classroom, because they can focus on the teacher and their work. However the demand for executive functions is limited until the upper elementary grades and, most notably, the middle school years (Holmes, 1987). As children make the adjustment from learning specific academic skills (e.g., reading writing, calculating) to applying these skills for learning content areas (e.g., literary analysis, report writing, algebra) the demand increases dramatically. As children enter middle school, they must also contend with significantly less organizational support than they had in elementary