Discussions of unalterable variables can actually slow attempts to find the solutions to learning

problems (Howell). This is particularly true when the variables in question fall under the heading of
stundent ability. The traditional concept of ability rests in distinction from the concept of skill as
unalterable. It is typically not thought of as something to be changed throught instructions
(particularly short term). In distinction, skill and knowledge are taught and learned. By now, most
educators have encountered presentations on the limitations and even risks of misusing the ability
construct (Reschly, 2008). These include the conclution that the measures typically utilized are
insufficiently informative or reliable. In addition, attempts to draw instructional recommendations
from measures of cognitive and perceptual ability constructs, including aptitude-by-treatment
interactions, have not been productive (Gresham,2002). Although there is no reason to repeat
those findings here, there is even less reason to employ the procedures in practice (see Floyd)

Instructions Role within ICEL

Changing and or improving instructions is the most direct way to influence and accelerate the rate
of student learning. However, like students, teachers come to classrooms with varying skills and
resources. This does not mean that teachers cause all learning problems. However, a change in
the teachers behavior or teaching is often needed to fix a student’s learning problem. For example,
if the class does nor allow sufficient time for practice to build a student handwriting fluency, the
problem will most likely be found through an analysis of the teacher’s daily plans and time
allocations (Hoadley, 2003), not through student test result.

Regardless of content, method, or materials, there are recognized sets of instructional actions
(called routines) that can have a major influence on student learning. A successful routine can
have many characteristics but four critical attributes rnust always be factored into planning.
These are alignment, format, procedural fidelity, and dose. In the discussion that follows, a variety
of instructional procedures related to these four attributes are presented. Others can also be
found in Figure 14.1 (on pp. 240—241).

Alignment

Alignment refers to the coordinated arrangement of instruction/assessment, curriculum,

educational environment, and learner need. It is accomplished by first establishing learning
objectives that will take the student to acceptable levels of competence and self sufficiency. These
objectives represent the curriculum (i.e., the C component in ICEL). Alignment is established
when all ICEL components coordinate with a student's needs (and with each other).

Format

Lesson plans can also have different types of format, .sotuetirnes called instructional routines.
These formats can be thought of as templates designed to complement different categories of
content or learning outcomes. Although all lessons should share certain components (e.g., the
delivery of informa tion, questioning, and activities), how these components are structured can
vary. The way a teacher asks questions when teaching conceptual knowledge (e.g.,
photosynthesis) should be different from the way questions are asked during a lesson on factual
knowledge (e.g., parts of a plant). Similarly, lessons targeting increases in fluency commonly
employ routines that are different from those that target an increase in accuracy. Knowing about
the various format templates allows one to quickly analyze, critique, or design lessons across
multiple content domains.

Here is an exarnple: When students' objectives specify increases in rate (e.g., rapid letter
formation in writing or word recognition in reading), the fluency format or template is used to
structure the lessons. Such lessons, regardless of content or age of the student, will generally
utilize extensive drill and practice. They will have limited explanation and minimal error correction
(because students should not be put into fluency building until they are reasonably accurate). In
distinction, an accuracy-formatted lesson will provide considerable explanation and demonstration,
as well as immediate and comprehensive correction. Lessons designed around the fluency
template may not complement the needs of a student who is inaccurate, even if the lessons
directly cover content the student needs to learn. Accuracy, fluency, and generalization outcomes
are complemented by different types of lesson format.

As mentioned, lesson formats can also be aligned with categories of content (e.g., factual,
conceptual, strategic). For example, in a class on academic survival skills, Dusty might have
trouble learning to take notes if he does not understand the concept of main idea. Concept is a
category of content (just as fluency is a category of proficiency). There are particular ways to teach
factual, strategic, and conceptual information that complement each. Consequently, alignment not
limited to content.

There are times when school psychoiogists need to examine instruction ,and even to offer
opinions and/or advice on how it is delivered. Although it may be unreasonable to expect school
psychologists to know the specifics of every branch of curriculum and all instructional techniques,
every lesson will have objectives, which themselves contain statements of behavior, condition,
and criterion. Lessons can be built or aligned around any of those statements by selecting their
complementary instructional formats. Here is a brief overview of formats based on the common
objective components :

• Content is commonly categorized as factual, strategic and/or conceptual.

• Behavior and/or display is commonly categorized as say, write, do (identify, produce, and/or
generalize/apply).

• Condition is commonly categorized as with or without assistance, in isolation or in context, in a

familiar or in an unfamiliar setting.
• Proficiency/criterion is commonly categorized as accuracy, fluency, and/or
generalization/application.

Each of these can be linked to instructional procedures and teacher actions. Figure 14.1 provides
a summary and comparison of the formats. It can be used to guide analysis of lessons and to
structure feedback on instruction.

Active participation is another important element of instructional format (Marks, 2000). Because it
is widely acknowledged that learners benefit from the active use of information, it is just as widely
accepted that lessons ought to include student activities. However, there is considerable confusion
about the kind, or definition, of these activities. This confusion is easily removed by recalling the
principle of alignment.

Learning academic information rcquires cognitive activity, and learning to climb a tree requires
motor activity. But although the need for cognitive activity may seem obvious, it is remarkable how
many educators routinely insist that students engage in time-consuming activities such as cutting,
pasting, and illustrating to learn academics. Although many of these activities and projects are fun,
they can be counterproductive if they supplant or redirect content-aligned cognitive activities.
Drawing and other creative activities merit a valued position in the curriculum on the basis of their
own worth; time spent on art should be allocated for improving art and not reading, vocabulary,
science, or other nonaligned academic content areas. For students who are not learning to read,
time is limited, and that which is spent illustrating a story needs to be judged in relation to the
learning that might be missed in additional explanation, demonstration, or faster-paced practice
(Hoadley, 2003; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001).

For academic learning, "active" respond ing, engagement and/or practice results from cognitive
engagement. For example, when a student points to the letter E during a reading lesson, we do
not necessarily want to praise by saying "good pointing!" But that is often what happens. Saying
"Yes, you've Iearned which Ietter is E" more directly addresses the thought process (i.e., the
cognition) intended bv the pointing activity (Walsh & Sattes, 2005)

Some activities, such as directing a student to listen, follow along, or reflect, introduce greater risk
of cognitive inactivity than others. Saying "l want you to listen for the name of a tree frog and raise
your hand when you hear one" is better, as the behavior (i.e., raising hand) verifies the desired
cognition. Conversely, saying, "Be sure to remember to pay attention to all the frog names" might
not prompt any form of engagement at all.

Questioning is often recomended for increasing active engagement (Harrop Swinson, 200.3;
Walsh & Sattes, 2005). For example, it is usually best for a teacher to say, "Now going to call on
someone to tell me why Dubai is a centeri of commerce in the Middle East. And then I'll call on
someone else to tell me if that answer was correct." This routine will get all students thinking about
the question, not just the student called on. Another why to do this is to pause after a question and
let all students think a while before requesting the answer from a particular student.

Procedural fidelity

Research has identified both effective and ineffective procedures for presenting information,
demonstrating, questiong, correcting errors, giving feedback, managing common classroom tasks.
These procedures are often specified within particular instructional programs or sets of materials.
Others are associated more generally with effective instruction (S: Walberg, 2006; Vaughn Fuchs,
2003). It is likely that almost any procedure seen in an typical classroom has been investigated.
Obviously, those instructional routines and procedures with empirical support should be used, but
to do so means using them as they were employed during validation. It is not enough to use a
validated procedure. It needs to be implemented with fidelity (Lane, Bocian, MacMillan &
Gresham, 2004; see also Noell, Chapter 30, this volume, for a more in-depth discussion of this
issue).

Dose Factor

Related to procedural fidelity is the idea of adequate instructional dose. Dose factor (or dosage)
means the same thing in instructional delivery that it means in a pharmacy. If an intervention is
employed exactly as it should be, but not in the same amount (e.g., for only half the required time),
the desired rate of learning might not be obtained. There are few guidelines for setting optimal
dosage except for the obvious: The correct dose is the amount needed for effective learning. Time
is an important element of instruction (Gettinger, 1984), but it is not the only element. Increasing
time in the math support class from 30 to 60 minutes per week may represent only a 15-minute
increase if the student will spend half that time illustrating a story. Student progress must be
monitored to finetune dosage (or any of the other components of interventions).

Curriculum's Role within ICEL

When we say a student is "behind," we mean "behind in the curriculum." In curriculum-based and
problem-solving models, the most likely reason for a student's poor performance on a given task is
assumed to be missing prior/background knowledge, Because this prerequisite knowledge resides
at lower levels of the curriculum, evaluators and reachers need to be with the curriculum; and the
aligned measure needed to tind that correct level for instruction. Knowledge of the subject area
being taught and/or evaluated is an extraordinariIy important consideration when working to solve
learning problems (Nelson & Stachek, 2007). However, the curriculum has more dimensions than
most educators realize.

As explained earlier, the curriculum is what is taught, and instruction is how it is taught. The
curriculum is commonly divided into subject areas within which objective sequences are
produced. Objectives are specified learning outcomes and are expected to include statements of
content, specifying what will be taught; behavior, specifying what the student must do (i.e., do,
write, or say) to display knowledge of the content; conditions, specifying the context or
circumstances under which the student will work (c.g., during an assignment, with or without
assistance); and criterion, specifying the quality of performance (i.e., expected accuracy, fluency,
or quality). For example, "Emily will write [behavior] question marks [content] with 100% accuracy
(criterion) during the history test [condition)."

Whereas goals are typically general statements covering large segments of curriculum,
behavioral/performance objectives operationally specify the behavior(s) students will be prepared
to perform when instruction is finished. Having clearly defined objectives is necessary for targeted
evaluation and direct, explicit instruction. Although instructors teach to objectives, they do so by
directing instruction to their students' thought processes and knowledge, not necessarily to the
task utilized as the display mechanism or behavior selected to give that knowledge, an operational
definition. Improved performance on measures aligned with the objectives is taken as the
necessary indicator of changes in knowledge and thought process (because knowledge and
thought processes are themselves covert).

Within any subject area (e.g., multiplication, Civil War history, punctuation), the same content may
include different types of knowledge, Various theories and taxonomies for structuring and
subdividing knowledge have been suggested over the years. The idea behind these taxonomic
systems is that information can be categorized and possibly sequenced in instructionally beneficial
ways (often without consideration of the behavior—criterion—condition components associated
with the objectives). Of these, Bloom's taxonomy of outcomes is the most familiar to teachers,
although not necessarily the most functional (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001).

In some cases, templates for categorizing and organizing the subdivisions of curriculum can help
guide our planning and decision making. For instance, a simple know-and-apply sequence is
functional for planning and evaluating most early-grade outcomes because it forces consideration
of application, as well as knowledge. For example, "Jim will know how to write question marks
with 100% accuracy during the history test" followed by "Jim will apply his knowledge of question
marks with 100% accuracy during the history test." Another common taxonomic format uses fact,
concept, and strategy (sometimes called know, understand and do). For example: "Jenny Mac will
display knowledge of the factual information required to complete multiplication problems" followed
by "Jenny Mae will display knowledge of the concept required to complete multiplication problems"
followed by "Jenny Mae will display knowledge of the strategies required to apply information in
order to complete multiplication problems."

Aligning Curriculum and Instruction

Teaching a student to be accurate may require different instruction from that used to build fluency
or application. Similarly, the ways to teach facts, concepts, and strategies are not the same. Even
within the same content, teaching and evaluative approaches often need to be adjusted or aligned
according to the emphasis on facts, concepts, or strategies (as well as accuracy, fluency, or
application). Alignment requires instructors to match the conditions of instruction and evaluation
with objectives. Once this has been accomplished, standard evaluation formats and instructional
routines can be utilized, making lesson planning both efficient and comprehensive. Some routines
for teaching facts, concepts, and strategies to the proficiency levels of accuracy, fluency, and
generalization/maintenance are presented in Figure 14.1. A review of this figure should give
readers an image Of the differences among the formats. The figure can also provide a quick
source of information about the intervention attributes required to teach particular types of content
or to reach particular outcomes. This information can be used to ensure alignment of instruction
with intended outcomes.

The reader should be aware that techniques and terminology presented in Figure 14.1 are not
uniformly defined across instructional levels, paradigms, and content. Also, instructors will vary in
skill at using them. Consequently, it is always a good idea for a school psychologist to talk over
the information with his or her audience. Before assuming a recommendation will be employed as
expected, the school psychologist should always ask these questions: Can the teacher (1)
Discriminate correct from incorrect use of the technique? (2) Correctly explain how to use the
technique? (3) Correctly demonstrate how to use the technique?

Educational Environment's Role within ICEL

The important thing to remember relative to the educational environment is the word educational.
Without minimizing the importance of the world outside the classroom, educators sometimes need
to be reminded that what is going on out there is largely unalterable (as the term unalterable has
been defined earlier) and relatively distal to class instruction and Iearning interactions. Some of
the alterable variables of greatest importance within the educational environment are:
knowledgeable and skilled staff; clearIy articulated objectives and instructional plans; routine
benchmark monitoring of all students; effective and intense time utilizalion (i.e., available,
allocated, engaged, and academic tilne); availability of aligned and high-quality (I.e., empirically
supported) instructional materials; continuous curriculum-based progress monitoring accompanied
by data-based decision making for students who have problem learning; and appropriate and
flexible grouping options (Johnson, al., 2005; Walqui. 2000).

The student/learner is intentionally placed last in the ICEL discussion because students are
usually the first thing considered in the search the cause of a problem. In addition, the focus on
student variables has often led educators away from useful information. Attributing Iearning
problems, to unalterable, noncurricular student or environment characteristics can detract us from
more obvious explanations for student learning problems.
The most immediate and likely reason for a student not performing or learning a particular skill is
that he or she does not know how to do it (i.e., the student is lacking the prior background
knowledge needed to perform and/or learn; Marzano, 2004). Educators provide students with that
needed prior background knowledge through instruction. Therefore, when a student is failing to
progress through the objectives of the curriculum, the first course of action should be to determine
whether she or he is missing needed prerequisite (background) skills. Consider the following as
examples:

• Question: "Why might Dustin struggle to read words with silent e?"

• Answer: "He has never been taught the silent e rules."

• Question: "Why might Claire be challenged by multiple-digit addition problems

• Answer: "She has yet to master her addition facts."

As the old saying goes, "Sornetirnes the best step forward is one step back." Time spent teaching
missing background knowledge can be recaptured by drastically improving the rate and quality of
future student learning (Howell, Hosp, Kurns, 2008; Marzano, 2004).

Teaching Learning Strategies and Promoting Their Use in the Classroom

Students learn about more than subject matter at school. Most of them also learn to learn within
the academic context. And, once equipped with that knowledge, they learn additional subject
matter faster. These skills are variously referred to as academic strategies, learning strategies,
task-related skills, academic enablers, and study and test-taking strategies. They fall into the
category of tacit knowledge, representing what we might think of as a student's know-how or
academics “with-it-ness” (Stenberg&Hedlund, 2002). Sometimes they are explicitly taught;
however, many educators and students remain relatively unfamiliar with the content of effective
study and learning. In the context of this content and its struction, the concept of a learning
problem shifts its definition. It moves from being an information-processing problem to being a
curriculum-and-instruction problem, and, in so doing, helps resolve the questions, hat does
education have to offer psychology? and What does psychology have to offer education? (Mayer,
2001).

Academic strategies are commonly taught to promote the application of adaptive attention,
memory, and motivation, as well for study and academic work. Many of these strategies are
content-specific (i.e., their application is limited to certain tasks), whereas others are more
"general" in their utility (Ericsson, For exatnple, Bhattacharya (2006) documented positive
outcomes for learning science content by teaching a strategy for use of syllable-based
morphological information to understand science terminology. The findings were consistent with
the conclusions of other studies showing that similar strategies can have a remarkably positive
impact on student learning across content-area classes in the higher grades (Mayer, 2001;
Pashler et al., 2007; Reed, 2008). However, past experience suggests the need for both clarity
and caution when discussing evaluation or instruction of learning strategies. School psychology
and special education both have unfortunate his tones of attempts to assess and teach various
hypothesized cognitive and perceptual processes (Arter Jenkins, 1979; Fletcher vet al., 2004;
Torgesen, 2002).

Strategic knowledge, unlike factual knowledge is not about answers but rather about how to arrive
at answers. The emphasis is on the process of completing work, not getting the task itself
completed. For example, because there are both correct and incorrect ways to complete
computations, an instructor focusing on strategies should be focused on how student solved 20 +
25 = 45, not just the fact that the student gets the answer right (the right answer could have been
copied [Link] student's paper—a common maladaptive strategy). Often there may be more
than one strategy for doing the same thing correctly. For example, when teaching students to
rearrange numbers for borrowing (i.e., regrouping) within subtraction, one could teach the student
this rule: "borrow when there isn’t a sufficient quantity to allow subtraction." As an alternative one
can also teach this task-monitoring strategy (called the "BBB" strategy): "When the big number is
on the bottom, we borrow" (Stein, Kinder, Silbert, & Carnine. 2006).

There are many academic strategies that can be applied to a variety of content areas (e.g.,
reading, math, social skills). Highly successful learners use them regularly. However, all students
do not simply pick up their correct use. Perhaps. unfortunately, there is nothing approaching an
agreed-on set of academic learning skills composing the "accepted curriculum" of academic
strategies. This means that students moving among schools and districts may be behind (i.e.,
remedial), corrective (i.e., having a patchwork of skills) or even ahead depending on what was
taught in the schools they came from and what is expected in the schools they go to.

Academic strategies are not uniformly addressed, as both good and bad programs exist to teach
them. Although almost every student gets some advice about studying and test taking, some are
taught very specific approaches to acquiring, processing, and displaying knowledge, and others
are not. In schools in which these techniques are taught, the students should be expected to
employ them in all of their subsequent classes (DiPernas Volpe, SC Elliott, 2005). Part of this
instruction often includes teaching students to stop using erroneous strategies. This can be difficult
because, even though an erroneous strategy is not working, the student continues to practice it
each time he or she uses it. (Students can practice incorrect strategies, as well as correct ones, to
high levels of "proficiency." ) Another important goal of strategy instruction is teaching students
when and when not to employ a particular strategy (Hamman, Berthclot, Gaia, &Crowley, 2000).

Students fail to use strategies correctly when they; (l) do not know the process; (2) do not know
when to employ the process; (3) do not recognize when the process being used not working;
and/or (4) simply prefer another strategy, All readers of this charter are utilizing some combination
of both reading task and self-monitoring strategy use. These are obviously difficult functions for
Students who are missing prerequisite knowledge of a task (Hamman et al., 2000).

In the absence of a predefined curriculum, one could consider the preceding problems 1—4 to
see which apply to tasks ot concern for a particular student. The problems can then be converted
into objectives.

Strategy Instruction

It is always important to provide both guided and independent practice during strategy acquisition.
As many academic strategies are cognitive and covert, these demonstrations and examples often
need to be provided through verbal mediation or self-talk (Baker, Gersten, & Scanlon, 2002;
Hamman et al., 2000; Wolgcmuth, Cobb, & Alwell, 2008). This practice should also include
examples of error recognition, as it is a precondition for self-correction (Kirschner, Sweller, &
Clark, 2006) One way to increase the utillty of instruction or recornmendations is to ask or to
advise teachers to ask the following four questions (using the example of how to teach asking for
assistance in class instead of interrupting a presentation). The goal would be to plan the lesson so
that, once it is finished, one can answer "Yes" to each of these questions :

l . Does the student know the appropriate steps to asking for assistance?

2. Can the student tell when it is appropriate to ask?

3. Can the student catch a mistake in asking if he or she makes one?

4. Does the student find asking preferable to interrupting?

Additionally, educators often will need to teach across a variety of contexts in order to ensure
generalizing to multiple environments. This will be increasingly true in the upper grades (one
might also need to provide multiple practice opportunities throughout the day). Finally, support
and guidance will eventually need to be reduced as the student to independent success through
practisce, and high levels of proficiency. When there are remember that replacement strategies
always need to be more effective and efficient ways of solving the same problems and completing
the same tasks for which an erroneous strategy is employed. This is particularly true if the student
is expected to use this strategy over time and across settings (Ericsson, 2006)

Attending

The topic of attention illustrates widespread confusion of skill and ability. First, not with standing
the general controversies regarding causation, syndromes, and categorization it has inspired, the
term attention deficit is most unfortunate in a very connotative way. As indicated earlier, implying
that attention is a capacity can encourage fixed-ability thinking. For many, attention has to suggest
a substance that can somehow evaporate (e.g., ".Most of my kids have 8 pounds of attention, but
poor Cheryl only has 4!)

Interventions and/or adaptations for students with trouble attending fall roughly into three
categories : psychophartuacological, behavioral, and instructional. Classroom based approaches
emphasize behavioral and instructional interventions (Harlacher, Roberts, Merrell, 2006).
However, recommended instructional interventions (e.g., peer tutoring, small group size, short
lessons, and computer use) are often advanced for their utility at reducing activity and class
disruptions, not for their effectiveness at increasing learning (although peer tutoring is very
eftective). As every reader most likely aware, there is no guarantee that a nonacttve student in a
calm class will either attend or learn. Many interventions are valued mainly for providing windows
of opportunity, not for promoting focus or in creasing vigilance. Teachers Will be disappointed in
attention interventions if they do not know how to use good instructional techniques to focus the
student on the critical components of lessons and tasks. Attentive nonlearners do not remain
attentive for long.

Lessons intended to teach attending skills may focus on adaptive strategies for monitoring, self-
evaluation, increasing task perseverance, and selective attention, Selective attention is particularly
important. During instruction, attention has two pertinent components : arousal and focus.
Although there is a tendency to think of students With "attention problems" as overaroused, during
instruction it is more productive to think and instruct for focus or selection (although arousal gets
more press because of the association of attention deficit with hyperactivity). Selective attention
refers to the allocation and maintenance of attention to central/critical information (not to
irrelevant/noncritical information). Instructional approaches to attention may either teach content-
specific skills or target more general attention skills.

General academic attention strategics are those that can be applied across a variety of academic
tasks and/or settings. For example, teaching students how to recognize, select, and underline key
terms in texts would be considered general, as the underlining strategy is not limited to social
studies or science texts, (Again, generalization of any strategy to another context can be facilitated
by training across context and situations [Deshler Swanson, 2003]) But in addition, Gettinger and
Seibert (2002) suggest that students be taught that strategics can be modified and tailored to meet
their own needs.

Securing and Directing Attention

Teachers can effectively secure student attention and use any of several techniques to direct it.
This is especially important early in skill acquisition. Here are three ways in which an instructor can
initially secure or redirect student attention: (1) Use novelty, change, and surprise; (2) conversely,
use uniform presentation routines, signals, and visuals to reduce uncertainty in presentations
(allows student to focus on the content of the lesson, not the way it will be taught); and (3)
provide and use consistent labels for the things students will work with routinely

When an instructor directs attention, he or she shifts it to the critical information of a given task or
concept. A nonexample of directing attention would look like this : The instructor holds up a
square and says "This is a square." Then the instructor holds up a triangle and says, "This is a
triangle," An example of correctly directing attention would look like this : The instructor holds up a
square and a triangle next to each other and says: "This is a square, notice that a square has four
corners. You count the corners as I point to them." In this task, the critical information is the
number of sides and corners a shape contains. By directing student attention to the important
information, the instructor in thc second example is illustrating the attributes while modeling how to
select and focus on the appropriate stimuli. In addition the instructor is also contrasting the square
and triangle to show what a square is not. This is critical; one cannot teach what something is
without also teaching what it is not. One cannot teach a student what to focus on without teaching
what not to focus on.

Here are some other ways instructors can direct student attention: (1) Ask students to label Or
indicate the relevant attributes of a task (do not use the terminology relevant attributes unless it is
skill appropriate); (2) modify relevant attributes through elaboration (e.g., adding color or size); (3)
do this only during initial instruction as needed; (4) attenuate the additions as thc students skills
improve; and/or (5) use precorrection by asking questions about critical aspects of a task before
the student begins to work (or make errors).

This last technique, use of precorrection, can also be accomplished by using Iead questions. Lead
questions guide the student through the task. For example, "In a minute I'm going to show you
some shapes. I'll want you to tell them apart and name them. Can you tell me one thing you can
look for to find the answers?" If the student says, "How many sides they have," the instructor
would say, You've remembered one way to tell shapes. Can you give me another thing to look
for?" Then the instructor would show the shapes and have the student carry out the task.
Additional options for promoting attention and teaching adaptive attending skills are provided in
Figure 14.1.

Storage and Recall

Memory involves both storage and Fecal} information. Students ,who, are successful at memory
tasks find. ways to. connect new tnforntatton to [Link] knowledge. Like attention, memory
Includes a set of active skills that educators can improve through instruction (Wolgemuth et al.,
2008). As with attention, monitoring is important for successful use of memory strategies. Students
who are not successful at storing and retrieving information often have unrealistic ideas about how
much information they can or cannot store and retrieve. This is part of understanding task
difficulty. Until students can monitor task demands and their own attention and memory skills, they
have no basis for figuring out on their own which things will Of Will not require the use of any
mnemonics they have learned.

There is another explanation for failures to recall and store information. which, ate though obvious,
always needs to be emphasized. If the student does not understand information, it probably will
not be remembered. Basically, that makes effective instruction the most fundamental of all aids to
memory.

Promoting Storage

Given that combining prior and novel information is at the core of learning, activities centered on
that intersection can be particularly useful. For example, strategies for store age of information can
include both active preview and review. Previewing activities evoke a student's background
knowledge before the presentation of new material; this provides a foundation for processing new
messages. Reviewing allows the learner to reconstruct and re-form existing information. As a
result. teaching strategies for both activities can help with the combining of existing and future
knowledge, as well as organized storage (Marzano, 2004; Schunks In practice. this can involve
the teaeher reviewing previous learning and previewing or introducing new lesson objectives in
one coordinated presentation. That practice can also highlight key concepts while alerting students
to portions of the current lesson that should be remembered.

To close link between preview and ,review, instructors 'can also give a learning goal (or the leeson
by saying: "By the end of this lesson, you will know and then reviewing by asking, "Now what is it
you are going to remember?" The aligned preview and review statements used that context can
later be turned into aligned questions and/or practice exercises (e.g., "Today we learned that all

Promoting Recall

Creating meaningful organizational structures or sequences for the presentation of content is

important for recall. Teaching students the steps in a process while having them actually carry it
out will elaborate otherwise rote practice routines. Also, multiple opportunities for active student
responding during instruction can improve recall.

Teaching Memory Skills

Teachers can provide instruction on a variety of strategies to promote the effective use of storage
and recall. These include strategies such as: (l) mnemonic techniques for discrete and factual
information (Wolgetnuth et al., 2008); (2) note taking and other cotnplex rehearsal procedures; (3)
infonnation organizing procedures; and (4) approaches to summarizing, such as merging notes
around the structure of key concepts.
Effective instructors teach students how to remember material as thev teach the material ("Do you
recall what the •BBB strategy• is used for and what it means?"). An ineffectivee instructor may
simply fail to offer strategies for remembering information, provide no logical sequence or structure
for lessons, and/or overwhelm students with objectives requiring prerequisite knowledge that they
have yet to acquire (all established pedagogical procedures for ensuring that the information will
be forgotten).

Motivation and Perseverance

Students who are seen as motivated persevere in the face of task difficulty (and, for that matter,
all other forms of difficulty). Those considered unmotivated do not (Trzesniewski, Dweck, 2007),
The prevailing explanation for these difficulty can be found in the studies of students implisit
theories of intelligence and work (Dweck. 2006): The students who are less successful describe
themselve as helpless and attribute their unsuccessful outcomes to nonalterable and/or external
causes such as stupidity, task difficulty, luck, poor teachers. or even bad days. For a student with
this helpless explanatory set, it is completely rational to give up the face of perceived difficulty. In
distinction, for students who see failures and accomplihsments as resulting from things that can be
controlled, such as their own effort and the quality of their work. difficulty becomes the signal to
work longer and better (Dweck, 2007). Interestingly, nonadaptive attributtons of success (e.g., "I
got an A because I’m smart") can be as detrimental to motivation as nonadaptive attributions of
failure (e.g., "I got an F because l’m dumb"). Therefore, it is more irnportant to praise effort and
improved performance (i.e., progress) than talent, intelligence, or even high performance. Here
are some attribution examples:

Student

Event statement Type oi attribution

"l •m too Nonadap:tee:

osstgnntent. dutnl' to Internal ability do this!" attr'butjon to a nonalterable cause.

eitort.

Falls "The test Nonadapttre:

asstgntucnt. was too External task

hard'" difficulty attribution to a nonalterable cause. Correct (u: Interna: effort.

Falls didn't

• Adopta•e: Internal

Correct to: Internal

assignment. study the effort (lack of materjal!" effort) attribution (alterable).

Pa sses Nonadapttt•e:

assignment. rcajly Internal ability

smart! e

'attr;bution to a nonalterable cause.

• Correct to: Internal gifoct.

e I rvallv Internal

•worked eiiort {alterable).

fop, Effort and progress.