Along with mastery and application of essential content as typically prescribed and monitored in state standards, assessments, and accountability systems, it is necessary that students cultivate higher-order cognitive and meta-cognitive skills that allow them to engage in meaningful interaction with the world around them. Further, members agreed that these knowledge and skills are not achieved in a vacuum but require the development of underlying dispositions or behavioral capacities (such as self-regulation, persistence, adaptability) that enable lifelong pursuit of learning. (p. 3)
The report goes on to state that these “Socio Emotional Skills,” “higher-order cognitive and meta-cognitive skills,” and “dispositions” are “mutually reinforcing”78 with the academic knowledge in the Common Core Standards. In other words, all elements can be learned better when they are taught side-by-side.
Coincidentally (or not) these targeted “skills” and “dispositions” also appear to be the primary qualifications that employers are looking for in potential employees, according to multiple surveys.79
CCSSO is not alone in highlighting the role of “Socio Emotional Skills” (the report uses that term instead of the more common “Social Emotional Skills”) in the Common Core.
The school reform group Achieve, another of the three CCSS originators, encourages that the Standards be used as a “platform” for educators to help students develop self-motivation, metacognition, and self-control.80
In addition, the American Institutes for Research concludes that “CCSS makes the assumption” that students have these kinds of Social Emotional skills.81
To sum it up, it is safe to say that those behind the Standards recognize, as teachers have long known, that if students do not feel motivated, confident, and curious, very little of the “knowledge” being taught is likely to engage them.
We are not placing this topic near the beginning of our book to suggest that that these “skills” and “dispositions” need to all be taught prior to the content of the Common Core Standards. Rather, we are including this chapter to emphasize that, as the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and others suggest, they should be taught alongside Common Core content knowledge.
Without them, it's like teaching someone to sing by providing them with the words, but not the music.
CCSSO lists many “skills,” which they define as “strategies,” and “dispositions,” which they define as “mindsets.”82 The CCSSO suggests that acquiring these skills and dispositions can facilitate students in learning the knowledge in the Common Core. We agree that all the skills and dispositions the CCSSO lists are important. However, we are only highlighting ones that, based on our teaching experience, we feel are especially useful to learning in the classroom. It's important to keep in mind that there is also a great deal of overlap between many of these skills and dispositions – for example, where might metacognition end and critical thinking begin?
The “skills” of goal-setting, metacognition, critical thinking, and creativity/innovation, and the “dispositions” of agency, self-control, and persistence/resilience are the ones we review in this chapter. In addition to teaching CCSSO-recommended skills, the strategies and lessons we suggest incorporate the Standards at the same time. In other words, they are “three-fers”:
1. They teach the Socio Emotional Skills and Dispositions that the CCSSO report says are critical for students to develop in order to be successful in mastering the Common Core Standards, even though many are not explicitly included in the Standards themselves.
2. They are all accessible to Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners. Some may not be practical for very early ELL Beginners to complete in English. However, if the teacher or an aide speaks the home language of the student, then there is value in having him/her do these activities in that language to help them develop skills they can apply to learning English. We need to “keep our eyes on the prize,” which is helping our students acquire English skills as quickly as possible. On more than one occasion, their use of a home language will likely be a very effective means to that end.
3. The strategies and lessons we'll be recommending also correspond to specific skills listed in the Common Core Standards themselves.
You will also find that many of the teaching ideas in this chapter and throughout the book emphasize what researchers have identified as four key qualities that encourage the development of intrinsic motivation:
1. Autonomy: Having some degree of control over what needs to happen and how it can be done
2. Competence: Feeling that one has the ability to be successful in doing it
3. Relatedness: Feeling connected to others, and feeling cared about by people whom they respect
4. Relevance: Seeing work as interesting and useful to their present lives and/or hopes for the future83
In our last book, The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide, we also shared specific lessons – on the advantages of being bilingual or multilingual and another on the qualities of a successful language learner – designed to help ELL students develop further intrinsic motivation for learning a new language.84
These “skills and dispositions,” taught in the context of encouraging intrinsic motivation, are important for all learners. They are especially critical to apply in the ELL classroom because of the extra challenges most of our students face: They are adapting to a new culture, customs, and country; they are learning the content knowledge all the other students are learning while at the same time acquiring a new, difficult-to-learn language; some might be recovering from trauma they experienced in their home countries; and a number are coming from uneven and limited academic backgrounds. Many of our ELL students, because of their background, might very well have a number of these skills and dispositions – perseverance, for example – precisely because of the previous challenges they have faced. Yet, they may need help in learning how to channel those mindsets into an academic context.
We teach these same skills and dispositions to our mainstream students, as well. So even though these lessons and strategies are accessible to ELLs, please do not hesitate to use them with your non-ELL students, too – either as they are or in a modified form.
Skills
Goal-setting, metacognition, critical thinking, and creativity/innovation are the four skills considered most important for effective learning.
Goal-setting
Extensive research has shown that a scaffolded and supported goal-setting process, particularly one where students choose their own goals, enhances student motivation and academic achievement85 and specifically helps in developing second-language proficiency.86
Researchers typically divide goals into two types – learning goals (also known as mastery goals) and performance goals. Learning goals are motivated by a desire to increase one's skills and ability in an area or in accomplishing a task, while performance goals tend to be more motivated by a desire for recognition – from friends, teachers, or family – and a competitive desire to “be better” than others. Students have been found to persist more when they face obstacles if they are focusing on learning, rather than on performance goals.87
This heightened level of perseverance is generated because learning goals can often be more likely achieved by effort without a finite end point (“I want to be more focused in class” or “I want to speak English more clearly and with more confidence”). Performance goals are more easily