by Jo Hoffman
My daughter is a 1st and 2nd grade multiage teacher, and I’ve often observed her as she helps her students creatively solve problems, generate goals to guide their decisions, and think about planning for the best solutions. Between the years of kindergarten through second grade, children experience a developmental shift characterized by an increase in self-reflection, control of attention, and emotions, and improved perspective-taking (Daniels & Clarkson, 2010) . Young students are also busy learning associations between words and their meanings; as such, two words, I believe, are emerging as key concepts for young children to develop a greater understanding about during their early elementary years. With intentional energy and focus, we should be helping children make tangible their understandings of “choice” and “purpose.”
Let me explain why I am making this assertion. In the summer of 2008, I read two influential books and was introduced to an area of brain research targeting executive function and its impact on decision-making. The subjects in the books and studies were not young children, but I began to think about and explore how we can perhaps better prepare children in the early childhood years so that as adolescents and young adults in a digital world, they can navigate more successfully the complexities of our time and to engage productively in all its opportunities.
The first book, The Path to Purpose (2008), illustrates the importance of purpose in youth development. Damon’s landmark study of some twelve hundred 12-22 year olds offers initial findings that “…reveal a society in which purposefulness among young people is the exception rather than the rule” (p. 8). Sixty-percent of young people from Damon’s study are lacking purpose. The subjects were from US regions spanning coast to coast, north to south, urban, suburban, and rural and his findings did not vary by region or population. They all had in common their age, ranging from 12-22, and all lived and played during this time in our society characterized by the ever-expanding digital presence.
The digital natives of Damon’s study literally grew up along with the technology explosion…from basic Nintendo systems to X-box Live; from beepers to today’s sophisticated cell phones; from the early AOL Instant Messaging to today’s popular social networking sites; and the interactive applications of Web 2.0 and 3.0. Young people born between 1980-2000 are sometimes defined as the first digital generation. While these uses of technology are powerful and amazing in their connectivity and potential for learning, is there a causal relationship between growing up in the digital world with its ever-present demands, and the current state of ambivalence and absence of commitment as seen in young adults?
Findings in brain-based research may help to get at the root of what may be ailing the digital generation’s psyche and examining the increased physiological demands on the executive function of the brain operating in a digital world may hold clues. The executive function of the brain is a term used to describe “a set of processes that all have to do with managing oneself and one’s resources in order to achieve a goal”(Cooper-Kahn & Dietzel, 2008, para. 2). The brain resources for executive function are limited and “…types of actions exhaust executive function and affect subsequent decision-making may even involve the very common activity of making choices itself…The mere act of making a selection may deplete executive resources in the brain” (Amir (2008)p.1). So then when it comes to making important choices that require more attention and are accompanied by real consequences, the resources needed for executive function may already be depleted from the bombardment of inconsequential choice-making and high frequency responding that characterizes life in the digital world.
The brain’s executive function that is used for choice making is a limited resource tapped equally by making choices of all kinds. Theoretically, one could expend the executive function resource in a plethora of inconsequential choices. Executive function has also been shown to be impacted by multitasking, another demand of technology use, which has resulted in lower and less effective organizational function (Franzen, 2001; Manhart, 2004). The digital playground has exponentially increased the number and complexity of choices students make throughout a day. Is it any wonder then that the ability to identify positive purpose in life can be likened only to finding a “needle in a haystack?” To what extent do the constant multitasking demands for making choices and decisions contribute to a pervasive feeling of anxiety and exhaustion that may manifest itself as a lack of purpose? And if this is the case, then are we perhaps fighting a natural disposition toward purposeful activity? Damon (2008) summarizes implications from neuroscience research, stating, “…a disposition toward purposeful activity has been bred into us and plays a central role in energizing and guiding [us] through the most important choices that we make in life” (p. 26).
In the second book that inspired me to begin my exploration, Paradox of Choice (2004), Schwartz describes well the paralyzing effects of having too many choices. After reading this book, questions emerged. Are aspects of our current society and the digital environment responsible in part for the apparent anxiety of this generation? Is the seemingly unlimited array of choices at any given time when we are using digital applications getting in the way of pursuing a positive purpose? Is there a set of skills or strategies teachers can apply that will help to prepare students over time to face these digital demands? I’m determined to find out what we can do to better prepare the young learners of the next digital generation and I submit that making concrete connections to expand understandings about purpose and choice for young children may be a good start.
Curriculum targeting the most effective means for young children to investigate purpose and choice has not as yet been developed. As Gardner (2011)aptly describes, young children are essentialists—“…they believe that the phenomena of the world each have a fundamental essence” (p.122). Theirs are the unchallenged understandings of a basic moral code. Simply put, choices are good or bad and when one does something “on purpose,” it is usually not very nice. Recently, in a small pilot study, first graders’ journal entries bore this out. I was not surprised, in that having been a K-2 grade teacher for several years, I knew this to be true. But it is only in the past three years or so that I’ve been thinking about what is in essence the GoodPlay Project directed to young children. Without pointedly providing young children with many activities and much discussion about choice and purpose so that their schemas can expand to gradually learn associations between choice and purpose and the variety of meanings these notions embrace, we may be missing a valuable opportunity to better prepare them as they enter the middle elementary years with perspectives beyond essentialists’ understandings.
Current research is limited when it comes to studies of 4-8 year olds’ and their emerging self-reflection/metacognitive abilities. Desautel (2009)* examined emerging metacognition in second graders, but with the focus on metacognition about themselves as learners. What other 21st century skills need to be taught so that perhaps our second generation of digital natives won’t be as affected as the first?
I am suggesting that examining K-3 students’ perceptions of purpose and choice before and after specific intervention activities and discussion may be a good place to begin. (See Hoffman, 2010.)** In the current study being designed, I will be investigating young children’s development in understanding choice, decision-making, and purpose given specific integrated intervention experiences and activities. The study will continue building on the findings and implications from the pilot study within a developmentally appropriate context about the need to make concrete the abstract notions of choice and purpose for young digital age learners to broaden their perspectives and to better prepare them for the neurological demands that come from growing up in a digital world.
Recently I read Gardner’s Truth, Beauty, and Goodness Reframed(2011) and thought about the relationship of choice and purpose to truth, beauty, and goodness. It may be that as children’s abilities to understand the purpose of things and the choices we make associated with defining and pursuing purpose will help them to recognize truth, beauty, and goodness. I am exploring how to help today’s young children so that when they become adolescents and college-age they have seen learning as purposeful and are challenged to select a positive path. It is necessary for young adults to be self-reflective about their choices and decisions with a better understanding of the impact that their digital lives has on their ability to make choices of all kinds. As the use of digital tools and the content on the Internet becomes more and more personally generated and complex, we need the second digital generation to have learned to critically apply skills of authentication to truths, have an expansive list of criteria of beauty, and feel grounded in what it means to seek and recognize goodness.
* Desautel, D. ( 2009). Becoming a thinking thinker: Metacognition, self-reflection, and classroom practice. Teachers College Record, 111, 1997-2020.
** Hoffman, J. (2010). What can we learn from the first digital generation: Implications for developing twent-first century learning and thinking skills in the primary grades. Education 3-13, 38(1), p. 47-54.